Comparison Of Formal Writing : High School Compared To College

First and foremost writing has always been a bit of a challenge for me. My writing in high school was mostly regarding essays about a book I was assigned to read and analyze. I've noticed that there's a difference between my writing in high school and the essays i've wrote so far in college. My writing in college seems to be far more formal and includes complex wording. My writing in college tends to be longer than most essays i wrote in high school and far more detailed.

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

My high school years were not spectacular, nor were they terribly productive.I left high school without learning how to proficiently write an essay. However, CUNY's Borough of Manhattan Community College afforded me a desperately needed second chance. It was at BMCC that I sharpened many of the skills I should have mastered in high school. I was able to greatly improve my writing ability. I began college as a student who found writing a 2 page paper to be a terrifyingly daunting task, but due to practice and numerous resources offered by CUNY, I soon was able to compose papers consisting of 10-14 pages with confidence and efficiency.

I succeeded more in the formal writing because we learned ways to make the writing easier. One thing that helped was outlining. In class we learned that “prewriting builds cohesion and coherence of the body of the essay” (Appendix I). Outlining helps you organize your paper and see if all of your ideas connect with each other. (Appendix I). Before this class, I would never make an outline and all of my papers were incoherent and sloppy. This process helped me to become more

As seniors about to embark on a journey into the adult world, it’s important to be prepared for what college professors expect in an essay. The article, What do College Professors Want from Incoming High School Graduates, was very insightful on how different the rules are. It states the different skills and mindsets an incoming freshmen must have to succeed in more advanced writing classes. It explains how high school and college writing differ, also how the two are similar. In order to be successful in school and in life one must become independent and open to change.

In this article, “College Success” written by Bruce Beiderwell, Linda Tse, Thomas J. Lochhaas, and Nicholas B. deKanter, they explain the differences of high school and college writing, expectations of the instructors, and the types of papers that are assigned. Most students who struggle in their writing are usually still going through their transformation into college, without even knowing it. Though, how can you see these symptoms? “Students who struggle with writing in college often conclude that their high school teachers were too easy or that their college instructors are too hard” (Beiderwell, P. 1). When going into college there are all sort of ways of writing an essay, in high school you were taught the five paragraph basic

Starting college during high school was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made. I have learned so much being part of a college English class. Some weaknesses I had before in my writing turned into strengths because of this class. I also learned a lot about my interests and other weaknesses I never knew I had. One of my weaknesses, organization in writing, improved immensely. My improving organization made my papers more interesting and intriguing. My grammar and punctuation also improved due to the in-class quizzes we took every so often. My grades on essays increased greatly throughout time because of my strengthening skills on grammar and punctuation. The writing process was different for each essay, but it also improved. I became

As a mature age student, I have spent the first 9 units of my study struggling to comprehend how to successfully write an essay or report without any grammar issues. I have not formally studied since I left school at the age of 15. In my current profession as a Special Needs Educational Assistant, I regularly participate in note taking and Individual Educational Plan writings. These are completed using mostly short hand or dot points. There has never been a need for me to further investigate formal writing until I started my studies at university.

College writing is much more complex than high school writing. Coming of high school teachers were just letting you just get by with simple elementary grammar errors, punctuation errors and more. Now in college writing may come hard for students, because their teachers babied them and they don't know the correct way to write. Professors expect you to come inn knowing these things, so they can show you the next level of writing. In college you have to write on a higher level because when you leave college you have no next level of higher learning. Once you're done with college, its time to go out into the real world.

an assignment and a project. High school writing is more informal, students often incorporating abbreviations throughout their assignments. The writing expectation is considerably lower as teachers don’t already assume that students are proficient writers. This includes being able to devise and defend a thesis, or examine the appropriate source material in their field. In comparison to college high school writing is primarily done for an english class with more instructional guidance. teachers often walk students through steps such as approving topics

When it comes to essay writing, college and high schools have different approaches during the writing process. In this online blog, “High School vs. College Essay Writing” written by Polina at University language, she argues how colleges write essays and how high school students differ from it. Her argument, compared to the other articles sort of disagree, stating that, “Your writing hasn’t changed; college essay writing requirements are simply different than those of high school essay writing” (Polina 2). Entering college there are multiple requirements for writing an essay, “Essays that were getting perfect grades in high school are often criticized in college” (Polina, P. 2). For example, when writing an essay teachers only want to see

Before taking my sophomore year of High School, writing was a very big struggle for me. When I first began writing essays in school I did not know how to go about the process. I had struggled many years with how to start the essay and how to make it flow. My first essays were mechanically flawed and constantly changed topic. As I went up each grade level I began to transform my writing a little at a time. Mr. Marhefka’s class helped me set up the organization, but still I did not understand the importance of transitions between paragraphs. I would stop a paragraph and start the next with a completely different topic because I did not what I was doing wrong. After taking my sophomore year of English I definitely changed my writing in many ways. Learning everything I did, I understood many new things that did not make sense before. Having made such changes in the past have made it possible for me to understand more advanced levels of writing that will help my future in many ways.

Throughout my college experience I have got the chance to learn some new things from a few different teachers on writing, writing hasn’t always been a strength of mine. When I was younger I had a hard time reading so that didn’t help my writing skills, it actually made it quite difficult. My first year at Western I had to take writing, I thought how hard could this be but I struggled and the professor I had was really hard on us, he was always pushing us to write more from the heart. I ended up getting a C+ in the class and had to have him the next semester for the next level. I didn’t always agree with the things he made us write about and how we had to read out heart filled papers in front of the class but every time I got up there and had

All of the formal writing I have done recently and in the past has been for school. In my junior and senior year of high school my two year course focused a lot on reading and analyzing novels and plays as well as written commentaries. I have a very solid base in analyzing text and as well as writing for a purpose, whether it is formal or more personal in nature. Other types of writing include things others have mentioned including texting, emailing, etc. I do not particularly enjoy fiction writing, and same goes with reading, I would much rather read something nonfiction.

I have been writing since I have been in Middle School. I have realized that by college it was easier for me to write down my thoughts in order for me to remember what I have said or done. Writing out my thoughts gives me a sense of recollection, knowledge, and pacification that gets me through my day. I pictured writing to be as simple as jotting down a few sentences, but as I got farther in school I realized that there is more to it than just writing sentences. English has been my most difficult subject I have ever endured, but I have somehow been managing to make excellent grades and achieving all requirements. First in the essay, I will discuss my experiences in the English life that I’ve taken so far up until college. The second part will list my struggles in creating a thesis, a work cited, and properly citing my sources used in the papers.