Project Web

A Long Journey

            Throughout my life I have struggle with reading comprehension. I can never understand why this has to happen to me. I love to read and I read all the time but it doesn’t change the fact that I still have difficulties in reading. It all started when I was little and I move around a lot. As a result I went to different school pretty much every year and was taught different ways how to approach reading. Throughout the years, I have always been confused on how to understand the reading. As this year is coming to an end in my English class, I realize that the first semester in the class helped me understand reading a lot better during the second semester.  

         During the first semester in my English class, I had the confidence that I will do so well in this class and that I will understand the reading material easily. In my mind, I was thinking that since I passed my English class in high school; college English shouldn’t be any different. What I came to realize is that my reading comprehension was still a struggle for me even in college. Throughout the first semester my classmates and I had to do these progression assignments that led up to the essay that we have to write about. Our first assignment that my teacher gave to the class was a poem called “Its A Woman’s World” by Eavan Boland (http://www.cwoc.ufl.edu/owl/TutorialSessions/OWLsession1042708.html). I already knew that I wasn’t going to like this because I didn’t like analyzing poems at all. When my classmates started breaking down each stanza of the poem, I had the most confusing face ever and had no idea what they were talking about. I was trying to figure out how my classmates came up with these ideas and knew what it is between the lines. I remember asking questions about this poem over and over again because I didn’t understand at all. When I analyze the poem myself, I was getting so frustrating and pretty much gave up because I knew I wouldn’t be able to understand this poem at all. I knew right then that I was going to have such a hard time in my English class and thinking that I am not going to do so well on my essays and in the class itself. That was my mindset during my first semester in English in college.

            I was struggling a lot during my first semester in my English class. My classmates and I had to do these progression assignments and I didn’t get why we had to these assignments. In my mind in the beginning, I thought none of these assignments helped in no kind of way to help me prepare for the essays that I had to do. Doing the first progression that I had to do in the class was that we had to write letters to the speaker of the poem, the author, and to a family member and explain what I understood about the poem. I was thinking, how can I write a letter to someone about a poem and I have no idea what I understood in this poem. When I was listening and reading other classmates letters, I get so frustrated inside because I can’t analyze a simple poem to save my life. Watching clips that were posted online and reading other material that related to what we were doing wasn’t helping me at all. I didn’t understand how it related to what we were reading sometimes and how I can write an essay based off the poem and extra readings and clips our teacher gave us. I remember writing my first essay that was based on the Eavan Boland’s poem; I was completely blank on what to write about. I am going over all the notes and trying to analyze the poem all over again but there were no ideas popping up in my head. In a way I know what I wanted to write about but at the same time I know this was nothing that my teacher wanted to see in the paper. At that point, I was pretty much, I felt like I was a gambler and just have to take the bet that whatever I wrote in me essay was good enough. There was one progression that I did in class that I was confuse and had the hardest time trying to understand the concept of doing this progression.

           In Progression 2, I had to deal with using the rhetorical devices and applying it to what I had to do with the different assignments within this progression. The rhetorical devices that I used were logos, pathos, and ethos. When I first heard about these three rhetorical devices, I thought it was confusing and probably it is going to be hard to relate it to what my class was going to do. I knew what each of the devices means and how each of them in a way intertwine with each other. But I can never figure out how to make it related to the readings. I was told that the rhetorical devices can help us analyze the reading texts better. The rhetorical devices were the most confusing and hardest thing that I learned during my first semester in my English class. Even though it was confusing and hard to understand the concept, but I did get the hang of it when me and my group had to apply these devices in a commercial. It seem a lot easier to work in my group and actually use it on a commercial and it also helped me to understand the rhetorical devices because commercials use it a lot on TV to sell something.

         When the second semester came around, I try to have high hopes that it will be a little bit easier for me when it comes to understanding reading. My classmates and I had to read a graphic book    called Persepolis by Marjane Strapi. I usually can’t concentrate on the reading because I am more focus on the pictures that are inside the book. I thought it was an okay book since I am not a really big fan with graphic novels and I understand what was going on in the book but didn’t really analyze it piece by piece. When I and my classmates were discussing each chapter in the book, my mind started racing again. In the beginning, I had kept beating myself up because I couldn’t get it right. What I thought was right, it was wrong. I stress out about not understanding this story that I just give up. So I decided to not think so hard and just have an open mind about this. As my classmates and I went on throughout the book, surprisingly I started getting a hang of it a little bit.

      My greatest accomplish was when I worked on Project Space and was talking about as a class about what we think is L.A. So I had to read a short story called Minnie Riperton Saved My Life by Luis Alfaro. This was my all-time favorite story to read in my English class because I can somewhat relate to what he is going through. I read this story over five times and I understood the reading like it was nothing. When I thought about it for a while, I also use rhetorical devices to help me analyze this story without even knowing that I did. Since in the beginning I struggle with understanding rhetorical devices, this story made it easier for me because I can relate to it and I like the story. The other stories and poems that I had read during the second semester, I really felt at ease because I was at the same pace as everyone else in my class in understanding reading.

            In the beginning of my freshman year in English, I knew I had a problem with reading comprehension and that I will fall behind for a while but I didn’t let that stop me. The different strategies that I used from the first semester to the second semester helped me a lot on bettering myself in reading. I always loved to read since I was a little girl, it just the understanding and trying to analyze it was the problem. I stress, fussed, and sometimes wanted to give up because in my mind I know that I couldn’t do it. I am happy where I am at right now. Of course I might have some readings that will be hard for me to understand but I know that in the long run it will turn out great.