At the beginning of this semester, I was not the strongest writer. I used to focus on quantity over quality, because my high school teachers were very adamant about length requirements. I believe that I was not a strong writer because I was not ver good at annotating. I was never sure what to write, what to ask, where to write statements and where to ask questions. I had a hard time understanding the text because none of my teachers really taught me active reading strategies. Fortunately, this semester I have learned many reading strategies to make myself a better annotator and a better writer. At the beginning of the semester I was not necessarily sure what to highlight or write about. Then I began to read the text at a pace where I was no long rushing myself to finish things, and I took a step back to begin taking my time. After this, I was able to highlight and understand what I was reading. When I was able to find the key point in the articles that we have read, I was able to build off of those to ask questions. Asking questions has gotten me farther already because it usually adds strength to my arguments which is very important for this class. When I ask a question I go deeper into the text once again and I am not satisfied until I find what I am looking for. Therefore from the beginning of the semester to right now, I put in a lot more effort to understand the text and hope that this makes my understanding of the texts deeper and allows me to transfer the thoughts I have while annotating into my essays.
