Reflective Essay: My Writing Process

Rachida Kateb

Professor Dustin

4 December 2014

Reflective essay: My writing process

My experience in English class has totally changed during this semester. The student that I was in my French school is very different than the student that I am here in America. English has always been a language that I wanted to speak and to master. Learning English in a country where it is not the native language it is obviously different from learning it in a country where it is the only spoken language. In France, the class were barely the same during my high school years. The teachers were only focusing on grammar and vocabulary. We really never had to write essays of more than 150 words, which is the reason why whenever I came to study here in America

If I compare my current teacher to the ones that I had in my former class I have noticed that Professor Dustin tries by his own teaching approach to find an uncommon way to attract students to English. I deeply think that it had an impact on my writing skills because I always wanted to prove him that I am worthy of it. I do not want to disappoint him and that is what gives me the desire to always do my best.

The difference also from back home is the textbook, most of the time the textbook helps the teacher, and it should be helpful for international students whereas the current English textbook is from my point of view a little bit complicated with unclear essays. Although, after this little critic of the textbook I have to say that some of the essays were very interesting. The one who caught my attention was the first essay that I studied. It was The Ordinary Devoted Mother from Alison Bechdel. It was actually a comic book, which is the reason why I like

As a non-American student it helped me to know more about the American mentality and people’s point of view about several subjects. Indeed, this exercise helped me to structure my thoughts and make them understandable not only for myself but also for the entire class. It helps also to develop my ideas; with the panel of arguments of each student I was able to conceal the truth of the forgery. For instance, once we were talking about plagiarism and during the class discussion the teacher asked us “is remixing plagiarism?” and it was amusing to see that most of the students had several points of view and thanks to that freedom of expression, each one had the possibility to present its arguments and to explain them. This exercise was really helpful because when I chose to write my interpretive essay about the harpers’ magazines article of Jonathan Lethem called The Ecstasy of influence I was able to have several arguments, and the class discussion inspired me a lot. However, I do not think that the interpretive essay was my strongest essay. My strongest essay was the personal essay. I had more facilities to write it. Talking about ourselves is obviously easier than talking about people’s work. In the personal essay I was inspired from my own life experiences whereas in the interpretive essay I was trying to understand, analyze, and argue the author statement which is never an easy