Reflective Journal-Eng 203

Ain El Helweh Camp

Saida, Lebanon

Date: 12/5/2017

Dr. Zane Sinno

Department of English

American University of Beirut

Beirut, Lebanon

Dear Dr. Sinno,

   I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for helping me to develop my way of thinking and writing, and making my experience in Eng 203 rewarding. I spent my years in UNRWA schools and I worked hard to get a scholarship to enter AUB, and now I’m here majoring in Biology. I faced many problems since I attended AUB, especially with my English background although I’m English-Educated.

  

   You might be shocked when you know that I have never heard the words “Plagiarism” and “Citation” before I had in Eng 203, and I have never used “Google docs” or “word” or “Canva” and many other things in my school; I just learnt how to use “PowerPoint” there. Sometimes I didn’t participate in your class, because I’m afraid of not being able to deliver my idea or miss a word or something like that.

     One more thing is that my friends need at most an hour to complete their assignment and they do it well, while I need at least two hours to do so and most times I didn’t get a very good grade. I was writing with my Islamic thoughts and you taught me how to show my respect to others, which I have in reality, in my writings.  Personally I don’t care about the grade as much as I care to learn from my mistakes and enhance my way of writing, but unfortunately the scholarship cares.

  

     Moreover, the presentation which I have done with Elias and Sally about “Emotional Intelligence” was my first presentation in English in my life! This may explains my anxiety and worries in your class. During your office hours I have classes so I always bother you by emails, but that was somehow useful.

   

   I have no clear idea about my personal performance in this class but I think that I really worked hard in this class and I have enhanced my writing a lot after taking into consideration your feedback which, to be honest, had disappointed me sometimes after remembering the effort and time I’ve spent to do the assignment, but that’s what motivates me to go on. In the first assignment “Beydoun the Sociologist” I spent about four hours, and I struggled how to write on Google Docs the first collaborative essay.

    

     I also want to thank my classmates who made the English session much more interesting by sharing their different thoughts and attitudes in many topics that we have discussed in class. The most thing I liked in Eng 203 is that it was more like debate sessions rather than a lecture. Where I read the text, came to class, listened to many different points of views, and discovered the various angles of the topic. Although Eng 203 is a required major by the university I would recommend this course for my friends because of its outcomes, despite its heavy workload at least for me.

      

Sincerely yours,

Nour Al Manayaa