Language Arts Skills During My English 101 Class

Students are required to take English all four years of high school to improve and develop skills for higher education. We read different types of literature to learn morals and explore new ideas. With writing assignments of résumés, formal letters, and essays, students establish a foundation for future responsibilities in college or a job field. Vocabulary expansion is woven throughout everyday tasks in the English classroom; word choice is crucial to our professional and educational futures. Accumulated writing and reading skills are used in preparation for standardized testing, such as the SAT and ACT. English class improves the confidence in students with reading, writing, and speaking skills. In four years of English, written literature greatly impacts one’s learning experience.

In Dan Berrett’s article, “Students Come to College Thinking They’ve Mastered Writing,” the idea of freshman thinking they are or must be a refined writer is discussed. Students may think this way coming into college, but their teachers do not. While students might feel satisfied and think that they are prepared with their writing skills, professors found that these students did not necessarily meet the expected level (Berrett 1). Many students reported that they would normally write around 25 hours every week. They said that most of those hours of writing was for more formal purposes like passages to make changes in society (Berrett 1). It was found that one reason the new students might feel this way is that their assumptions about writing differed greatly from those of faculty members and their expectations. One big thing that students will not get for a while, is that good writing is not just listed as a bunch of steps one is to follow that automatically make one’s writing good. Good writing requires one to be in different mental states; it requires the understanding of how to write for different audiences and different reasons (Berrett 2). Berrett includes in the article that writing is not just universal and that in order to do very well, writers must use different forms of writing specifically for their purpose (2). It seems as though students think that, before they even take a class, they are supposed to know everything about writing; in reality, they are supposed to learn new skills and enhance others (Berrett 2). Berrett says that many believe the schools these students previously attended with their test focus might cause these feelings about writing (2). Berrett ends his article by saying that students these days do not think that informal writing actually counts as writing, and that students should practice writing for informal purposes because it can help them (2). Even if they feel like it, students are not fully prepared to write in all contexts when they arrive at college.

Restate your Thesis Statement in a new and interesting way by briefly reminding the reader of your strongest argument(s).

Instead of focusing on the different types of writing styles they will encounter in college and the workforce, most of the writing instruction students receive in their underclassman English courses at Carrizo Springs High School is primarily focused on preparation for the English Language Arts Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills Written Composition test, which has standards that are different than the outcomes they will be expected to accomplish in their dual credit English class and future college writing courses. Therefore, there must be a method implemented at Carrizo Springs High School and Southwest Texas Junior College to help students become more successful in dual credit English before they even step foot in that class. Students must understand that how they perform in that class will have an effect on their

When you start to think about it, quickly you realize that almost everything we do in life has some sort of writing around it. Whether it be sending a simple text message or writing a long essay we all have to have the common foundation of how to write. As students progress their way through high school we are often pounded with the rules of writing. By the time you get to be a upperclassman you quickly learn that your days of learning how to write are not over once you get to college. As someone who is looking to study Aeronautics at Liberty University, still, the days of learning to write are far from over. Because Liberty University requires students to participate in two writing based classes my skills will continue to be developed. Even

Students should care about learning how to write at the college level because it is part of the foundation of learning how to comprehend readings. Learning to understand any type of readings can help in the workplace as well as college. This is because the reader will be able to fully the grasp the idea of what is being told to to them. Therefore, the best way to learn this skill is being able to be a writer that knows how to “influence a student's comprehension”(Alhabri 2). This could also help in the workplace because you know what to do in order to get the job done effectively.

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).

Throughout the course English 101, I believe my writing skills have improved through understanding concepts such as rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, ethos, pathos, logos, and rhetorical analysis. Looking back at the semester, I reflect on my strengths and weaknesses. My strengths include my note taking skills and being attentive during class. Doing this, I was later able to use these notes to look back at while writing, which I found very useful. For example, for the essay Comparative Rhetorical Analysis, I took note of almost every piece of information Dr. Braun gave us, writing in the margins of the articles and highlighting important phrases. Because of this, writing came very easily to me not only for that essay but also others,

Many students question themselves of what they might learn from taking an English class. If they will understand the material or if what they learn in class will be used later in their lives. Gaining something out of a class is what matters the most or why else would a student take that class in the first place. Through my observations and experiences if someone were to ask me what I learned in English 101, I would say that I have improved as a student overall. Taking English 101 has helped me to become a more specialized writer, a more studious student, and a person who is more minded person.

