Personal Reflection : An Introduction To College-Level Writing

Writing 101 has been a tremendous learning experience for me. It is not my strongest area, so it is my primary reason for taking the class. I took this Writing 101 class to improve my writing skills. In college courses, I have to do a tremendous amount of writing. Writing is also not my favorite thing to do, because it takes time, thought and research. The first week of class, we had to write the first assignment draft. I thought this class will be hard for me and difficult to keep up with the assignments. I disagree with my initial thought. The class definitely challenged me, but I learned so much. My expectation was to improve my writing skills. I would say I met that expectation. However, I feel that I need to continue to learn and perfect my writing to become even more proficient. I learned how to develop strong thesis statements, to conduct online library searches. I started WRTG 101 with a basic knowledge of the writing skills; now I know how to accurately use punctuations, I know how to develop unified, consistent and well-supported paragraphs, and I know my weaknesses in my writing.

Also, I was in the Accelerated English II class, and the teacher had a higher standard for the students. The class was one of my less desirable ones. I had a first year teacher, and she didn’t exactly have everything together. When I wrote papers, I made sure to write to the best of my ability. I had a research paper at the end of the semester. If I remember correctly, my paper was on cyberbullying. I am very against bullying in any form, so I chose to write on that topic. Throughout writing this paper, I expressed myself and my thoughts on the subject. I made an A on this assignment and was pretty proud of

Overall, I believe that I acquired a conceptual and practical knowledge of argumentation. The rhetorical situation worksheets that we were given in the beginning of the semester was a great refresher on all that I was taught on argumentation. It also helped me to understand the format that the professor would like us to introduce the articles and it’s Kairos before we analyze them. These worksheets definitely helped when it came to writing our first paper. However, although the worksheets made it easy to know what to put in the paper, it was not easy to actually put the paper together and make it flow. Therefore, when I wrote the paper it felt choppy in some places due to the fact

The second to last essay type we wrote this year were personal essays, which were a blend of reflection, analysis, and persuasion. The first was about A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and the second was about The Odyssey. The purpose of writing this kind of essay is to develop a thesis, which “probes” the theme of an issue or text. While writing these essays, I learned to “probe” and question the meanings of a certain issue. I also learned important techniques and lessons for integrating multiple sources, such as a book, philosophy, or personal experience. A sentence that I feel used both personal experience and historical evidence was in my first paper, where I state: “If not hero had ever thought to allow women’s rights to education so long ago, I would never have written this essay in the first place.” This sentence, I felt, was a personal sentence yet still upheld my thesis. Another sentence I felt was well crafted was in my Odysseus essay, where I state: “Because we can shut our mouths when we want to beg. Because holding onto the world for what it’s worth makes you human again. Because we can drop our hand.” This sentence, to me, sums up my entire paper while still alluding to an earlier metaphor, which aided me in “showing” my ideas. Altogether, it was difficult to balance my ‘showing’ and my personal essay, as a large part of a personal essay includes taking from multiple sources. Explaining several sources while still connecting it to a thesis is complicated,

Then I began writing like never before, so to get an understanding on the inside of me that I too could do this. Attend college at my age and learn to write. I have to admit that when I received a grade of B, on my paper; I was thrilled not to mention exhausted. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to writing any more essays because there was so much work involved in receiving a passing grade. Then all of a sudden I was faced with the next English 111 assignment, which definitely was not going to be any easier. As in my promise to myself, I remained faithful not only to the commitment of college but to the fact that I still believe I was worth every effort that it was going to take to receive a passing grade of confidence which I so desired.

Not only had I put a lot of work into composing the paper, but also the majority of the class had received much higher grades. Until this point I had always felt very capable of reaching my academic goals however when I received my grade I felt very incompetent and was unsure of my abilities as a writer. Although it was a negative experience it showed me the skills I could and still can improve upon such as editing.

Writing is one of the most important skills that I have learned throughout my years in school. I have learned that no matter how much I love or hate it, writing is a necessity; I might as well try to be good at it. Writing has been in my life for many years. There are many types of writing, educational writing and personal writing are two that I will mention in this essay. I have learned how to allow writing to help me in my daily life. When I began writing I hated it, however, I have learned the many uses of it, and it has become a huge part of my life.

Throughout the timespan of a semester could you improve your writing to where there would be noticeable differences? When writing for English 1010, I noticed that there was obvious weaknesses and minimal strengths or lack thereof in my writing abilities. In many ways I do believe that I was able to improve in areas pertaining to reading, thinking, researching, and writing.

Well, my first semester in college is coming to an end and I have learned many things about myself, my learning and most specifically my writing. My writing 101 class was a bit of a culture shock for me. I was surprised by the amount of freedom we had in that class and how much I didn’t actually know about writing. Our class’s instructions were to keep a blog of what we were feeling or thinking while writing each essay over the course of the semester. With each essay and blog post, I learned more and more about my writing style and what I liked to write about.

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

This class has helped me to improve my writing in many ways. Though I do not manage my time as well as I would like to at the moment, I have evolved this aspect of my writing vastly. At the beginning of the semester, it took anywhere between two and four hours to complete an essay, and I would wait until the very last minute to even begin writing. I have learned how to properly manage my time in order to write my essays in a shorter amount of time. I have also increased my ability to find and present sources in an academic essay. Though I still need to polish my ability to present information without bias, I am able to find relevant information in order to further prove my point in an essay. Overall, this class has taught me many valuable things

First, thank you for your honesty and your bravery in posting this. As a few other posts in this course seem to attest, many people are uncomfortable with posting something potentially negative, or even positive, from their lives and their history and would instead either spurn off the idea and topic of the assignment, or acknowledge a lack of interest and create a false narrative. You did neither.

| |the intellectual conversation of topics that were discussed. I also enjoyed the learning |

During the course of this semester, I wrote several essays, several of them being for English 111. The four primary essays I wrote for the course were on: the importance of truth, the time I almost died from an allergic reaction, a review of one of my favorite films, and a revision of the truth essay. In addition to my essays, I learned a lot from the peer reviews that the professor implemented as well. In writing the the first two essays, I found many improvements in my writing styles as a student. In the truth essay and its revision, I learned about the important of evidence and examples. This helped improve my writing style and essay because it provided information in areas that I was lacking. I felt as though my narrative

Throughout my first semester of college I have learned many new things about the writing process. One thing that I have learned is how to make strategic composing decisions that consider the specific audiences and purposes for which most university students write. During this semester I have made quite a few composing decisions to help better my writing for my classmates understanding. As a writer, I have had to make a few composing decisions that have influenced my writing in a good way. For this class, whether my decisions are based on word choice, or writing style, these decisions have helped shape me into a better writer. In our most recent essay for this course, I choose a certain writing process that would help me convey my writing. Also, throughout this semester, I have learned that I am not allowed to use contractions, so in regards to that, I have been moved to better my writings in ways that I can use more in-depth vocabulary words that will help convey my points to readers.