Writing has always been challenging for me because of the complexity of multiple rules. In the beginning of the semester I constantly worried about the structure of my writing and its overall material. In high school it was important for me to complete my essays by answering the questions that I was given, but in college, students go more into depth such as focusing in grammar, and well structured ideas that flow along with rich analytical content. After given my first assignment I was pushed to improve my overall work by focusing on organization and thinking more analytically. For example, the weekly readings and writing assignments helped me improve my overall work. Later on, these two techniques, organizing and analyzing work were useful …show more content…
These weekly readings slowly taught me how to analyze the structure of different essays. Through the journal essay assignment I came across to a particular essay that grabbed my attention. The essay, “Why Bother” By Pollan, allows the reader to be moved by his written work, and teaches the different techniques to grab the reader’s attention. In his work, Pollan describes people attitudes regarding climate change and he offers possible solutions if people attempted to help. For example, he says, “Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will.” (Pollan 317) In other words, Pollan gives the reader a chance to engage in his work by offering a solution to a problem that’s well known. As I read this essay I focused on some of his quotes and reflected their meaning in depth. Most of Pollan’s quotes were a source of motivation to those who may lack in hope an inspiration to make a difference. For my journal entry I focused on introducing evidence that supports my interpretation from the quotes. For example, Pollan says, “Gardening is a process of social change, and by doing so; it can impact others to make a difference”(Pollan 318) I decided to include other quotes from the reading because this supports my interpretation of the reading. After, I found out that this technique helped me go in depth …show more content…
In order to organize my essay I took a piece of paper and wrote the main ideas of the essay. For example, for one paragraph I wrote about my experience about the book, and then in another paragraph I focused on writing about a moment in life where I found myself connected to that the book. Once again, I found out that the weekly readings and assignments helped me to think more analytically. In the essay, for example, every time I presented an idea of the book I asked myself why and how is this part of the book important. Then I pushed myself to find evidence that supported my text. Through time, I learned to include well-analyzed ideas in my essay because this helps the reader to understand the importance of that
In Michael Pollan’s “Why Bother?” Pollan argues that each person can contribute to helping to the environment by erasing their carbon footprints. In my everyday life I experience the choice of driving my car to work or riding my bike. More often than not I choose to drive my car because it is the easier option. I, along with many other people, believe that my individual impact will not cause a larger impact on the global scale. In Pollan’s essay, he makes each person think about the effect they are leaving on the environment and how each person, as an individual, can change his ways before it is too late. Wendell Berry, a naturalist and well-respected and influential writer, was a key factor in recognition of the environmental crisis and how to solve the problem.
Individuals wait for someone else to create a solution to the problem that is affecting them indirectly or even directly. Assumptions made by them create a pattern where everyone is waiting for someone to take the risk and create a solution that would benefit them within their efforts. These ideas of leaving issues to someone else solutions could be identify in minor issues but it is really affecting society and are showing its effects. One example is politics, economic issues, international affairs are some, similar to the train controversy that Buckley suggest or the global warming concern that Pollan refers.
Use transitions and make connections not only between paragraphs, but among sentences, too. Play with different types of sentence structures (some long, some short, etc.) and more vivid, descriptive word choice to make the essay engaging to the reader.
The strengths in my writing are my organizational skills, grammatical construct, and my work ethic. Organizing an essay is a very natural process for me. I always follow the basic guidelines for the structure of an essay, which state that one must have an introduction, thesis statement, body, conclusion, and a works cited when needed. The “Are Helicopter Parents Entering the No Fly Zone?” essay, “Animal Cloning—How Unethical Is It?” essay, and the “The Clean Water Act—Is it Successfully Reducing Water Pollution?” essay all have a proper introduction, an informative thesis statement, a body, great conclusions, and works cited pages. Formatting the essays is an integral aspect of organizational skills. Each new paragraph is indented, the font is twelve-point Times New Roman, the sentences are double spaced, and the headers are correct.
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.
