I was always a person who was afraid of writing. During my former high school English writing experience, I used to apply a fixed structure for all my essays. So, when I first came to writing class in college, I expected the same thing; I expected that professors would teach a new universal structure which could be applied to all my academic writings. However, I was completely wrong. According to all the brainstorming, outlining, drafting, writing, and revising process, I knew that writing is not only a process to put various words and sentences together, but also a process to show your audience what your opinions are.
Among all essays, my most favorite one is rhetorical analysis. Personally, I really enjoyed reading Wit, because it is a reflective play and I could gain a lot by thinking about the play from different perspectives. By leaving hints in people’s appearance activities people’s conversation, and text formation, Edson has done a fantastic job to show the personalities of characters and the main idea of the play. So, when I tried to identify her rhetorical techniques, I felt like I was
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As I had written in former reflection, when I outlined the essay at the beginning, I tried to use all my body paragraphs to show how arguments in MacKay’s article failed based on Rothman and Rothman’s article. However, I soon realized if I structured my essay in that way, ideas other authors would bound me. Then, instead of writing an argument synthesis, my essay would be more like a literature review. This means for an argument synthesis, I was not supposed to simply summarize what have others written and I should push my argument beyond my observations. As a result, the objective of the essay encouraged me to really think carefully about the topic and come up with my original thesis. I felt very proud of myself for I could write to show a problem which I found in the chosen essay and explain a solution logically in my final
The upper three levels of Blooms’ Taxonomy – analysis, synthesis, and evaluation – were all closely related for me and were all aspects that I found to be challenging to do in my essay. As we all picked different essays and did not go over them at all in class, understanding the work was crucial to having through and accurate analysis. I found it challenging to immediately identify what Carr’s argument and purpose was in the essay; I noticed that over the course of the writing process, what I thought each was gradually evolved as I continued to read over and think critically about Carr’s work. Having a more complete understanding of the essay also helped me to be more precise and less wordy because I knew what I wanted to express and did not need to use as much “fluff” to compensate for not having a clear understanding of something. Because of the relatively low word count, synthesis was crucial; after identifying what I wanted aspects of the essay I wanted to focus on I had to precisely bring together the necessary background knowledge with through analysis without being to general
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.
Going into this course, I felt that the reading and writing skills I learned in high school were very beneficial in preparing me for an English college course. In high school, I was enrolled in GATE and AP English courses. In these classes, I was assigned several readings and was taught to actively read by doing annotations. I was to summarize the writer 's main points, to write down my own opinions, or to connect it to any personal experiences. These annotations helped me understand the writer 's message better because I was able to break down the things the writer said and only focused on the important points. Then, I was also able to form my own opinion on that topic by deciding whether I agreed or disagreed with the author’s opinion. Moreover, I used evidence from the text to support my argument.
My form and structure are not always the best. In one of our more challenging essays, the Rhetorical Analysis Essay my form and structure weren’t as strong as they should be. As stated before, I made the mistake of not staying focused on the rhetorical elements of my topic and venturing my own personal opinion in the essay, which crowded and weakened my form and structure. Continuing with Murray’s path, the development of my essays is based on the rubric. I always seek to include information that the rubric is essentially telling me to include, but sometimes I fall short of developing my thoughts enough. The dimension of my essays also has inconsistencies. I tend to have a problem of expanding into great detail on one point of my essay leaving another point barely expanded upon leaving my essay disproportionate. Finally, the last thing writer’s look for in their essay is their own voice. Thomas Osborne in Late Nights, Last Rites, and the Rain-Slick Road to Self Destruction states “I strive for a good grade, and will work as hard as possible to achieve one, but there is a voice in the back of my head that is effectively scoffing at the ridiculousness of some assignments and expectations that I have had to complete and live up to.” My voice sometimes gets lost in assigned essays when I try to fulfill certain standards that are put upon me. Thomas and I both struggle with writing what we need to write in order to achieve the grade
English has never been my best subject. Reading books can be exciting, but the writing aspect of English can be dreadful. Somehow, however, I passed all my advanced English classes with at least a B, and my teachers always considered me to be “above average.” My impartiality toward English shifted to an indifference near the end of my high school career; my indifference then shifted to appreciation. This appreciation is attributed to American Studies and Honors Writing, the most difficult English classes at Belleville East Township High School. American Studies and Honors Writing have strengthened my writing skills beyond what I believed possible. I still do not believe that I am the best writer, and English may never be my best or favorite
English 111 was different from what I expected a college English course to be. I was expecting to have to read books and analyze the meaning of the themes. I found it challenging to have to analyze different websites and design our own. This was different from what I experienced in high school English classes. This course required that I expand beyond my comfort zone when writing essays. This required that I put more time and dedication into projects. It allowed me to learn valuable skills to use in other courses in college and I learned what abilities I need to concentrate on. I carry with me the abilities to use rhetoric devices to analyze websites, research techniques to polish the ethos of my papers, and the knowledge that I need to refine using other sources of media (i.e. websites, PowerPoints, etc.) to present an argument from English 111.
