Thank you for a meaningful year!!

I still cannot believe this is going to be the last blog post that I will be making for this class. This class was always challenging, yet full of learning too. We were given a various type of assignments,  starting off with the first semester, where we were introduced to "Google" (not Safari :), Feedly and Blogger, giving a thought in our mind it is going to be a tough year, as the quality of the lesson was high from the beginning. Then we were taught how to write a persuasive essay, creating a website, and were also introduced to writing piece checkers, such as AWL (lextutor) and ARL (analyzemywriting). In the second semester, we looked into presentations, where we grew big as an "effective presenter". By challenging ourselves into group presentations, we were able to improve in working both individually and collaboratively. When we did a presentation in Ms.Sawada's English class, she gave us overall feedback saying slide designs and structure of the presentation was good.  This is all thanks to Mr.Paterson's lessons. Lastly in this semester, we went back to our essays and properly referenced using Zotero.

Prior to the lessons, even though I knew academic Plagiarism is a serious issue, I never thought that referencing interferes directly to the credibility of my essay. Due to this, I used to consider referencing as not-so-important matter - that only the content of the essay matter. However, I came to realize that I was wrong throughout this semester's process. By using Zotero as a tool, it allowed us to reference very efficiently. I thought this tool is very handy when we reference our writing pieces, as it does everything in the right manner if we look for "bad strawberries".

There are several things that I learnt throughout this whole academic year, regarding the working style. First thing was "practice makes everything better". This is the phrase Mr Paterson kept on repeating almost every week until we get bored of hearing it. We practised writing essays and presentations improving every time, reflecting every time. This was what raised our skills. The other thing was to manage our time properly. Not only, but especially in the first term, we were undertaking the essay, leaving it to the last minute, suffering only a few days before it is due. We did have a hard time going through this, therefore I thought to work on or even ahead of the schedule is the key to success.

I would like to finish off my last blog post for this year's Mr.Paterson's English class by saying a big thank you, for teaching us so many different things, of course academically but also in terms of our attitude towards work, and the efficient way to complete multiple tasks. I appreciate it as everything we learnt will definitely be useful sometime in the future! I am looking forward to have Mr.Paterson as my teacher someday again!