Kelly Gallagher discusses how to promote students’ writing in chapter four of Teaching Adolescent Writers. Gallagher assesses his students’ writing from the beginning to know where his classroom stands: “Each of my thirty-eight freshman students completed a timed writing piece on the second day of school and turned them in without their names on the papers” (73). This allowed Gallagher to assess his classroom as a whole instead of as individuals. He took this writing and sorted into piles he assumed were “heavy readers (defined as those who frequently read for fun),… moderate readers, and… light readers” (73). Gallagher based these predictions on the diction, sentence structure and variety, essay development, craft, and punctuation and editing skills (74). As Gallagher asserts, these predictions are not entirely accurate, but they allowed him to understand that the majority of heavy readers are skilled writers because they have an underlying foundation for their writing in their reading. This does not mean that all good readers are good writers. Gallagher asserts, “Reading alone does not explain why some of my readers write well and others don’t” (75). He goes on to create a formula explaining that reading paired with an “exposure to intensive hands-on writing instruction” lead to students becoming better

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction because it was about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. All those things make effective writing because you have to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail of my experiences with reading and writing through my life. In the narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second grade class got the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts (Writing is Good).

ANT showed me how to get my reader's attention, then give the necessary information and follow it with my thesis statement. In the beginning of the semester my introductions were boring and probably made my teacher hate her job, but after she taught me the correct way of writing them through ANT I was on my way to writing introductions she could enjoy. I don't wish to repeat my mistakes but I will say that my Tyger vs Tiger introduction looked more like a list than an introduction. Showing how much of a struggle it was to be a bad writer in the beginning of the year. But after a while of practicing the correct way I was able to create a nearly flawless introduction in my Things Fall Apart Essay: “Imagine having no one truly understand you, to always have people only see one stereotypical side of your character. The people of the nineteenth century Europe only saw the Africans in a certain way, they only saw them as uncivilized beasts. The Europeans try to colonize the African Ibo tribe in Achebe's, Things Fall Apart. The Europeans see the Ibo with their own ethnocentric views, as uncivilized animals less than them, simply in need of saving from their barbaric anarchy. Achebe contradicts the stereotypes of Africa being uncivilized by showing that the values, culture, and structure of the Ibo tribe contribute to an advanced society.” This was my favorite introduction of the year because of its

Joseph Williams and Lawrence McEnerney, in the third chapter of Writing in College, offer strategies for revising a paper, including suggestions regarding the point (or thesis), the organizational structure of the a paper, the evidence, and the attitude of the argument as a whole. The first step of the revision process “is intended to ensure that the beginning and end of your paper cohere with each other” (14). To accomplish this first step, Williams and McEnerney recommend isolating the point in the introduction and conclusion, and ensuring these sections communicate the same argument. Williams and McEnerney also suggest two different methods to communicate a point: point-first, in which the introduction contains a full statement of the argument

As a kinesiology major student, I take English 49 to complete my General Education Requirement. Prior to this, I had taken English classes in high school and I wrote short stories on the Internet, too. I started off thinking that this class would be boring and full of reading and researching. My thought was completely wrong. Since I have been enrolled in English 49 from January, my writing has improved tremendously. I have learned how to think critically, how to write and express myself through writing, and how to find the answers to questions that I don’t know throughout this semester.

Writing influences the way humans communicate. Good writing skills are essential in the working world and it’s important for our own self. The love for writing creative stories that engage the reader personally feels like an impossible task. After thirteen years of English I’ve realized that English does not come easy to me. It’s important to note that my writing skills have improved over the years. Going into my first year of college, I was nervous. I knew that my writing needed improvement. During my first semester of college, I was able to take the WAC 101 class. This class not only improved my writing, but it also encouraged me to start reading again. I look at reading as a task instead of a hobby, but I know that it can progress toward something that I like to do on my free time. WAC 101 is a class that helps develop a student’s writing skills. To measure the progress, outcomes in different areas of writing are reflected upon.