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 a tool that is universally known and used as a primary source of communication. It is a process that is taught, practiced, and perfected throughout the course of one’s life. The process of learning to write begins in your early school years and continues to develop all the way through high school, college, and even beyond college. However, once you get to college writing tends to become a little bit more challenging and is typically more articulate. Writing can help you gain more knowledge and also help you to explore and discover new ideas. In terms of college writing, it is the process of being able to express your thoughts and ideas in an intellectual and effective way.
In high school, writing essays was my weakest link. When I began my first semester of college, I still had that trouble in my first writing composition class. I improved significantly from gaining organization and length. When I started my second writing composition class, my grades for my paper sky rocketed! The essays I have written though out this semester have shown improvements in context and organizations, however, I still have some room for improvement on reasoning’s and thesis statement.
Writing an essay was always the least favorite thing to me. Whether it’s a paragraph or five paragraphs, I hate it write. Whether it’s something fun or something easy, I just hate to write. I specifically chose to be an automotive technician so I don’t have to write much in my life. Writing in my previous experiences just never worked out for me, because my ideas and writing go way off topic. For example, I start writing about one thing and then jump to another thing. Everything I learned about writing from elementary school to high school was taught in many different ways. Like it said in the “College Writing” article, “The way college instructors teach is probably different from what you experienced in high school, and so is what they expect from you.” So why can’t a...
At the beginning of the semester, I had a different idea of what is considered as good writing. In my first rough draft for my first essay, “Post-secondary education and cultural backgrounds”, I demonstrated mostly of my preconceived idea of what good writing is suppose to be. I tried to sound intelligent by asking rhetorical questions and using big words improperly. I noticed that there was no harmony and organization on my essay as a whole. I had no idea what MLA was. With the help of the Writing Center and my determination on continually revising my essay, my scattered ideas developed into cohesive statements. I learned the use of topic sentences, thesis, reference page, page number, and other given structures on writing a paper. As I tried to develop my skills to becoming a good writer, my writing and knowledge has slowly grew into the accepted academic text.
The transition between high school writing and college writing marked a difficult time for me. In high school, I never had the motivation required to develop my writing skills and writing essays was not my forte. I would express my jumbled thoughts on a paper and turn them in for a decent grade. Upon coming into English 1101 with this lax mindset, I immediately encountered many weaknesses in my writing, struggling with constructing an essay with a proper direction, style and grammar. As I began reviewing my problems, I started understanding these issues and eventually learned to improve upon them. From my portfolio, I hope to demonstrate my improvement upon these weaknesses in English 1101.
2. Joseph M. Williams and Lawrence McEnerney. “Writing in College.” University of Chicago. University of Chicago Writing Program. Date of access: April 23rd, 2014. http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/resources/collegewriting/high_school_v_college.htm
As I look back into my high school years, I thought I wrote papers well. But then coming into a college environment, my papers were mediocre. By overlooking at my past papers, I found that they were unorganized, sloppy and had bad use of diction. From now on, I will use the tools I learned in English 1100-40 as a foundation for the future papers I intend on writing in college. Following the criteria of organizing ideas so that they flow, impacting the reader with diction and also by being creative, will help become an ideal writer. Following the criteria of staying motivated in short and long term goals, taking responsibility for actions and finally the ability to study well will help me develop into a supreme student.
Learning is one of the most important concepts that I hold dear to my heart. In order to advance in life that is something you must be able to do. I have learned many different things from various places, but in this year alone, I have learned a tremendous amount of material in honors English 1301. Not only did my professor, Mrs. Minkel, give me the tools needed to make successful scholarly papers, although it came with some challenges, she also provided her students with the tools needed to be a great student overall.
I started the semester not knowing how I would adjust going from a high school writing class to a college level writing class. I felt my writing was above average, but writing was never one of my strong suits. I had no way of knowing if my writing competency could hold up to college academic standards. I took expository writing with Professor James Brady. Over the course of the semester, multiple learning objectives were learned through my essays. These learning objectives were subject matter knowledge, writing process knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, genre knowledge, and meta-cognition.
In the beginning of this semester, English 1302 seemed as though it would be the subject that would be the toughest for me to pass. The pace, the work load and everything in between seemed overwhelming for me. As time proceeded to pass, the course didn’t seem as overpowering. By taking the work one step at a time, it simply became another step to achieve the overall goal of this first half of the semester. I have made improvements as well as learned lessons from my mistakes made along the way.
For me, being a college writer means writing well-organized essays that readers enjoy reading. Being a well rounded writer was also important. Each unit in this class challenged me to write in a well-organized, concise way. During each unit, we conducted some sort of revision activity where I was exposed to other students’ writing. As I read their work, I picked up on their use of transition words and separation of paragraphs to make the essay flow. Naturally, I began implementing more transition words in my own work and learned the appropriate ways to split paragraphs. The structure of the class was key to the organization of my ideas which was crucial to the development of my essay. During the third unit of this class, we were asked to identify an issue on campus, conduct research on the issue, and finally propose a solution to correct the issue. At first, it was difficult to get my ideas down and figure out what it was I would research. What I learned in class allowed me to first identify the issue I would research, write a rough draft, and hear what others had written before the final paper was due. This helped me to identify the main points, brainstorm and figure out what additional research I would need to find to support my argument. Being able to organize my thoughts from the beginning made writing the paper a much easier process. This course has helped me to grow as a writer and make
This semester was my very first semester as a college student. Being the first, it was probably the semester I would learn the most in. I learned the expectations for writing that I will have to live up to for the next four years of my college career. Though my high school teachers were usually demanding because I was in the Honors English section throughout high school, writing in college has still ?raised the bar? for me. Also, in high school, we would have weeks to pick a topic, create a thesis, outline the paper, write the paper, and then revise the paper. In college, the time restraints are not quite as lenient. I?ve had to learn to manage my time and be more productive with what free moments I have. Strangely enough, I?ve found the college English experience to be much more rewarding and enjoyable than in high school.
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
As I look back on my schooling I can’t believe how many papers I’ve written throughout my life. Naturally as I’ve grown up, my writing has developed from learning how to write sentences all the way up to the pages of essays that consist of deeper criteria. I know for a fact that I’m a better writer now than I was before. College writing is more challenging and I’ve had to learn how to adjust to it.