From September to December I’ve learnt and written a lot in English 11000. I’ve practiced writing analytic work, personal narrative work, and even a profile (something I’ve never done before). I found a lot of this work really refreshing because while I do a lot of writing in my other classes, none of it is very personal or reflective of my own ideas or thoughts. I enjoyed this opportunity to sharpen my personal writing skills since it isn’t something I get to do often. I also liked how this class offered refreshers on things that I might have been rusty on like certain grammatical structures and formatting issues. I think…

Relationship With Language     In fourth grade my school had received a grant to completely refurbish our school library. As a way of celebrating, my entire elementary school had a reading competition. Whoever read the most books in their grade would win a 50$ gift card. Each day teachers would ask students if they had completed a new book. To prove you had really read the book, you had to submit a book report and rate it 1-5 stars. For every book you read, my teacher would add a star next to your name on the class reading chart.     At first I was hesitant on whether or not I even wanted…

     Born in Pakistan Aisha Bi grew up in a world surrounded by people who weren’t very different from her. Pakistan is largely a Muslim country so Aisha was very used to interacting with people who shared the same religion as her. “Mainly a Muslim country, Pakistan isn’t very diverse in terms of religion”, says Aisha. The official language of Pakistan is Urdu which is Aisha’s first language. Despite going to an English school from a young age, amongst Aisha’s friends, family and city Urdu was always she used to communicate. In an interview with Aisha she described her relationship with English like this, “ In my country I used to…

Relationship With Language     In fourth grade my school had received a grant to completely refurbish our school library. As a way of celebrating, my entire elementary school had a reading competition. Whoever read the most books in their grade would win a 50$ gift card. Each day teachers would ask students if they had completed a new book. To prove you had really read the book, you had to submit a book report and rate it 1-5 stars. For every book you read, my teacher would add a star next to your name on the class reading chart.     At first I was hesitant on whether or not I even wanted…