Zabad Building

Sabil Maaloof Street

Beirut,

Lebanon

December 6, 2017

Dr. Zane Sinno

Department of English

American University of Beirut

Beirut, Lebanon

Dear Dr. Sinno,

The semester is almost over, and what a semester it was! It was the first semester of my university life, and I might say it was a pretty hectic period. From the way we were treated as students, to the way we treat our studies, it was all very different from high school. However, the English 203 course was one that I perceived very similar to high school classes. It was a small class with comparison to other courses, we always had interesting debates with the teacher, sometimes joked around, and all of us at some point became friends with each other.

To me that was the thing that I thought brought this class to another level. During most courses, we just sit down and listen to the professor explain the course; they all seemed to be very dry. It felt really nice attending a class that made us take a break from uni-life and feel involved. Another thing that I really appreciated was how approachable you (Dr. Zane) were. You joked at the right time and always encouraged interaction, not to mention the interesting activities that engaged us into knowing each other (like the group work in class).

We learned many skills throughout the course, one of those skills was usage of Google drive. Many of us in class did not of it before (at least I didn’t) and learning about was very beneficial making collaborative work much easier. Another important task that I thought was very beneficial is the oral presentation assignment since it really taught presenting skills. We have all done presentations before, but none were quite real presentations. They more of reciting information; they included no interaction and the actual presentation included too much information. In addition to that, I liked that in many of the things we did in class, we actually chose to do. For example, most of the topics discussed and debated in class were of our choice. Although the general theme was already chosen, it was nice to do something we wanted to do. On a side note to that, I appreciate that you let us debate each other and organize each other freely without cutting off the discussion like many other teachers do because the students are ‘too loud’ or ‘disorganized’.

Although most of the skills we learnt were useful, there were a few things that I thought were meaningless. One of those things was the blog. Even though it is an effective way to get students to share opinions with each other and ensure that all perspectives were participated, it felt a bit forced. There were topics that we didn’t have much to say about yet had to publish a blog post about. In addition to that, I felt it was a bit confusing especially concerning the class blog and the personal blog. Another thing that I thought was meaningless was the infographic. Its idea and what it meant represented wasn’t that clear and I personally didn’t see its purpose.

In general, I find myself as a good English speaker. English was one of the subjects that I enjoyed most in high school and especially in artistic English like poems and novels. It was nice seeing the other side of English that is academic English. Though I find my English language to be relatively good, I do have a few angles that I suffer in. Mainly I find problems elaborating my ideas which in turn leads to me repeating my ideas. I tend to be over concise in my writing cutting as many details as possible. Throughout the years, this problem was generally avoided being the essays that I wrote were relatively short. However, this problem really made me suffer in university being that essays were much longer.  Fortunately, during the problem-solution report did I find a solution to this problem by subdividing each topic as much as possible and thinking of every angle possible to talk on (following your advice of course).

There’s not much I can think of to say other that thank you for a great semester.

Sincerely yours,

Karim Al Sayed