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Avishkumar Patel Patel
Prof. Schuster
English 1
30 April 08
After reading all the essays this semester, what did you learn about yourself.
This was my second semester at this University. My major is business administration. In
this major, there are many different courses. I have to learn. In this semester I took five courses.
English 1 is one of the courses of these five. In this course assignment are given regularly to all
students. Always the assignment is of reading the essays and answering the questions from the
book The American Values Reader. I was always doing assignments regularly to learn
whatever it includes. After reading all the essays this semester, I learned many things.
I learned many things from which few things were totally new for me to learn. The first
thing I learned is the meaning of word aardvark. Its a name of kind of animal. This word is in
the essay Prison Studies. As in the assignment, reading and answering the question of essay
was used to given always, my reading skills was improved. In the beginning, I was not being
able to understand few sentences. But later on, as I did more reading, my skills improved. I
became to understand clearly and easily. Besides reading, another thing I learned is to find out
answers of questions of essays, perfectly. I also learned about the thesis sentences that a thesis
sentences is the most important thing of the essay. Thesis sentences is always written in
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beginning of the essay. After reading all those essays, learned I how to support the thesis
sentence and what kind of topics can be added to support the thesis sentences.
Many essays I read this semester are written in different format. After reading those
essays, I came to know and learn about different types of methods to write the essay like writing
information and paragraphs as per the time of its existences. This method is used in the essay
the War Room at Bellevue. The another method of writhing essay I learned is making
explanation of topic and mentioning examples of real life in between. This method is used by the
writer Lucie Prinz in the essay Say Something: Theyre Only children.
About grammar, I learned different ways to write about talking conversation of two
persons in the essay. I learned it from the essay Children and Poverty. Besides this I also
learned about intended audience that how to recognized intended audience.
Other thing I learned by reading all those essay in this semester is that always use
dictionary, if I dont know the meaning of any word, I learned a good lesson. I was not using
dictionary before. But this essay made me to use dictionary to solve the question and answer, and
it makes good understanding. Finally the interesting thing, I learned by reading essay, is of about
the American culture. I learned few things of Americans culture from the essay My Parents
Bust-Up, and Mine and My Husbands Nine Wives.
Whatever I learned by reading essays in this semester is going to be very helpful to me in
the future.