Damir Stanisic Anthony Borrero ENGL 1102-023 14 January 2012 Dear Professor, All throughout high school, English

was definitely my least favorite and one of my weakest subjects. There were a few good novels that we read my senior year such as Beowulf, Grendel, and other British literature pieces. For me writing and composition has always been a nuisance because I never was sound in planning or outlining very much plus it takes me so long to think of what to write about and in some cases I would rush through the assignment. Nevertheless, after each writing assignment I would look at how I did and learn from any mistakes that I made. My hardest year for English in high school was sophomore and junior year. My freshman year was straight forward as far as written assignments, literature and vocabulary. Sophomore year was alright and out teacher pushed us to the limit because of the state-mandated writing test which I did really well on. Even though the writing test was the main focus of that semester, there was some good world literature that we examined. That year we read a few interesting novels such as Night, Ties that Bind, and some mythology. Junior year was something else because we had to read stories like the Scarlet Letter and plenty of analytical writing but I managed. Senior year English was fun for the most part because we watched many movies and videos bases on the British literature curriculum. There were many group activities too plus my teacher that year was also my soccer coach. After I graduated I realized that I could and should have done a little better in my English classes but I was just an average student when

it came to that subject. When I continued my higher education at the community college I went to English was a little smoother. Before I transferred to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte I took three college level English courses. Those were expository writing, argument based research, and world literature I. In expository writing we learned to development, revision, topics and thesis statements. For argument based research there were some new writing techniques introduced such as more research, MLA documentation and argument strategies. That specific English course was the worst of all three because of a lot of the bibliographical requirements, certain prompts and my lack of enough ideas to argue. In my world literature class we read a good number of stories like ones I have read in my previous studies in high school. Drama, poetry, and history were all stressed in this course. This literature course was my favorite of all three college courses because it let me improvise when it came to doing plays/performances and the material was definitely something I enjoyed to read. Another benefit was the historical documentaries that our professor presented because there was so much that tied in to the literature that was read. We also did plenty of creative group projects that I believe went perfect with the stuff we read. Overall this was the kind of course that would motivate me to go into a history related field of study because the amazing literature such as: the Divine Comedy, Grendel, the Prince, Fuente Ovejuna and some other works. As far as this class goes I feel like it is going to be quite interesting and fun but serious at the same time which will definitely help me in my future English courses. When it comes to creativity and ideas, I can have something brewing in my brain but the hard part is putting them together in writing. My goals for this course this semester is to better understand how to develop my thoughts properly and go in depth beyond the basic and the obvious (like the eyeball picture assignment).