My Performance during the First Term of English for Academic Purposes

 

During the first lessons of the course, we were asked if we were part of a discourse community, my immediate response was to answer negatively. However, after reading the material, reflecting upon it and participating in the forums, I found myself immersed in the academic discourse community of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. I consider myself an active member of the group since I always participate and complete the activities proposed, yet I sometimes feel hard to follow the discussion forums or connect to the virtual meetings since my timetable is a bit complicated on week days. When doing the questionnaires and activities, I could apply my previous knowledge, but it struck me that English and Spanish apply different writing styles.

Regarding group participation, when I read we had to do a collaborative writing, a feeling of anxiety filled me. I have never been good working in groups as I know from experience that dealing with people is not easy. In the first task, we were asked to adopt a role in the group and write a vignette collaboratively. It was daring to adjust myself to the editor function and when we received the feedback, I realised I had not fulfilled my job. It reminded me that style, format and vocabulary are equally important in academic writing. In the second activity, I found it challenging to write a specific summary because there were many technical aspects to take into consideration. The outcome was acceptable; even though there were comments to work on. The main difficulty was the group organization as two members left the subject. Therefore, we could not meet the requirements since the self-evaluation section was incomplete. 

 To conclude with, my work throughout the course has been steadily and committed.  I still have plenty of aspects to work on, such as improving group work participation and enriching my academic vocabulary. I feel motivated to continue working in EAP developing and improving my writing skills. I consider that the corrections help strengthen self-awareness and by taking them into account, I think I am prepared to delve deeper into academic writing.