Critical Skills And My Writing Assignments

In this chapter, Lunsford details the planning and drafting process for a writer to organize their ideas with either a formal outline or a rough plan. Lunsford reminds writers to be flexible during the drafting process and not to think twice about changing elements of the essay at this point in the process. Lunsford goes on to explain the qualities academic paragraphs must have these include unity, development and coherence. To obtain unity within a paragraph all sentences should relate to the topic sentence of the paragraph. When developing a paragraph it is important to switch between general and specific ideas in the paragraph, while supporting those ideas with details, evidence and examples as required. Ensuring a paragraph is coherent is crucial when developing an academic paragraph. Because readers need to be able to follow a writers ideas easily, Lunsford gives her readers a method to follow to achieve this goal. This method includes using the general to specific ideas, repetition, parallel structures, and using transition words. The author notes that this method should also be used to link paragraphs

Step 7: Create an Outline: Now that you have a thesis, you can move on to creating an outline to organize your essay. On the next page is a sample outline that can be used on any essay.

English Composition I has developed my style of writing and my skills analyzing and researching topics to write a piece about a topic. Throughout the course, I got better at analyzing articles and pieces to get the meaning of the topic. With that improved skill I was more able to use the information given from the text and install it into my essays, with proper citation if needed. Before taking the English Composition course, I was not one to organize my essays in an ordeal order to clearly state the point of the work. Now with taking the course, I have learned to organize my essays, examine research for a topic, and develop an essay with proper mechanics, and revising skills. In writing my personal, review, analytical, and cultural

Personally, from the class of English 1101, I have learned on how to use the writing processes effectively, where the first step is to have a pre-write, which focuses on brainstorming ideas form either the group or from individuals’ brain for the required topic. The second phase of the process is the thesis statement, which is the primary idea of the entire essay. I discovered that the thesis statement should be persuasive and truthful. The third step is on developing drafts, where it showed me on how to focus on content, organization, and style. Again, I noted that I must ask myself who is my audience, and what do they want or need to hear.

My writing skills have fluctuated throughout the semester. I feel, although, I have mastered leads and headline writing. Leads and headlines were the first writing skills we practiced and have continued to practice throughout the entire semester. The continuous practice of leads and headline writing throughout the semester, I feel confident in my ability to write concise, eye-catching leads and headlines. For writing assignment three I needed to provide a follow-up headline and corresponding lead for a criminal case. The headline had to focus on the upcoming sentencing hearing because it was the newest information about the case. In order to do so, as I mention in my blog entry, I had to write several drafts for both my headline and lead. [INSERT BLOG PICTURE] After many drafts of the lead I settled on a summary-lead because the article was a follow-up story about an established criminal case. I wrote the headline after I wrote the lead because the headline had to be a shorter, more intriguing version of the lead. After many drafts I finally wrote a six worded, eye-catching headline that was about the sentencing hearing. [INSERT WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Initially, a writer should do an outline before starting any essay. An outline can help to organize his or her main points in order to build an introduction, body and conclusion. This method of pre writing was something that I had never been exposed to prior to receiving an example outline from Professor Vilceus. By studying the example, I went from zero knowledge about an outline to creating ones that made arranging essay material uncomplicated.

Third week into clinical. So far, things are slowly improving, however I do need to work on critical thinking and being less task oriented. I had my very own patient. The clinical objective was to be able to perform a successful health assessment on a patient and to identify factors in the environment that would impact patient care. Hopefully from there, my critical thinking skills will develop through experience and to fill my concept map thoroughly. On Tuesday, my patient was an older gentleman who came in with destruction of the liver due to medication. When caring for my patient, I made sure that he received everything that he wanted. I felt that I did well in that aspect for seeking good for the patient. I was told to get his good and make his bed. I don’t know why making his bed didn’t occur in the beginning. But, I learned that in the beginning, it’s important to make sure that the environment is clean, their bed is made, and ask if they needed a show. The important thing that I received from this is asking yourself what would you want the nurse to do if you were the patient. One thing I do realize is that my ability to work with patients and communicate with them with some baseline knowledge is good. With these, I am able to be more confident in my work. But, I do need to work on looking at the full picture when gathering information from the patient. I tend to overlook things but I will improve by realizing my failures.

it was brought to my attention that I need to pay attention to how I structure my essays. As a writer I think I need to focus on how structure my essay. I am stuck writing the typical five paragraph essay. I need to step away from that style of writing into something more complex.