As time goes by, I noticed how reading and writing became one of my weaknesses. Having an assignment readings and writing an essay about it was one of the things I don’t like doing. I am not sure if there are any valid reason on why I don’t like it but all I know is there is always a point where I end up getting stuck because I do not know what else to say. Also, reading gets deeper and some of the words are hard to understand especially when some of the readings use metaphors. However, in every essay I turned in, I always look forward on all of my teacher’s comments because I always want to know what else I am missing, what else to say, and how to improve it. I guess in this case, Sherman Alexie and I are opposite towards our view on writing but we are the alike on the view of learning and improving.
As a strong math, science and engineering student, writing has not come easy to me and by taking this class, I was hoping to become a stronger writer. Throughout the semester, organizing ideas in logical ways has become straight forward thanks to the peer discussions and review I have had. Before this class, I struggled to transition between ideas and discuss each idea in a logical sequence and, unfortunately, my language arts and history grades suffered as a result. By exuding effort and receiving guidance, my hope was to improve my writing and prepare myself for the college writing which would be
1. Read carefully. First, skimming through the readings and look for similar issues in each essay. Reflect on those issues, and jot down your ideas. Reread and decide on one topic that will unify your essay. Note each essay's thesis and main points. Finally, take notes.
The United States is the world’s top global warming polluter responsible for 80% of fossil fuel consumption every year. More than one million species have already perished due to global warming, and, with predictions indicating around 150,000 people will die due to heat related causes by the end of the century, the human race could very well endure a similar fate. With global warming manifesting as a significant calamity Michael Pollan, a journalist and activist, published an article entitled ‘Why Bother’ in the New York Times Magazine directly addressing the ignorant attitude of the human race for disregarding the seriousness of global warming. According to Pollan, the climate-change crisis is essentially a ‘crisis of lifestyle’ and in his article he urges people to make considerable changes to their lifestyles in order to avoid destructive consequences of global warming. But, is it realistic to expect others to change their ways in order to help prevent a disaster that has already been set in motion? Or are the reasons which prevent those from making changes too great a barrier for us to overcome?
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
In the beginning of the semester I found writing a sizable essay in a coherent manner challenging. I previously wrote only formulaically, usually in preparation for timed examinations. Throughout the semester I have found myself writing coherently with less effort than I previously thought was possible. Near completion of this semester, I could transition from one paragraph to the next with ease, while my paragraph transitions in the beginning of the semester were incoherent and choppy. At times the overarching structure of my writing is confusing, and I will continue advancing my ability structural ability. I am now able to organize my thoughts effetely in a manner that is un-formulaic; this is a skill fundamental for effect college level
During the course of this semester; the variety of writing styles and essays assigned to me in my communication skills class encouraged the development of my writing skills, as well as provided me with more self-assurance in my abilities. My writing, research, and presentation abilities enhanced through practice, determination, and the understanding I gained during this course. With every single writing assignment, I learned new innovative approaches and skills, which enhanced my abilities to improve my thoughts logically, enabling me to write more clearly, and to organize my papers more effectively. At the beginning of this semester; despite the fact that I already knew the terminology MAP: message, audience, purpose; I never really understood the significance of MAP. For this reason, my writing lacked clarity, organization, and my writings appeared less focused on the topics. As a result my research papers and essays did not flow as smoothly from one passage to the next. Furthermore, I was unaccustomed with the precise procedures used when writing an essay. For instance, my previous classes before college, although requiring a reference page, did not require me to include proper citations in my writings. After evaluating the quality of my writing toward the end of the semester, I recognized vast improvements in several areas of my writing. By concentrating on the beginning stages of my writings, I could distinguish ahead of time my audience and my message. As a result, my essays are clear, and I remain on topic. In addition to that using transition phrases efficiently also helps my writing to flow smoothly. The proper use of transitions makes my writings easy to follow from one topic to the next. I also learned that pre-writing...
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.
When I went through my essay, I first noticed that the sentence structure I used was strange and confusing. With limited writing practice, I was unable to put clauses and prepositional phrases in the right place in a sentence. Sometimes I put too much information in one sentence but did not arrange it in an order that was easy to understand. When I was reading sentences with unusual structure, my thoughts jumped between phrases. Thus, I believe readers will have to put extra effort into understanding the sentence, which interrupted their understandings of the essay as a whole. If I were going to revise it further, I would rewrite long and complex sentences into short but clear ones. For example, sentence...