Composition II: Composition Analysis

The first few years of college student’s lives are not necessarily the most enjoyable time, having to take the basic core classes. Unless someone is planning on getting their degree in something that involves the basic core classes like; Math, Psychology, any Humanities, or English. English has not been my strong suit and I know that I still have work that needs to be done to make me a better writer, but I believe that I was able to meet and achieve the goals and requirements of this Composition two class.

Revisualizing Composition, by Jeff Grabill along with his fellow co-authors is a paper about a study carried across seven different universities across the United States Of America. Each university ranks differently in terms of various statistics such as enrollment, size and setting, therefore participants have different styles and approached towards writing. Following the standard survey method, a series of questions based on 30 different types of writing, were ranked in terms of popularity and value.

I want to achieve a better grasp of active versus passive voice, and the correct time to use each one. I would like to better understand basic grammar, and explore advanced grammar and sentence structure. I want to continue to write essays that I can be proud of, and that I can feel as if they were important to me personally and not just written to complete an assignment or earn a specific grade. During this first semester I have relearned and reviewed the basics of formal writing so that hopefully next semester I can reach higher, go farther and write better than I ever have

Have you ever wondered whether a writer’s voice and the standard rules of academic writing can exist on the same page? According to Dr. Debra Pena, English Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Mathew Teorey, English Professor, University of New Mexico and the author of "Using Freshman Composition to Analyze What Students Really Know about Grammar" a writer’s voice and the process of academic writing can exist on the same page (Personal Communications February 13, 2017, Teorey 2). However, my first essay In Freshman Composition II titled, “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE): Is it the New Death Sentence for Future Athletes Playing Sports in America?” where I lost the power of my voice to the process of academic writing.

This semester has been full of different types of writing styles and writing topics. Throughout the semester of being in College Writing One we wrote a visual critique, critical review, rhetorical analysis, and an argument synthesis essay. All of the types of writings came with the struggles, strengths, and the learning parts to them. Overall writing all those different types of styles and topics I feel like I have become a little bit of a better writer than I was when I walked into the class back in January.

I entered the fall semester viewing myself as a non-writer. I have always had trouble getting the ideas and thoughts out of my head and onto paper. I have always been more comfortable stating aloud what I thought as opposed to writing them down. This semester has taught me a great deal. I have learned that I am capable of accomplishing college level writing. Even more, I have learned that I can focus and dig deeper to add more detail than I had thought I could when I started this semester.

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

Starting off with what I have learned, how I think the class will be and what goals it will take to have success during freshmen composition. First day of class what I have learned is using the correct format of MLA writing style, what goes into each sentence in a paragraph. Expanding my vocabulary learning what the word metacognition means to think about writing. The 9 steps it takes to follow the correct format of having a successful paper. Freshmen composition I expect the class to be very challenging and difficult for me. Writing papers and reading everyday is something I do not excel during my normal days which leads freshmen composition being difficult and challenging for me. I do expect me becoming a better reading and writing during

The preparation process, which was undertaken before the writing of the composition commenced, featured lengthy research into concepts and techniques employed within both traditional Japanese music and Western film score. A diary was maintained throughout this writing process so that I can remember momentary flashes of inspiration. I began researching the Hirojoshi scale, that in which I had previously looked into within my early high school years, in order to create an authentic oriental feel.

I have also realized that there are going to be many times you have to scrap ideas and start over. This semester I have realized that I try and perfect my assignments too much to where I start to crunch on time because it wasn’t to my expectation and I started over to many times, that there is in fact a way that too much thought can be put into a paper to where it becomes cluttered. The biggest growth I’ve seen over this semester is overall just my writing in general. At the beginning, my writing was very basic. My sentences were all around the same size and it was just not at the level of writing I would have liked it to be. The biggest thing that helped me with this over the semester would be just reading and editing mine as well as other peers’ papers. Towards the end of the semester it became easier to write, whether it was a personal, research, or

The very last essay that I was assigned in Intermediate Composition was an Argumentative Research essay. The purpose of the assignment was to have me come up with different global issues around the world. However it did not just have to be global issues, it could have been local, family related, political issues, etc. The topic I chose for the argumentative writing was pollution. I picked it thinking that it was going to be an easy writing because pollution is very well known amongst everyone around the world. Little did I know that there is a lot more to pollution than just littering and recycling materials. This was by far the worst essay I wrote because I was all over the place with trying to about the issue. I struggled with the topic,

One skill I greatly improved upon was my ability to gather and organize information. On my first paper, Arguing a Position (AaP), I did very poorly on this. The paper was arguing that the mass surveillance by the United States government had gone too far and was suppressing individuals’ freedoms. I spent a long time researching for this essay. When I went to sort through it all I had found that I had gathered way too much information and I had not organized it in any useful way. This put me behind the rest of the class in the writing process. I was still typing down to the very last day, while everyone else was editing, which hurt the quality of my essay. I did, however, learn from these mistakes. In my second essay, Proposing a Solution (PaS), I proposed a solution to the algae problem in Western Lake Erie. I feel I did much better at researching for this paper. I collected less information and only kept the information that I knew would be useful in writing the essay. This saved time which allowed me to put more effort into the quality of the writing. For this reason my PaS essay was much better than my AaP. This improvement shows that I have improved enough to earn credit for this course.

Throughout this semester there are many skills that I have noticed have improved through the constant writing of essays for this class. The one that I find most noticeable is a habit I had long struggled with which was essentially my tendency to be over necessarily wordy when writing my essays. I believe that I was able to somewhat fix this subconsciously, just by knowing that I was no longer in high school, and could no longer get by with just attempting to fill up my word count. I also believe I have greatly improved in my topic selection. In high school I would throw caution to the wind and just pick whatever topic came to mind just in an effort to get it done. I have been much more calculated in college, and I believe that it has helped me write better essays. While these were the

“the music should give a feeling of importance, weight, and sense of the ’ancient’ to the visuals of Halo” -Joseph Staten, Bungie's Director of Cinematics

Over the course of the semester, there has been numerous amount of areas where I believe I have improved in comparison to high school. What has helped me in my writing is the writing class and the in-class writing workshop. The writing class that is located in the Kremen education building has helped me with my writing greatly because in the writing center the person in charge teach us lenses and we apply those lenses to the writing, draft, or reading that someone brings in. The in-class writing workshop has helped me because other students get to read my writing. This is helpful because I get feedback from many students and they let me know what needs to be fixed. A new tool I have been using is They Say I Say. The book is very helpful because of the information and examples it provides such as the templates. I have been applying the templates into my essays and I have seen a significant difference.