Every essay was a struggle to morph your topic into something that could fit its guidelines. That is what high school writing is. College writing is different because they don’t care about structure, they care about quality. It is up to you to find a structure that works for your topic. In high school, writing was a technical skill about mastering a single structure and learning what you needed to do to get good marks in that. High school writing was a test of how well you could write the five paragraph essay. College writing is a test of how well you can write. This means you need to be able to build from the ground up without a groundwork like the five paragraph essay, and to do this you need to creativity, a skill that wasn’t tested in high school writing nearly as much as it is in college writing.
My RIP companion essay was a complete mess with no structure in the first draft. I believe it was because I had procrastinated to complete both the first drafts for the RIP project and essay. I finished my RIP project then moved on to my companion essay, and the transition was vastly different because in the RIP project I was writing for a different audience than in the companion essay, which was an academic audience. In addition, I forgot that we had been given a prompt with specific instructions and guidelines for the companion essay, which gave the structure for the essay. My professor, Delany-Ullman also points out that “For most essays, you should NOT include your textual evidence in your topic sentence. Your topic sentence should make
Coming into this experience, I questioned where I would find my place in the Senate. In 2014 I came here as a page and was able to witness daily floor action, but I never had the opportunity to be a part of day to day office business. I knew I would be at the bottom of the totem pole as an intern, but I wanted to feel as if I was making an impact on Senator Reid’s last year in office. In an office as large as Harry Reid’s it is hard to feel as if you are making an impact. I had the misconception that I would be working closely with him; however, thus far I have only spoken with the Senator one time. Within the first week I readjusted my expectations to try and find my role within the office. I was still doubting the impact I would make here this summer. With the Senator retiring, the office is tending to run particularly slow. When available, work was handed down to us by the Legislative Correspondents. Work primarily consisted of covering hearings, attending briefings, and doing research. When given the opportunity, I have worked as hard as possible to complete tasks to my best ability in hopes of getting more work in the future. As I may
I knew that I should have a thesis, a few body paragraphs with evidence, a paragraph dedicated to the counterargument and a conclusion. After learning to replace the thesis with a complex claim, my writing has really evolved because it forces me to plan out the organization of my papers in advance, and can be used as a point of reference whenever I’m unsure about which direction to go next. The first draft of my Short Assignment 1 – Advertisement Genre Analysis is a pretty good example of how I wrote most of my papers in high school. After going back and revising the assignment for this portfolio, the final result is an excellent showcase of how my writing has evolved and become more thoughtful and
During the course first semester of freshman year in English 101, I have learned multiple foundations when it comes to writing. When I first entered college, the only knowledge when it comes to writing was gathering a bunch of information on a piece of paper. Knowing that writing wasn’t my strongest suit throughout my academic career, it was challenging for me. Going through my first college class, which was English 101, I realized that writing is more than just putting words on paper. I have learned the purpose of writing and the structure to make a solid concrete essay such as to create the thesis statement to acknowledge what the reader is going to read and a technique to help edit and limit word, together with discovering
The key is to understand what ethos, pathos, and logos are. Then I learned to find the sentences in the article and sort them into three parts. Analyzing the rhetorical techniques can improve my writing skills and my essays can be more credible when I need to persuade readers. Compared with the rhetorical analysis essay, the argumentative essay is harder and more complex. I should state my opinion and find enough reasons to support it. The most important thing in writing an argumentative essay is rebut the opposite opinions strongly. In this case, the rhetorical techniques I learned before helped me a lot to make my essay reasonable. The summary-response essay is different from those two kinds of essays. I could not mention any of my opinions, but had to summarize all the important information in the article. Then, I had to mention something impressive the article and express my feeling and views in the response. Using good transitions were required when I wrote the last sentence in the summary or the first sentence in the response.
Having attended high school for the past four years many of us have accomplished the act of analyzing articles and books as well as writing many papers to the extent of our abilities. High school english was meant to prepare us for college courses. High school introduced the five paragraph format and many organizational methods so that we could have strength and stability while writing papers at a college level. It also taught us how to analyze and annotate written articles, books and poems. Little did we know that those methods were only our training wheels. Once we start writing in college we are forced to think outside the box and not on a specific format. More importantly we are to focus on researching a specific topic and writing about
Overall, I believe that this course has enhanced my writing. Previously, I never added an element of first person in my formal essays. I believe it was because in high school there was a bad connotation with it, but now I’ve learned that adding my own opinion enhances my essay and makes it more interesting and elaborate. I think it’s really useful to incorporate my own opinion throughout my essay to make it more personable and relatable. I’ve also found that the They Say, I Say book has helped me a lot in terms of structuring and formatting my thesis statements and topic sentences. This has majorly improved my writing and has allowed me to be more clear and concise with my ideas. Before, I always struggled with writing my thesis and topic sentences
My English 1310 course was taught by Professor Daniel Stuart. He taught us the concept of academic writing and why it is important. Academic writing is the process of breaking down ideas, using a formal tone, deductive reasoning and third person. Writing done to carry out the requirements of a college or university on a research based level. It requires a starting point or introduction, followed by a thesis on the preferred topic, then comes proving and disproving of the evidence based arguments. It is important because it is a way to communicate our thoughts clearly and originality. It helps us think and see what evidence we can come up to contribute to that thinking. This course approached this idea of academic writing by exploring further