Semester Reflection

I have learned many new things in my first semester of Global ED English class, especially new things that I probably wouldn’t have learned in a normal English class.

One of my very first things I learned to do was my weekly articles, I remember sitting at my computer trying to think of good ideas to help get my point across. It was only after the first weekly article where I finally got the hang of writing them properly and persuasively, all the thanks to Mr. Fielder’s great way of teaching us how to type our paper properly, by going through each paragraph with us one at a time.

Another thing I learned is how to view things at many different perspectives. One way that really helped me look at things in many different ways was listening to the “The Man in the Well” story, which really got me thinking of what the author was truly trying to get across to his readers/listeners. It really helped me when Mr. Fielder had a large class discussion on what others thought the author was trying say, everyone had their own little ideas and thoughts about what the author was trying to tell.

I learned very much about the Rwandan genocide. We had many class discussions about the genocide ranging from what we all had to say about one faction that took part in the genocide to what they were fighting over. One way we got to learn about the genocide was the debate, we each had an assigned group (U.S., U.N., MRND, Belgium, etc.) and debated over who truly started the genocide. Also when we had all of our facts known about the genocide Mr. Fielder had us write a letter acting as if we were in Paul R.’s (A person who experienced the genocide first hand) situation. When we wrote the letter it really helped me improve on my writing skills and taught me about pathos, ethos, transitions, and good supporting paragraphs. It also had us took what we already know about writing and just put it all together in one good paper.

Did you know Aborigines of Australia were mistreated for hundreds of years? That’s just one of the thing that I learned about the history of Australia, The aborigine people were mistreated and abused for centuries, ever since Europeans had first settled in Australia. Only recently have the Aborigine people gotten their rights back, but before that they used to be fenced off from the other half of Australia and the Europeans settlers had tried to breed out their heritage so there would be no remembrance of them. One way we learned about Australia was from watching “Rabbit Proof Fence” which told the story of 3 young children being taken away from their family and their mission to be reunited with their family once more.

Those are just some of the things I learned over my first semester, hopefully next semester I can learn even more!