Learning many skills and techniques from different professors, I believe that I have obtained skills that are beneficial to school, studies, and life. Two semesters of English in college has prepared me more than my four years of English in high school; I have become more confident in both reading and writing. As an immigrant, English became my second language. Although I had a hard and long time adopting the new language, I managed to learn it after a few years. However, I still had room for improvement as a writer and reader. English 1A, my first real English class, gave me a lot on my plate. I was unaware of my professor’s requirements when it came to writing tasks and skills. After a full course with my professor, I have improved drastically with one technique that I acknowledged in her class. Her technique was to criticize a student’s essay harshly and give out below average grades. Thus, she raises awareness to her students that they need to improve if they want a decent grade. Students were given a chance to revise their essays to receive a higher grade. Based on the informative feedbacks left by the professor, a majority of the students were able to identify their mistakes, and revamp their essays into a masterpiece. Due to the low scores and crude comments, students often feel aggravated and tend to ignore it after. However, the feedbacks are useful and continue to give me an opportunity to learn and improve myself as a writer in the future.
Some students have tricks and preferences when it comes to writing essays while I feel that procrastination generates a good quality essay. I prefer to write out essays last minute, usually the night before it was due, because I enjoy the pressure when I’m racing against the clock. T...
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...e expectations are for a college level essay. Most of the students, including myself, typically despise writing because students are not properly taught how improve the right writing techniques. Students should still continue to use their critical thinking reading and writing skills because it will beneficial when they go to college or find jobs. With many different expectations from many college courses, students should try to master their critical reading skills because it will help them analyze and have a more in-depth understanding of the text. In order to improve their writing skills, students must get assistance from their professors, friends or the writing center. By reading aloud repetitively and spotting little mistakes, it will improve a student’s writing. In order to be successful in school and everyday life, students must use these necessary procedures.
This article is very helpful when writing an essay for college. I realize that I tend to do the majority of the things he had mentioned. For example, he said that writer
I took the previous course at a junior college, and my instructor wasn’t as qualified and didn’t identify exactly what she wanted in the writing assignment. I would go to her office hours and ask her what I needed to do on my essays to improve my letter grade, and she would do the revisions and say my paper was “great” and still give me a “C” on the assignment. Unlike, ENGL 1302 when I went to office hours my instructor always explained what I needed to improve on and advise me towards pages in the St. Martin’s Handbook as instructions to follow. My instructor was always helpful and patient at answering all questions I had towards a particular assignment. The University Writing Center also helped me with some weaknesses found throughout my literature review and word choice.
Several people have trouble writing college level essays and believe that they are unable to improve their writing skills. In “the Inspired Writer vs. The Real Writer,” Sarah Allen argues how no one is born naturally good at writing. Sarah Allen also states how even professional writers have trouble with the task of writing. Others, such as Lennie Irvin, agree. In Irvin’s article “What is ‘Academic’ Writing?” states how there are misconceptions about writing. Furthermore, Mike Bunn’s article “How to Read Like a Writer” shows ways on how one can improve their writing skills. Allen, Bunn, and Irvin are correct to say how no one is born naturally good writers. Now that we know this, we should find ways to help improve our writing skills, and
Since this moment on the very first day of class, I have grown immensely through hard work. In this essay, I will explain what I have learned over the course of this class about myself, and about writing. The first thing I learned about myself is that I can’t help but procrastinate. A few things I tried include treating myself after an assignment was done, remembering the stress-free moment when you finish an essay, and the ten minute technique.
Learning to read and write are both considered to be fundamental human skills, that we begin to learn from the day we start school. As time advances, as do our minds, and we are expected to evolve in our reading and writing skills. Finishing high school is a large milestone for the lives of young adults; however, there is so much to learn in order to reach the next big milestone. To be a writer in college can challenge our preconceived thoughts on how we write. Although some skills remain unchanged, high school graduates are faced with overcoming new ways of doing a skill that seems so simple that it is practically innate. The definition of writing skills for college students is much different than high school. However, considering we have come so far it is time to go over the information we already know and challenge ourselves with ideas that we are yet to learn more about.
English composition has always been a weak point for me. I despised the thought of having to write down my thoughts on paper in a manner that was appropriate for my teachers. English 1301 introduced me to a new tool to soothe those crazy thoughts through stream of conscious writing. At first I was very skeptical, but it proved to be valuable in understanding that I had more knowledge of the topic of discussion than was realized. Although that tool helped tremendously, it did nothing to quell the quality of my procrastination skills. In high school, I completed most of my homework at the last minute. Coming into college, that clearly could no longer be the case but it still stuck. One concept that utilized my procrastination skills to my advantage was peer review. Peer review forced me to write all of my essays ahead of time in order to make the grade. Not only did it help with my procrastination, it also gave me lots of feedback on my writing. During the narrative essay draft one, I was given a lot of revisionary advice, and that was due to the fact that I wrote the paper at the last minute. Knowing that, when it came time to write the argumentative essay I spent more time actually putting better grammar and diction into my essay because I did not want my peers to think any less of me academically. As
Throughout the semester i only learned few new things but i did improve and solidify my skill of writing. Before my first year of college my skills have always undermined by other high school english teachers and with that came disappointing grades. I am writing this paper as a reflection of the semester and the progress i have made as a writer. I now understand many things that my high school teachers have done a poor job demonstrating and i am grateful that i decided to take my own route in my education instead of their syllabus. I entered the semester with anxiety that i would perform as i did before but i clearly outdid my own expectations by receiving top grades on my essays.
