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reflective letter


Dear Kim and Laura,

My friends tell me my English has improved since I started college last fall, but especially this semester. I feel I have learned a lot in this semester. In a flash, our semester ended, and I want it to continue. I reviewed this semester's learning experience. I am so glad to describe how I grew as a writer and reader by describing my strengths, my weaknesses, and some barriers I have experienced or that might challenge me in the future.

First of all, I have some strengths as a reader and writer. I am so lucky I took the Culture Club for English 99/Read 94. Reading and writing, just like twins, always support each other. Culture club is great idea to help students improve their reading and writing since they are like two trains running on parallel tracks. These classes helped me take my good ideas and share them with others with my writing. I used to write in Mandarin and then translate into English. But now I write mostly in English. I was always a good organizer but did not know how to apply that to writing. I had no idea how to organize my writing. Currently, I understand the writing process and how to organize a paper into thesis, topic sentences, body paragraphs, and conclusion. I also can write in many styles, such as blogs, essays, interview papers, and research papers.

This course taught me to read different types and now I love reading, especially books. I used to hate reading and only read on the computer. My vocabulary and grammar have improved, and my reading speed has improved also. So, this new love of reading was because of these classes. I plan to continue reading for fun and go to the library to find books that look interesting to me.

I found researching at the beginning very hard. I did not know where to start and wasted a lot of time reading too many articles and struggled with my thesis topic. This made doing the research paper harder than it should have been. But now I can focus my research and take my good ideas to write a good paper. And I know I see things others don’t. My writing helps other people understand things they did not understand before.

In addition, I still have reading and writing weaknesses. My grammar and vocabulary have improved but I need to keep getting better. I know more reading will help. And I plan to keep writing and am thinking about writing blogs which will help me become a better writer. And I know I am perfectionist. When I write, I always think about how to improve with a lot of drafts. But sometimes, I think I need to stop and finalize what I wrote since I have other classes. I know I need to learn to make my drafts final sooner.

Lastly, I have some barriers to my success in school. The first one is cultural. I moved from China in 2010. So, I am just learning American culture. What many American students take for granted, I need to learn like a new baby. Even going to school in America is so much different than in China. Another barrier is that I have a family and work full-time. This takes time and energy away from my school work. So, I must balance my time and energy with my family, work, and school. And sometimes I think my age is a barrier. I think I am old and all these young students are smarter and have more energy than me. These are my three biggest challenges to my success in college.

Therefore, all those strengths, weaknesses, and even some of my barriers all worked together to help me improve my reading and writing this semester. It was a great start and now I can use these skills to improve my reading and writing. One of my goals for college is to improve my English and I think I have achieved that.

Again, I really enjoyed the Culture Club. Thank you for allowing me to be your student this semester.

Sincerely,

Sunny

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