Kendall DeBerry Mr.

Neuburger English 102-101 14 May 2012 Final Essay My Experience in English 102 My English 102 class this semester was an informative one and although I slacked off sometimes and slapped things together at the last minute, I felt that I got a lot out of it. Getting a good grade on papers and projects in English 102 was always achievable and I felt like the class was preparing us for communication and work through the computer world. I learned from my own writing that sometimes a person can be too wordy and make their writings hard to read. In my first English class I tried to extend my papers by writing as eloquently as possible. As I got to this class that all changed. From the beginning of class I remember Mr. Neuburger telling other students to not be too wordy because the reader shouldnt have to stop and think about what they just read. So through experience I tried to always cut to the point and make my papers readable. Something that prepared us for the computer world was using blogs. At the start of the class, we created a blog to introduce ourselves to our classmates but coming from a public speaking course the previous semester it wasnt what I expected. Mr. Neuburger had a good point though. He would get a much larger amount of participation if people talked about themselves online. I did feel more comfortable sharing my goals with the class when I could read it to myself. Something that I did in English 102 that was helpful was the summaries and essay responses that we would write after reading short stories. By doing this, we got a lot of practice

writing and seeing how effective we were at sticking to our thesis. I learned to always introduce my source that I was referencing to and I learned to state my topic in the introduction. For example, If I was writing a response to a story that Lars Eighner wrote I would start off by saying Lars Eighner, a student at so and so university wrote in On Dumpster Diving that a person can make a decent living digging through trash. By doing this, the reader already knows what he or she is getting into. When looking back on my Essay responses I noticed how I Improved over the semester and how if it wasnt for practice and critique, I would not be a very good writer. Something that I really found interesting was the video A film Unfinished by Yael Hersonski. The video introduced me to parts of the Holocaust that I never knew about. We learned about the ghettos and the strange propaganda used by the Nazi party. The Nazis would film the Jews in ghettos and create scenes in which the Jews would be living an extravagant life style. Mr. Neuberger also raised an interesting question about the propaganda. Should the Nazis that filmed the execution and the torture of Jews be persecuted? This was something that I put a lot of thought into. Also, writing a summary about the video was different than writing one about a readable story. By watching the video, I had to try and keep track of the different things occurring. This wasnt hard though considering how unique it was. The use of technology had a large impact on my learning in English 102 because prior to this class I thought the only thing a person did in English was write papers. I learned as I was introduced to blogging and twitter that English has more to do with communication and expressing Ideas. I liked the idea of discussing things we read by different authors but I would have rather done it in person. Something that I would have enhanced my experience in this

English class would have been to just do more essay responses and papers. Im one of those people that learn from practicing and experience so just more time is all that would have helped. In this English class I felt that I was more in touch with the computer world and through making digital projects I feel that Im more prepared to continue English.