My English 101 Experience

As I look back on my English 101 experience, I have come to the conclusion that I have learned many new things that have improved my abilities as a writer. I have learned some new techniques that have improved my ways of approaching an essay. I learned all about the rhetorical appeals and how to apply them in my writing and how to look for them in a essay written by a author. I have also learned how to argue both sides of a argument, and how to look for reliable sources and to properly quote and site the author of the essay. I feel as if I have become a better writer and my improved writing skills are shown within each essay.
When I first signed up for English 101 at soar, I thought it was more of a reading and comprehension class instead of a writing class. On August 19, the first day of class, I learned that this class was opposite of what I thought and it made me super nervous. I never had to write so many lengthy essay in a short amount of time. When I first enter the class I saw myself as a writer that needed a lot of work. I knew my writing needed work because of my high school English teachers, they once told me that my writing needed a lot of work and was not college material. This statement became a reality once I received my first essay grade and feedback from my professor. I was still stuck in the high school mindset of the five paragraphs, and was unsure how to write a clear thesis statement. For example, in my first essay I had no clear thesis because I was only briefly taught how to write one my senior year of high school. I had no idea of what I was going to do or how I was going to even manage to pass this class.
Throughout the semester, I learned about all the different resources offered here around campus...

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...more to myself. For instance, I gave more detail about my parents’ divorce and how I felt instead of stating how most children felt after and during divorce like I did in my first draft. I also changed my image to a image that showed my family instead of using the image I first found off of Google, that showed a girl looking out the window while it was raining. I found my second essay, The Day That Changed Everything, to be the easiest essay to write and revise. I thought it was the easiest because I felt like I had a good story to tell with plenty of little details that could be added to make the essay stronger.
One strength I saw myself, as having when I enter college is being able to understand and critical think about a essay/article that I have read. However, after taking English 101, I have now learned that this is a strength of mine as well as a weakness.