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Tyler Dunlavy
English 250
Section SE
Assignment #5
Samantha Futhey
12/5/15

Semester Reflection
After rereading over my experiences with communication from the assignments I have
written this semester, I have begun to review and reflect with my written and oral skills presented
through my work from this semester. The course provided many opportunities for me to
emphasize my skills in substance and organization in the writing area, eye contact and voice in
my oral skill area, and increased participation in group interactions for the course as a whole.
Assignment one from the course was where I outlined my experiences with
communication in a personal manner. For my life, I selected three different experiences that truly
helped my work in oral presentations and technology. The first experiences I put my foot in was
my childhood of reading with my mom. The main points I emphasized in that experience were
that reading with my mom was an everyday event, and that my mother used passive reading
skills to let me sink into every page of what we were reading. Looking back, I still believe this
event might be the most important use of communication for me in my life since it gave me an
early insight with reading and the skills involved with it such as: the use of voice needed when
reading to others, the pauses incorporated after paragraphs and pages, and finally the importance
of reading to children when they are younger in order to provide them with the emotional and
communicational interactions needed in early development.
The second experience I talked about in assignment one was the class I took in
elementary school to correct my speech impediments with ings and R-Ws. The success of the
program has impacted me exponentially in oral presenting since it has corrected my ability to

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pronounce words in their correct manner. The last communication experience I touched upon in
assignment one was my work in building websites from code when I was in high school. The
class allowed me to learn freely and not be nailed down by a frame-work schedule preformed
quarter after quarter with little to no deviation. The experience, though only one sided and linear,
taught me the importance of the small stuff. Coding is a long process of writing lines of letters
and symbols that a computer can identify and convert into visuals. The process takes time since
you have review every line of code to spot small errors that could corrupt your site. Although the
creation of a website mainly focuses on the technology and computer language aspects, writing
code has a direct correlation with writing paper or anything in that manner. The need of editing
your own work in order to achieve a final product can be seen in both ends of the spectrum of
writing. These different experiences I opened up to in the first assignment have continually been
important in my writing life and I would not be able to communicate effectively if I did not have
those experiences in my life.
In general, the English 250 course impacted my thoughts about my own performance in
oral and written skills and resulted in me reflecting on this semester. Throughout the course, I
believe I have made a dent on some progress in my communication skills. I have improved my
abilities in oral communication through both of our PowerPoint presentations involved in the
class. On the other end of the question, I concluded that I have more work to do to improve my
writing. The main focus for my improvement is within the context and substance of a paper and
the correct sentence structure involved in my paragraphs. When I start a paper, I usually start by
finding enough information from credible sources to support or oppose my ideas. After finding
and reading through the information, I will begin to outline an introduction that correctly
connects background information to the specific focus of the paper in order to provide a

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transition for my audience. My audience has a enormous impact on how I present my ideas. If
the audience has little to no knowledge over my topic, I will add some background information
in my introduction and also explain the charts or graphs I add to my presentation. Through the
use of peer reviews and the PowerPoints shown in class, I feel my peers help me make some
effective decisions in my own writing. In the W.O.V.E areas, I believe I possess strengths in each
of their respective areas. In writing, I use the correct format and organization and have different
but creative style. In oral, I speak out frequently in large group discussions as well as work hard
in small group assignments or discussions. For visuals, I have prepared many colorful
presentations that contained the correct ratio of visuals to the number of slides. Finally, from my
experience with the internet in high school, I believe I have a very strong understanding in the
electronic area of communication skills. The area I want improve is the writing area of
communications because I feel I stick to a strict form of writing that involves five paragraph
essays that is frowned upon due to their lack of creativity. The other area I could improve in is
the Oral skill area of communication. The main focus that would help me improve is to polish
my eye contact by looking back and forth to make a personal acknowledgement with all the
students in the class instead of the small portion in the middle section and some on the right side.
Also, I want to add more words into my presenting arsenal so I dont fall to the dreaded ums or
likes that lower the credibility of the topic that I am talking about.
Overall, this semester of English 250 has taught me a lot about my own personal progress
in the W.O.V.E skill set and opened my eyes up to the questions I should ask myself to become a
better writer. Other than the writing involved in the course, I have opened up as a person with my
participation in class through the group discussions and working with other students on in-class

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assignments. English 250 has taught me a lot about my writing and the steps I need to take to go
in the positive direction. All of which, I couldnt have learned without this class.