The first story by Tanya Barrientos caught my attention. I liked how she talked about her struggles to fit into a group. She wasn't american looking so she didn't fit into the "americans" but yet she wasn't spanish speaking so she didn't fit into the "latinos". However, the next story titled "Learning to Read" was not as easy to read as the first. It was an interesting story but the writing was not as well written and easy to read as the first. I thought it was interesting that Douglas said he was jealous of the fellow slaves that did not know how to read because the reading made him aware of how awful his life as a slave was. When reading the exerts from Malcolm X's autobiography, I was in awe that someone could have that much curiosity to copy the whole dictionary. The story "Mother Tongue" written by Amy Tan really shows the stuggles that foreigners face when coming to America only knowing how to speak "broken" English. It shows the disrespect and unequal treatment they receive. In the story written by Rose, he talks about how he had no desire to learn until he found something that he thought was worth learning about, chemistry. I think many people feel this way. Unless it's something they have a desire to learn about or something they feel will be used in everyday life, they don't care about learning.
Until class on Thursday, I had never done anything like freewriting where you write nonstop for a certain amount of time. After reading about it in the assigned reading, I learned how it can be helpful. It can help you get all your thoughts and ideas about a topic out onto paper. Looping, helps you gather your thoughts and seems like it might keep your thoughts a little more organized. Listing helps you brainstorm a topic or topics that interest you to write about. I think clustering is too complicated to generate your ideas. Questioning helps you think about the basic ideas of the topic that your going to write about. Most papers written in high school or college require an outline to be written. So I think outlining is very helpful because if you start off with an outline, it makes it easier to write the paper. I liked what the book said about draft writing. It's supposed to be simple and quick and doesn't have to be perfect or neat. This will be very helpful advice for writing.