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.
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.
Another semester has ended. However, this time in English class, it was different. It started out the same: the required course work , the dreaded reading assignments along with the required essays for the class. Once class started, the professor went over the syllabus. I thought to myself that this was going to be a long first day. By the time I got to the second essay (about the sixth week), I started to realize that this English class is not like the others; it had much more to give. Before this class, English was all about structure and writing without errors. It concentrated more on the skeleton of the content rather than the content itself. This class taught me to look at English or more precise, literacies, in a different light. I have been able to develop a clear line of argument that incorporates ideas and evidences from sources; recognize that writing is a flexible and recursive process; and incorporate conventions for source integration such as paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting. I have a newfound respect and exhilaration for the English discourse.
To be completely honest, this year has been nothing short of a disaster. Partially due to this class, which it is my fault for taking the class in the first place when I was obviously not qualified to take an AP Literature class. It started out fun, but became more and more stressful as the year went on. My mental capacity has reached its limit, and my physical health isn 't in the best condition either due to the late nights I have spent on homework. However, despite it all, I have learned a great deal from this class. Not only from the curriculum, but I have also learned some of my own limitations and realized some faults that I need to mend. This class tested my patience and my temper, which I had only discovered
Transitioning from high school to college can be overwhelming. Before English 1301, I thought that I did not have to worry about being prepared for college. I quickly realized that my little background in writing essays was not going to be enough for college. Writing is not just something that I will use in English classes. In college, I will have to use effective writing skills in all my classes to complete research papers, essay tests and communicate to professors. Throughout my education, writing strategies persisted to be something that did not come easy to me. I dreaded writing because I could never find ways to get my thoughts down on paper. Ironically, a class that petrified me due to the amount of writing that was required ended up helping me in so many ways. English 1301 and my professor prepared me so much for college and real life.
In my opinion, over the years, my current writing skills have improved. Beforehand, I used to have difficulties understanding the proper format of sentences and had dragged sentences on. However, my current writing skills are becoming more developed. The composition of my writing has become more concise, clear, and understandable. Furthermore, some of the dominant skills my writing demonstrates is; avoiding slang, jargon, and transitions. With each of these skills in mechanical writing, my papers have become more advanced, more concise, and able to follow the primary goal. So, from these writing mechanics, my personal writing has matured. This allows my personal writing to evolve further. Nevertheless, my current writing skills have improved by becoming more concise, clear and understandable.
At the beginning of the semester in Eng 121, I knew that there would be much to learn and many areas to improve. In high school I was not a strong writer, so taking Eng 121, in my first semester of college, was intimidating. Yet I quickly adjusted and was able to grow as a writer. My greatest accomplishment was understanding myself as a writer, because of this I quickly learned my weaknesses and strengths. After I learned my weaknesses I was able to prevent or go back and fix my mistakes, this allowed me to improve my writing immensely. Luckily, over the past few months I was able to learn the new 8th edition of MLA and identify my weaknesses, such as writing clear and concise sentences. The papers I chose to submit are ones of which I was able to prevent or correct mistakes I knew that I struggled with as a writer because of my Eng 121 class.
In essentially all areas of academics, college students benefit greatly by learning how to write competently. At school, successful writing does not just benefit students inside of the english classroom. According to Marquette University, “Writing is the primary basis upon which your work, your
In the end, this semester has really helped me out with my writing skills. It opened my eyes to the simple fact that writing does not always have to be miserable and boring. Having the right subject to write about can make or break your attitude about the papers you have to write, personal ones were never something that I would dread to write. Learning how to incorporate rhetorical styles into my papers really did help spice them up and make them more interesting. The online discussions showed me how to be more outgoing and reach out to other people to help edit my paper and return favors in the end. Over all this English class has changed my outlook on English in general and really did help me enjoy it a little bit more.
As an incoming freshman in an enrolled in a writing course, but still in high school, I believe there are many aspects for me to learn from this course. Learning to become a better writer, achieving higher quality, and improvement of a great flow is what I want to achieve from this class in my future writing career. Being a high school student, I acknowledge that I am filled with more weaknesses rather than strength, but the knowledge that I had been educated for this class is pretty impressive as well. In addition the classes previous to this class set me up to a better fundamental to succeeded in this class and were emphasized the power of writing in my future career as well.
For me writing is one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy how you can write something and look back on it and see how well you have developed as a writer. At the beginning of the semester my writing was all over the place and it wasn’t written as well as I would have liked, however, I feel that my supporting sources was something that was good in my first essays. I had hoped to improve my organization and my introductions and conclusions. I feel that I really did improve with both my organization and my introductions and conclusions, before taking this class I was an average writer, which I wanted to improve. My organization in essay before this class wasn’t as good as it should have been as well as my introductions and conclusions. I had hoped to become an overall better writer after taking this class.
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
In summary, I had an enjoyable time in my first college English class. I pushed myself as diligently as I could and learned much more than I thought I would. In addition to, my strengths grew stronger and my weaknesses improved as well. I acknowledge I still have some techniques and skills to work on; however, I am willing to put the time in and cannot wait to take English in the future. Writing is an everlasting skill that will be an enormous asset to me; in addition to my future classes, and my career as
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.
During this College Composition course, I came across numerous obstacles and educational involvements. Every factor of this course contributed to my overall learning experience. For starters, we often read out of our textbooks, “The Little Seagull Handbook” and “They Say I Say”. These books helped showcase proper writing techniques. In addition, we would have class discussions that everyone would participate in. This opened my eyes to different viewpoints that could influence my writing. I recall one class we had a debate over a topic and everyone had to choose a side to argue. Then when we wrote argument essays, even though they were on a different topic, it helped me view my topic in different ways. Lastly, the most helpful to my writing was peer review. We were told to read our paper out loud to our partner. Although personally I am quiet and dislike reading out loud, I found this very helpful. Instantly, my partner and I could find grammar mistakes that one may not pick up on while reading silently. Then we could also talk about other possible revisions for my paper. For every paper, we would have conferences with the professor. This was effective as well to have a professional giving corrections and ideas. When we would get back our graded rubrics on the assignments we completed, the instructor would leave comments to