Dear Reader Letter

Going back to college is my primary goal when I arrived in Everett, Washington two years ago, but I always procrastinate that's why it took me two years before I enrolled in a community college. I came from Manila, Philippines where I grew up, and had my elementary and high school education. After high school and before migrating to the U.S., I attended a university where I spent two years with a goal of having a degree in civil engineering when I'm done. But things did not turn out quite good, for I got a failing grade in two classes during my first year, and got another one on my second year. Some of my relative said that it was because of my peers, but for me, the reason is lack of motivation, and I didn't take my classes seriously. Two years after I left the Philippines and stopped school to migrate to the U.S., I realized, finally, the value of education. I don't want to work on a manufacturing job for the rest of my working career; I want my career to climbed up. Now, motivated, I am going to take my college education seriously, and have my engineering degree four or five years from now. I enrolled in Everett Community College on winter quarter of 2009, and now, spring quarter, is my second quarter in the college.

Spring quarter's English 97 is not my very first English class; however, taking this class made me feel that I am learning to write in English for the first time. I had several English classes before when I was in a university in the Philippines. There, I learned what is a sentence, parts of the sentence, and also how to write simple sentences. We did some journal writing, but it is not a weekly homework. We did some major writing assignments too, but the instructors did not require us to turn pre-writes and drafts in. So before taking English 97 class, I really never tried brainstorming my topic for the paper, write drafts for a peer response group, and revising my drafts before turning the final draft in. In this class, English 97, I learned the basic of paragraph writing; moreover, I learned how to use them effectively.

Although I now know some rules in writing effective paragraphs, I still have weaknesses in writing. I am still having problem on narrowing a broad topic to a more specific one. Catching reader's attention, and making my sentence more descriptive are also my biggest struggle in writing effective paragraph. But, the part that I struggle the most is using correct verb tenses. In the past papers that I wrote, I always got verb tense error. On the other side, I know now how to write a complex sentence, and how to punctuate them properly. I also got an idea on how to fix and avoid sentence fragments, comma splices, and run-ons. Maybe I still could not write the best paragraph, and I still commit errors in writing, but I am trying to improve my writing little by little in every paper that I will write in my future classes.

I am glad that I am almost done with English 97, but I still have two more English classes for my engineering transfer degree. What I have learned from English 97 will surely help me on my next two English classes which are English 98 and English 101. And what I learned in this class will not just help me on other English classes, but also classes like history and humanites where I think I will have to write some papers.

In this E-portfolio, I want to show you some of the papers that I wrote throughout the quarter.In this portfolio, I included my pieces, "My Immigration Experience to the United States," "I Was Nervous," Step by Step," and "The Water Cycle." Two of them are from my major writing assignment, and two of them are from my journals. This pieces that I picked, for me, shows my improvement as a writer, in addition, as an English language learner.