Before taking Mrs. Hawkins’ English 102 class, I used to hate writing; no, I despised it. Along with my hatred for writing, I, as many other college students, am a terrible procrastinator. In my past English classes, my procrastination had affected my grades, especially when it came to papers dealing with multiple steps and drafts, due to the fact writing takes many timely processes to
This class has been significantly more difficult than any other English class I have taken all throughout high school. This semester, I have been introduced to different styles of writing that I have never been exposed to before. This class has been stressful, but also fun. With using all of the resources I have been given throughout the semester, I have been able to do my best to further my writing abilities and hopefully only continue to grow them as I finish my later years in college. Throughout this essay, I will discuss my failures, my successes, my overall performance in the class, and my skill development skills.
In the course of this semester of writing, I grew more than I ever had in my ability to write well. I remember on the first day of class several other students were talking about how hard this writing professor is. I was a bit worried and even thought about switching to an easy professor for a guarantee A so I can get a 4.0. Now, I am grateful that I chose to decide to work hard for a 4.0 instead. Even though I may not get it, I am still glad I stayed because for once, I learned and became a better writer. I can see that my knowledge of conventions definitely improved from last semester. I really loved the feedback for my assignments, since it allows me to realize what I need to improve on and what I should keep doing. Unlike the previous semester, the writing professor only told us our grade on the very first assignment after two months. There were no feedback on how I could improve either, so I had no idea if I was having trouble with anything. Prior to this course, I always had trouble writing sentences and organizing them in such a way that flows and delivers my idea well. I also rarely outline or plan out how I will write a paper too, and even when I did, it was very vague. Out of the five learning outcomes, I grew the most in rhetoric knowledge and writing process from the reading responses and 4 assignment.
As writers, many students write to the expectations of their professors and not to their fullest potential. Throughout English 101 I had been writing only to please my professor or to fill the basic requirement to pass English. I always felt that my writing ability was never enough for my professors throughout the previous years. They always wanted clear and concise essays, which for some reason was unreachable by me. However, starting college and taking English 101 helped me with my weaknesses and changed my technique of writing essays. My experience in English 101 taught me to write to my fullest potential and to write what I felt; rather then writing what was required.
Over the past semester, I have found the most challenging part of this course to simply be the transition from high school composition classes to college. Because writing expectations are so different in college than in high school, even with AP and Dual Enrollment “college level” classes, I first found myself being overwhelmed with the pressure to write the perfect first draft. The pressure came from knowing how much a final draft of a paper contributed to my grade. This left me sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time with thoughts of what I wanted to say racing through my head, but unable to deliver these thoughts into organized, structured sentences. I learned, through writing my persuasive essay, that instead of trying to write the paper start to finish and already in its perfect form, it is easier for me to look at the paper through its different components and focus on them individually, then work to best organize my ideas fluently.
Writing is an important part of everyone’s life, whether we use it in school, in the workplace, as a hobby or in personal communication. It is important to have this skill because it helps us as writers to express feelings and thoughts to other people in a reasonably permanent form. Formal writing forms like essays, research papers, and articles stimulates critically thinking. This helps the writer to learn how to interpret the world around him/her in a meaningful way. In college, professors motivate students to write in a formal, coherent manner, without losing their own voice in the process. Improving your writing skills is important, in every English class that’s the main teaching point; to help students improve their writing skills. Throughout my college experience I have acknowledge that
According to the article (Magazine: Journal do- Genetic Psychology, December 1999), procrastination is referred as the act of needlessly delaying a task until the point of some discomfort. This is a behavior problem that many adults experience on a regular basis. In this paper I will be talking about two studies that researched about how procrastination hits students. It will also talk about ways to put an end to procrastination and give stories about people who overcame procrastination and achieved their goals. Toward the end I will talk about how procrastination effected me in my first semester.
My instructor helped me to improve my papers because she was always there when I needed her and she would always answer my questions with an explanation. I liked how my teacher would explain why we should put something in our paper or why we should not put it in our paper. The critique that I received the most from my instructor was that I had a large quantity of repetitiveness and that sometimes some things did not correlate to my main point and they did not need to be in the paper. I would be told that I have many of the same phrases or words used throughout my paper and that I could use different phrases or words for. Also, for the sentences that were extremely repetitive she told me I could eliminate them because I already accomplished my point the first time. The steps that I took to improve those issues was that I would summarize my paragraphs and make sure that they aligned with my thesis and that they connected to everything that I was trying to say. Another concept that my instructor helped me to do is to associate all my thoughts to one another and make sure that they should be in the paper. My instructor’s feedback helped me extremely on all of my essays and I feel that with my instructor’s feedback it made my essays improve significantly and develop my thoughts more deeply and to ensure that it would be an easy essay that flows