Reflection On How I Learned In English

Like transforming from a caterpillar to a butterfly, my writing style transformed from something mediocre to something quite exceptional. In high school, even when I took advanced placement English and Literature courses, I was never good at writing. My writing would lack structure, reasoning, syntax, and a well-defined thesis statement. My inadequate grades on writing assignments lowered my self-esteem, so I assumed I would never enjoy writing papers because I believed I could never improve. However, since attending a university my writing style has improved far beyond my expectation. My EN 101 course enhanced my understanding of the different ways I could approach my writing. Also, it enhanced my comprehension of outlines to complete assignments. Investing quality time into my writing made a substantial difference because I became a stronger writer. Through the late nights, constant revisions, and agonizing head traumas, I learned that my writing is truly spectacular whenever I incorporate well-defined thesis statements, provide sufficient supporting evidence, and maintain a clear focus in my assignments.

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.

As I look back on my English 101 experience, I have come to the conclusion that I have learned many new things that have improved my abilities as a writer. I have learned some new techniques that have improved my ways of approaching an essay. I learned all about the rhetorical appeals and how to apply them in my writing and how to look for them in a essay written by a author. I have also learned how to argue both sides of a argument, and how to look for reliable sources and to properly quote and site the author of the essay. I feel as if I have become a better writer and my improved writing skills are shown within each essay.

Research types of writings at college helped me strengthen my writing skills because as I started to research on a topic, not only I learned more in depth, but also learned how to draw further connections outside of the course(class). I want to improve my writings in making correct connections and organizing ideas. Sometimes, I misunderstand the readings and end up making the wrong connections. In fact, my ideas are all over the place whenever I try to make connections, which does not clearly show that I have understood the assignment. These mistakes often led to downside of my grades. The most useful advice I received that helped me improve my writing is that “the word ‘writing’ actually means to put things together, so don’t be afraid of express your opinions in your writing your opinion.” This encourage me not to be afraid of writing and expressing my opinions.

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.

How can I become a better writer? Throughout my writing experiences, I have learned I have many weaknesses along with strengths. My experiences with writing has not always been the best, but over time, with lots of practice and instructions from my instructors, I can proudly say that I have gained a better understanding on the layout of essays and papers. As well as understanding how to write correctly my goal as a writer is to learn how to overcome my weaknesses and use my strengths to my highest ability. I have many strengths, weaknesses and goals that I plan to achieve and overcome in my college career.

When I started my first semester of college, I was very worried about writing essays and research papers. I felt like my writing skills lacked greatly compared to other students. I knew a few things of which I could improve on right off the bat, such as my vocabulary skills and organizational skills. To say the least I was very nervous about how my writing composition course would be like and did not think it would go very well for me. However, I learned so many techniques that have helped my writing skills grow. It all started with learning how to stay organized, planning what to write in your essay in outline form and sticking to it really helped when writing essays. These techniques helped me become more confident in my essays and allowed writing essays to become a lot easier. The few aspects in which I am strong in while writing essays is my ability to stay organized, focused and be very clear about what I am writing. Nonetheless, there is always room for improvement; a few things that I can think of being grammar and punctuation due to no revising, embedding quotes smoothly, and citing sources correctly.

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,

I used to consider writing as tumble words from your mind, write, read it through, fix minor mistakes, and done. However, you rarely get successful. The truth is many students, including myself, struggle with starting to write a word, or getting stuck in the middle without knowing the main point of the writing. After completing English 101, I can explain the writing process, evaluate the strengths of my essay, and identify my weaknesses.

English is a hard language to learn, for there are numerous elements of effective usage and writing. Many people, including me, struggle in writing because of a lack of knowledge. Since middle school, English was not a strong suit of mine. I struggled with the simplest of tasks often taking a considerably longer time to complete a task than the other students. Unmotivated teachers and a lack of interest resulted in remedial writing skills. To put it simply, I had little confidence in my writing and I dreaded taking the class because of the writing involved. In spite of my fears, I took the course and I was able to perfect and challenge my mediocre writing skills.

I chose this statement because the thesis statement is showing what the subject is about and the writer has stated their argument. Too, this statement has the power to make the reader want to continue reading.

Proficient writing is an essential skill in all aspects of academic and professional achievement. English 101, Introduction to Composition and Rhetoric, provided the framework to good writing, teaching me composition and rhetoric fundamentals, polishing up my grammar and style, and expressing a clear message. English 102, Composition, Rhetoric, and Research, continued to build on the skills I learned in English 101, focusing on the subject matter research process and employing various rhetorical and literary devices to better express a clear message to the reader. The course also improved my critical thinking capacity, allowing me to culturally evaluate my target audience, present logically flowing arguments using appropriate language and structure, and critically reviewing my writing projects for content and expression. Every writer inherently knows there’s always room to improve and I hold fast to this mindset in all academic, professional, and personal writing projects. English 102 has both challenged and inspired me to grow into a much better writer than before I began the class, providing the necessary skills to be not just a good writer, but a great writer.

A strongly worded and provable thesis is essential for any form of writing. It is important because

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).

Over the course of the semester, there has been numerous amount of areas where I believe I have improved in comparison to high school. What has helped me in my writing is the writing class and the in-class writing workshop. The writing class that is located in the Kremen education building has helped me with my writing greatly because in the writing center the person in charge teach us lenses and we apply those lenses to the writing, draft, or reading that someone brings in. The in-class writing workshop has helped me because other students get to read my writing. This is helpful because I get feedback from many students and they let me know what needs to be fixed. A new tool I have been using is They Say I Say. The book is very helpful because of the information and examples it provides such as the templates. I have been applying the templates into my essays and I have seen a significant difference.