My third area of choice is essay organization. I have written many essays in my school years, but I notice my organization of the body paragraphs may get confusing or mixed up. I even made a paragraph with two different topics put together and cause a confusing to my essay. If I want to improve on my writing, I need to know what I am doing wrong, and what can I do to fix it. I did some research on essay organization and found numerous reliable sites on how to structure an essay properly. However, I prefer Purdue Owl since it feels more trustworthy than the other sites. According to Purdue Owl, in order to make an effective essay, my organization needs to have the basics, introduction, body paragraph, and conclusion. In the introductory paragraph,

In writing an essay I also struggle with incorporating clear topic sentences and connecting my paragraphs ideas back to my thesis statement. This struggle is based on last years’ experience with writing essays. This struggle can be improved upon by concentrating on what exactly my thesis is stating and building my sentences to relate and explain the thesis further. Improving on this will allow my writing ability to increase and help me become a more successful writer.

I always thought that my writing skills were pretty good until I started this class. It has been thirteen years since I graduated high school and I quickly realized that I had a lot of “refreshing” to do as far as writing papers. I actually felt very discouraged when I took the grammar test and did not score very well. I knew that I had to dedicate myself and put a lot of effort into this class to really improve. The practice quizzes were a major help to refresh on everything I must have forgotten since high school. Being able to write a quality paper is a skill that everyone should master. Writing is such a major part of communication in this day and age so being able to write an intelligent paper will benefit you not just through school but also through life. Writing skills are a reflection of intelligence and I want to perfect my writing the best that I can. Being able to write a quality paper is a skill that everyone should master. Writing is such a major part of communication in this day and age so being able to write an intelligent paper will benefit you not just through school but also through life. Writing skills are a reflection of intelligence and I want to perfect my writing the best that I can.

A major area for development and improvement revolves around effective note taking and essay planning/writing. As a Higher Education student you will be required to plan and produce countless essays in relation to the course you are studying, and a key point of reference to help with this would come from “The Guide to Learning and Study Skills for Higher Education and at Work” who give the following advice and tips: ‘Identify the purpose of the essay and who the audience (reader) is and what is required for both – structure your work and develop your arguments/main points – proof read your work and improve language, spelling, punctuation, grammar and style – review what you did and use feedback to improve your essay writing for the future’ (Bingham, R. and Drew, S. 2012 The guide to learning and study skills: For higher Education and at work).

In my opinion I happen to partially agree the professor at Duke University with the fact that blog posts would be a more efficient way of getting the author's point across swiftly. Though I also happen to think that having term papers is a good way to properly assess the authors writing ability. Blog post help the individual easily give their opinion over the topic they are covering and quickly list the facts that back up their reasoning. Which is more direct than the term paper. When conducting a term paper there is a more thorough analysis of the author critical thinking and writing ability.

This fall semester in ESL 91has been pretty interesting, and so far successful. The main object of this semester was to improve our essay writing. We were taught various lab techniques that helped us to improve our English writing skills, such as using appropriate verb tense and how to write a research paper with a works cited. Through my work on the research paper I have learned how to write in an academic style, how to find appropriate sources from an academic database, and how to cite my sources. Most of all, I can say that my reading skills have improved because the research for our papers required me to do a lot of critical reading.

English, is my second language, is a big challenge for me because I didn’t know how to say any English when I came to U.S. The only sentence I knew which is how are you doing. People usually are very powerful when they understand English because a lot of professional documents are written by English. In this quarter, I have learned how to write an essay in efficiently and professionally, and I have become more advanced than previous. By moving to next level this is ESL 5, I will keep my English learning attitude and patient to develop and practicing my writing skill. In ESL 273 class, I learned about write a powerful conclusion paragraphs and a smooth organizing skill, and I also noticed I need to continue improving to make a strong topic sentences, and then explain the topic clearly. For those reasons, I should keep to the next level of education on my second language, and the level is ESL 5.