Learning How to Write Effectively

During this semester, I have learned multiple things in my class, English 101. I have learned a lot about different concepts while writing these essays, I am less scared of the blank white page, and improved my rhetorical strategies. Through class assignments and writing the different types of papers, I learned these skills. Writing the Response to Argument essay and the Comparing Perspectives essay, was the most challenging to write, but improved my writing skills significantly.

During this class, I developed in my rhetorical knowledge. I am now more capable of analyzing texts, understanding of audiences, purposes and contexts. I also have more variety in my writings. I learned how to use different words in context and how to formulate a better sentence. I developed my own ideas and opinions through writing about an outgoing conversation. I now understand how to analyze the writing of others, noting focus, arrangement, logical development, vocabulary, and style. I also developed the ability to use various sentence patterns and to edit for correctness, variety, and correct usage. We did this especially while we proofread our own and others drafts.

Since the first day of this class, every aspect of this class has been a learning experience for me. As I have said before, my Senior English class was very thorough as far as teaching the basic rhetorical tools and the skills necessary to analysis a piece of writing, but coming to college, I lacked the skills needed to actually put those skills into practice in my own writing. My knowledge of revision and drafting was limited by my habits of only editing grammar or changing a few words to sound like I was academic or qualified. Even though a great deal of this course focused on the skills necessary to be an efficient and effective writer, the last portion of the course was very useful to the development of my skills as a writer. Through revision, I learned how to take unorganized jumble of ideas and claims and arrange them into a piece that makes a useful and compelling argument with a purpose in mind. I find it hard to admit it but I actually found that I enjoyed the satisfaction of revising my work and making it better.

An essay is a great way to express your knowledge in a topic and also learn new skills involving reading and writing. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing. To turn those weaknesses into strengths, I have practiced my writing and took the advice given by my peers and professor. Throughout this course, I have overcome many of my writing weaknesses such as citations, thesis statements, and transitions. Although there are still skills to improve upon, I have improved these skills by taking my time with each essay, proofreading them thoroughly, and reflecting on my work when finished.

My writing skills have improved over the past months. I can proudly admit that I am a better writer than I was five months ago. Five months ago I was a terrible writer, I’m not admitting that I am as good as an Arthur now, but I can state that I am more comfortable with my writing skills at this point. I worked hard to get to the point that I'm at with my writing. I can not deny the fact that there is still room for practice and improvement in my writing because I lacks the fundamentals of writing, but I am grateful that my writing skills have improved significantly.

I was a pretty good student in high school, I got respectable SAT/ACT scores and had A’s in nearly all my classes throughout my four years there. I was considered “smart” by my friends because of my academic performance and my suspected lack of effort in achieving such. Unfortunately, this success did not come as easily as many people perceived. Of course, I maintained my high marks, but it was not without its stresses and if there was one class that I consistently struggled with during high school, it would have to be English. Without fail, I can recall the anxiety and dread that would creep over me every time we were given a prompt for an essay or creative writing piece. Personally, my creative writing capabilities, along with free hand writing, have always felt sub-par, making high school

Being an awesome writer is always a number one goal for me. In the beginning my writing was all over the place and not structured. Most of my inspiration was taken from unstructured climax after climax leading into long downtime stories. My writing reflected that of one who knew the focus but got into details too much leading to a whole story based on the details not the main topic. Eventually i learned strategies that made my writing grow a seed into roots.

Effective writing is essential to having a successful college career. Creating clear communication, efficiently completing assignments and applying what you have learned to your future jobs will help you succeed. Without effective writing, you will struggle along to succeed.

I have learned that in order to write a good, meaningful essay I have to always be prepared so I can never be caught off guard with my writing. I learned that organization is always helpful when it comes to writing. Mark Twain said, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” One has to first write and then see the errors, so they can fix them and end up with the best piece of work.

I learned not to put as many awkward words my essay. I also tried my best not to repeat my self as much as I was just to make my sentences and essay flow a lot better together. In this essay I used the turnitin.com and the teachers examples as a guide to help me compose a better essay. Once I was through composing this essay I was beginning to like this subject whole lot more. The Skills that I practice in the first and second essay carried on to my third and final essay for this

The biggest thing I learned this semester is where to appropriately place commas and how parallel structure is really important. I never really noticed how much simple commas could change a whole story. Parallel structure is probably going to help me out a lot later in life especially in college because it just sounds better. It sounds more professional when you write things and the flow goes along with it. I learned that having people read over your work is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. It helps a lot when other people can help you see the mistakes you may have missed a thousand times before.

The use of technology has made learning to write more difficult for me. I am quite dependent on technology for pretty much everything I do, my writing skills has bottomed out with little or no progress since freshman year of high school. Throughout high school we spent very little time on writing assignments that had to be completed during class, therefore causing a little bit of laziness on my part. Improving my grammer and spelling is a challenge for me, because the microsoft word software automatically corrects all your errors. I am so dependent on the software to correct my errors that I halfway try to produce an excellent paper. As long as you got most of the spelling correct Google can basically auto correct and if you don't even

Occasionally, I practice my writing skills by writing short stories. Since I am not a creative person, it’s difficult for me to come up with fresh ideas. Hopefully in college, I will be discovering many new things to gain ideas for my stories. With these ideas, I will love to write longer stories and hope to publish it one day. In the future, I will love to learn new skills and find new different words. I will also collaborate with people who have the same goal as me to help each other grow. I believe that reading and writing can bring people closer. I want people to realize that reading and writing are another way to escape the reality.

What did you learn this semester? The golden question from all friends and family members when you come home for breaks. One would think that since my first language is English, writing papers would be easy. It should be, but it is not. I have learned that my writing was not as good as I thought it was. I have learned that throwing a paper together last minute does not work as good in college as it did in high school. I realized early on in the semester that I have trouble analyzing pieces of writing, I can give a summary all day, but analysis is not a strong suit of mine. Sometimes teachers believe that we automatically know how to write, we are not born with reading skills. It would be hard to believe if someone said that they learned nothing from English 111. From English 111 I learned that summarizing is not the same as synthesizing. I also learned that I needed to strengthen my critical reading, thinking, and composing skills. I also gained a better use and understanding of rhetoric knowledge such as audience, purpose and evidence. In conclusion English 111 taught me to be more aware of my conventions in writing. I believe that I have gained knowledge in critical thinking, rhetoric information, and conventions from this semester that have strengthened my writing and I can provide examples to back the clause.

Throughout this semester I learned a lot about writing essay. Before this course I knew only one style of essay, because in high school, I wrote essay only for Literature classes. In this class I found that writing could be structured in many ways. Moreover, all reading that I have helped me to think critically and analyze all information that I get. A large number of examples in these readings and my own experience in this course introduced me that sometimes people are getting mislead, because of misinformation or setting wrong belief into the reader. All of these I get from this class, including practicing writing in the formal style and improving my English.