Sunday, December 9, 2012

To Live and Learn

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“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
Albert Einstein 


The skills I have learned in this class are many so I will touch briefly on the ones I have found most helpful. It's amazing how I was able to implement these techniques into other coursework as soon as they were learned. Close reading of text was something we learned early on in this semester and I found to be very useful. Just the act of underlining any words that I found interesting or looking for themes that are re-occurring within the text is a very useful skill. I used to be afraid to mark up a book and refrained from this practice. Now I find that this practice has me looking for elements within the text much more closely. It's like a scavenger hunt! I find that I am erasing from all of my textbooks at this point in the year in order to turn them back in. But that's a good thing. It means that I am using this skill that I have learned in this class. I really enjoyed the reading of “Bartleby the Scrivener” the most. The style of Melville is unique and I have since took to finally reading “Moby Dick” after all of these years. I was surprised by “A Modest Proposal” having no fondness for it initially but having that change after looking for the underlying message contained within. I have met the learning outcomes by effectively synthesizing information into well focused essays. By relying on good essay structure and method I was able to construct papers of which I am very proud. By sticking to the formula of pre-writing, outlining, developing focused thesis statements and topic sentences for each supporting paragraph I was able to hone the craft of communicating effectively through writing. I have seen the benefit in real time in my papers constructed in other classes. One of the challenges I have met and overcome in this class I have mentioned previously. This has to do with reading and analyzing text that I did not believe I would enjoy such as Swift. I find that I have a different taste of subject matter and was resistant to this work at the outset. However, when I looked for elements hidden within such as character roles and the like I found the text I was adverse to open up before me and come alive in a new and profound way. Great class Ms. Cline! Thank you.

Would you like to read more quotes on learning?

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