Charles Thurston

ENGL 1101-003
Debarati Dutta
Spring 2014 Capstone Reflection

Throughout the semester I have learned and developed many literacies. My past and
current experiences have both played a great role in this learning and development process. My
current standing in literacy is the combine progress of my past learning experiences and my more
recent learning experiences. My classes have played the largest role in my reading and writing
development up to this point. Having taken English 1101 during both of my semesters here at
UNCC has helped me learn a great deal about my personal literacy development.
The first time I took English 1101 here at UNCC allowed me to develop one of my most
important writing literacy skills. This class taught me the true value of the revision process of
writing. Revision is one of the most important processes of writing. After writing a fist draft
there is a lot of room for improvement. I learned more about the revision process during my first
semester of 1101 than I did during the second concluding semester of 1101. The main difference
between my two 1101 class is the amount revision work we did. If my first 1101 class we did a
lot of revision work and focused on it heavily. The second 1101 focused less on revision and
more on reading analysis. The second class was more focused on analyzing the articles we read
and making notes on them. The combination of the two classes gave me a better understanding
of how to analyze readings and write about them efficiently.
My past reading and writing literacy experiences have helped me identify trends that I
consistently follow throughout my literacy development. One of the biggest trend that I have
noticed with my reading and writing is procrastination. I usually wait till I have just enough time
to finish assignments before the due date to work on them. I tend to do the best when I wait till I
have just enough time to finish the assignment and review and revise it once before it is due. I
believe I follow this trend because I work better under pressure. I feel like this is most effective
if I have a few stress free days before I work on it then stress about it on the last day to do it.
Writing graded papers for school is what has allowed me to determine this. Some of the highest
grades that I have received where on papers that I wrote at the last minute.
Certain readings have helped me develop my literacy throughout this semester. Out of all
of the readings that we have done in class there are two that were the most influential for my
development. The first one article was Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott. This article helped
me realize that first drafts are not that important. It shows that even professional writers do not
get everything they write perfect on the first draft. This boosts my confidence in my writing
abilities when I feel like I have a poorly written first draft. The second article was My Pen
Writes in Blue and White by Vincent Cremona. This article allowed me to understand how
different points of view and ways of thinking influence my writing. This article shows how the
author writes from two different points of view that he developed from the different influences of
his family members. This gives me more confidence in my writing when I am writing from my
point of view. This helps me understand why I write the way I do. It also helped me understand
why I prefer to write opinionated essays. I am more comfortable writing things from my
personal experience and I enjoy writing about my personal opinion more than anything else.
Writing about something that I am more comfortable with and enjoy greatly improves my
writing ability.
There are classes that I have taken other than English class that have helped improve my
reading and writing literacies throughout my first year at college. During my first semester at
UNCC I was a Mechanical Engineering major and was required to take a lot of work intensive
courses. The course that had the greatest impact my writing ability during the first semester was
my Intro to Engineering course. This course required me to develop technical writing skills that
are used for communication in the Engineering field. There was a book called An Engineers
Guide to Technical Communication by Sheryl A. Sorby and William M. Bulleit that we used to
learn how to use technical writing and communication. This book taught me how to write and
format formal technical reports and other written documents. This book was a central guide to
all of the technical communication methods that are used in Engineering. We were also required
to write using the Chicago Manual of Style, or CMS, for our formatting. This is a style that I had
never used before and therefore it increased the diversity of my writing style. After my first
semester I was suspended from the College of Engineering here at UNCC and decided to work
towards becoming a Business major. During this second semester I have been an Undeclared
major and have been taking classes that help me work towards becoming a Business major.
These courses are not writing intensive but an LBST course that I was taking was mainly a
writing course. This class was my Western Culture and History LBST with a focus on the
history of Blacks in the Americas or Blacks in the West. This class required me to read a
number of books and use the information to write about the topic of the class. We were also
broken into groups and assigned certain readings to focus on and present to the rest of the class.
This was to help teach the class about our specific reading and help prepare them for the tests.
All of the tests in the class where written exams. We were given a list of focus questions that
were divided into two sections and were required to write an essay on each one. These focus
questions were based on the information that we learned from our reading and from the class
lectures. This experience helped me improve my research based writing skills. I increased my
ability to conduct research and write about it. Doing research for writing has been one of my
weaker writing literacy skills. This class helped improve the ability to pull specific important
concepts out of my research and use it for my writing.
These examples of my reading and writing literacy development are the experiences that
provided the best help in developing my literacy skills. These are literacy opportunities and
literacy events that provided me with useful knowledge and experience that helped me improve
my reading and writing literacy skills and abilities. These experiences have also helped me
develop new reading and writing literacy skill. Even with the amount that my reading and
writing literacy skills have increased I believe that I still have room for improvement. During
the rest of my educational career I expect my literacy skill to continue to develop. I also expect
my literacy to continue improving even after I have completed my educational career and move
on into the working field. It is my current belief that a persons literacy skill never stop
developing and improving throughout their life and I expect that mine will continue to develop
for the rest of my life.