My English 101 Experience

Ibrahim Elsayed Rasheed      

English 102-111

January 13, 2012

SWA#1

My English 101 Experience

            Last year was the year when I started learning how to write academic essays from the zero and it was the year when I got an A in my English 101 class. As an international student who is coming from a country where people have never heard of something called academic writing, I had to go to an English school named (EPI) to learn the basics of essay-writing before being ready to enroll to a university. After finishing my course in writing, I enrolled to Midlands Technical College, a small college here in Columbia, SC, and took some classes there in the fall semester. One of the classes I took was English101 which was one of my best classes in my first semester in the academic world. In that class, we had three big essays to write which I will discuss in details throughout this essay.

            The first paper I had to write in ENGL101 was about culture and society. In the essay I wrote, I discuss how technology affects our children in both good and bad ways. I report some statistics to support some of my points and I quote some of what experts say about this issue. The first draft of this paper was the worst I turned in in my Engl101 class because it was basically a big mess especially in the in-text citation. My instructor marked something in every line and asked me to revise the paper. However, in the second draft, I turned things around and it was one of the best papers I have ever written and I got an A for the paper.  

            For my second big assignment, I had to write about a current event. At that time, there was a presidential debate on the CNN , so I decided to write about the election. I talk in my essay about each one of the eight candidates briefly and about what they have in common and what they disagree about. I also talked about the importance of this election not the Americans, but to other countries that could be either directly or indirectly effected by the election. I got a B+ on that essay which was satisfying for me because I wrote the paper in only two days.    

            My last paper was about economy and had to be written in APA format which means I will have to create my own survey and questionnaire and conduct them. In the paper, I discuss the issue of homelessness and who the responsible for people becoming homeless is. This paper is the best I have written because I got to know lots of know information and I actually went to the street and surveyed real people for the first time which was exciting and enjoyable, I even made new friendships with two of the participants. The instructor gave us three weeks to work this research which made it easier for me to write a good paper and to keep adding and revising before the due date. For me, APA style was much easier than MLA style because in APA there is not much need to worry about the structure, all my focus was on the content itself. I had an A from my instructor for writing that paper.

            In sum, my English 101 class was a good experience for me in all ways. I got to learn more about academic writing and had a good grade in the overall. The class was a very useful preparation for English102 which is about to get serious. I can’t wait until I apply what I have learned in my English classes in my actual study field.