I Am A Great Deal Of Anxiety Essay

Furthermore, according to Duncan Carter’s article, Five Myths About Writing, “Years of well-intentioned English teachers have responded to students’ first drafts as if they were supposed to have been perfect. Combined with a pedagogy which suggests that revision is a form of punishment, it is not hard to see where students get the idea that good writers don’t have to revise” (Carter, 82). Growing up, high school teachers make it seem as if revising and editing your paper is the worst thing ever. Any student who worked long and hard on their assignment and turned it in to get revised, would hate to receive a paper back with nothing but red marks and errors written all over them. This initially gave people the mindset of forgetting about editing their work if all it did was tear them down and point out their mistakes.

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

Students don’t always know what they are going to write about right away while writing an article or essay, some people just need to give it time. Donald M. Murray claims in his article in “Write Before Writing”, students should be told of the importance of prewriting. To do so students have to understand the write before writing. Murray list 4 strategies in writing, there is Resistance, force, rehearsal for writing, and implications for teaching. “Most writers need time to wait for the ideas to flow into your head for everything to make sense, some people call is procrastination or delay.” (Murray 375) Murray talks about the four pressures that move them forward, by increasing information - when the writer decides on a subject understands the subject they are writing about, increasing

In the article Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product by Donald M. Murray, Murray argues that writing is a process of discovery not an end product. Rather than being criticized for a “perfect product” by the teachers, student should be provided with an environment of creativity to explore and discover. Murray states that many teachers focus on the end product rather than teaching students the process of writing in order to receive a better product. The writing process has three stages of writing which include: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. In the prewriting stage, students should take about 85% of their time dedicated to the writing process. Prewriting includes strategies such as daydreaming, note taking, outlining, and lead-writing. Next is the writing stage where it should take about one percent of a student’s time. The writing stage is where students produce their first draft. Finally, it is the

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.

Within the past eight weeks, I have realized my strengths and weaknesses within the writing process. I have realized that I do not utilize the first step within the writing process of prewriting. However, for the drafting, revising, and polishing steps of the writing process, I am very familiar and use additional resources to strengthen the writing assignment. I create multiple drafts, which includes revising and polishing in each step. Therefore, I use all three of these steps in multiple drafts as I reach the final product for

When presented with the question, “who are you as a writer?”, I was speechless at first. But after thinking about it, I realized who I am as a writer has been influenced by so many different sponsors throughout my life and there was not a short, concrete answer. Brandt mentions that “literacy is sponsored by people, institutions, and circumstances that both make it possible for a person to become literate and shape the way the person actually acquires literacy.” (Brandt 43) My attitude towards writing has been influenced by teachers, both negatively and positively, by my mother, and by academic assignments over the years. My answer to the question can only be answered by a narrative of my writing life. I have convinced myself that I am a terrible writer, and when presented with a writing assignment, I get anxious instantly. I see writing as a burden and a huge obstacle that gets placed in my life. Academic writing is not fun, but something I value due to the fact that we are a grade driven society. When writing, I write to the guidelines in order to receive points for the requested criteria. The reason being, I gave up on expressing my own ideas because I had been shut down by so many teachers throughout my education. I tried to write down what came to my mind and put my own twist on things, but that was not the “right” way to write papers. In order to make both my teachers and my grades happy, I wrote what they wanted to hear, and even then I was not to the level they

In first grade, I had started reading, or that is what I recall as my first time. My stuttering problem was always there, but I was a “great reader” according to my teacher Ms. Brown. She was a kind elderly woman, who wanted to see everybody in her class succeed in reading a whole book. Then second grade came at the snap of a finger. There, I wrote my first paragraph full of “mumbo jumbo”. Even though I wrote my first paragraph in second grade, I did not learn about the writing process until high school. After I left high school, I learned that we had barely touched on the writing process due to a significant place in my life… College! In my first English class (Eng 180), my professor went over the ideas of rhetoric, the writing process, and discourse community. Since my old professor did not go in depth on these topics, meant that they were still fresh in my head with no place to stay. In English 280, we went into full detail on these topics and understood more about the meaning and purpose of them all. I know that the writing process includes brainstorming, researching, proofreading, revising, and etc.; however, I felt like I have been doing it all wrong for years. I have made many improvements to my writing due to English 280, but the skills that I improved in the most were researching and synthesizing.

I need to just start writing even if it is awful, or even if it is hard to get myself to start writing because just the action of doing it and starting to write will help me to be able to write good papers. It will help me to be able to write and to do it because I know I should, and I know I can. I’m glad I read that because it’s good for me to know that other people struggle with basically the same stuff that I struggle with, having a bad first draft, and not wanting to start writing, but to put it off for awhile. Having knowledge now that it’s normal to not have desires to put stuff off, and just write crazy things in your draft, since it isn’t final. But it’s possible if you just commit yourself to it. Then it will most likely work out for the

In this essay I will be talking about my writing process and the strategies I use. The strategies I use combine with the readings I was assigned. The strategies I will be focusing on is prewriting and revision. Donald M. Murray’s essay “Writing Before Writing”, talks about prewriting and how it can help you with your writing. He gives you all these different ways to help when you’re prewriting and planning your essay.

I always compare my writing as a late bloomer. My writing is developing, ordinarily it will be perfected with time. After taking this class, I figured out the importance of being able to organize, arrange, and compose thoughts into a comprehensible format. There was always little time I spent trying to figure out English language. Coming from a Hispanic family that the primary language is spanish, it's consequently difficult for me to understand the “rules” of English. Until this day I feel that I have learned something new every time I practice writing. Although there are several different ways of portraying my thoughts to an audience, I always feel it's difficult for me put my thoughts on a paper, as simple as it seems. Because I never really enjoy writing I didn't write much at all until I took EWRT 211 this quarter.

I use to have a lot of anxiety. I don’t know how it started; I think maybe I got too deep in thought and my brain started focusing on the worst case scenarios, for every situation. Before learning on how to deal with my anxiety, I learned to hide it, to bottle it up inside and play the role like everything was fine. When I was nine, my parents and I decided that I would go to camp that summer; however, before I was supposed to leave, I got so anxious that I did not even want to go.

Writing has always been something I dread. It’s weird because I love talking and telling stories, but the moment I have to write it all down on paper, I become frantic. It’s almost as if a horse race just begun in my mind, with hundreds of horses, or words, running through my mind, unable to place them in chronological order. Because I struggle to form satisfying sentence structure, it takes me hours, sometimes even days, to write one paper. It’s not that I think I’m a “bad writer,” I just get discouraged easily. Needless to say, I don’t think highly of my writing skills. When I was little I loved to both read and write. I read just about any book I could get my hands on, and my journal was my go to for my daily adventures. Although it’s

In first grade, I had just started reading or that is what I recall as my first time. My stuttering problem was always there, but I was a “great reader” according to my teacher Ms. Brown. She was a kind elderly woman, who wanted to see everybody in her class succeed in reading a whole book. Then second grade came at the snap of a finger. There, I wrote my first paragraph full of “mumbo jumbo”. Even though I wrote my first paragraph in second grade, I did not learn about the writing process until high school. At the end of high school, I learned that we had barely touched on the writing process due to a significant place in my life… College! In my first English class (Eng 180), my professor touched on the ideas of rhetoric, the writing process, and discourse community. Since my old professor did not go in depth on these topics, means that they were still fresh in my head with no place to stay. In English 280, we went into full detail on these topics and learned more about the meaning and purpose of them all. I knew that the writing process includes brainstorming, researching, proofreading, revising, and etc.; however, I felt like I have been doing it all wrong for years. I have made many improvements to my writing due to English 280, but the skills that I improved in the most were researching and synthesizing.