Reflective Essay I have been a student at DePaul University for three years now. Over the course of my stay I have grown and learned how to write essays as Biology major. This class pointed out to me the things that science majors tend to neglect when they write their essays and lab reports; for example, punctuation, and citation. This is something I’ve gotten better at, but still improving. Most importantly, I’ve learned how to analyze a text. The scientific essays I am used to reading, rarely do I have to read between the lines. It was hard but quite interesting to go read an essay and having to break it down from the argument, to the tools used and the author’s opinion even when not directly stated. Throughout the course, I’ve also learned how helpful it is to share your work with classmates. I used to think only the professor had the beneficial feedback and would never bother asking people from my class. However, I’ve learned that they have a fresh perspective and could help. For example, when I presented my research paper, I wasn’t expecting any feedback that would be that helpful, simply because I assumed the class wasn’t familiar with my topic. However, I was surprised that not only were some familiar, but they had questions about my topic, and when I responded to them I automatically realized that unintentionally, they had just given me another argument to write about, and my response was the counter argument. That is what happened when a girl asked me “why
Compare and contrast essays allow the student to display the similarities and differences between the themes, characteristics, and style of two or more pieces of literature. Résumés help students present their accomplishments and education formally. Students learn to explore databases for critical information when working on a research paper. Ethos, pathos, and logos are key elements used in a successful persuasive essay. English students are instructed to write poetry to explore different writing styles and focus on rhythms. Writing is important curriculum to learn, but speech also crucial to
Throughout this semester I have learned many valuable resources, and tools. The big thing you taught us was how to write and argument paper. Also I have learned different tools on summarizing, how to better my skills for peer reviews, new library skills, and MLA format. Most of these I already knew, but you taught us them more in depth, and you gave me better understandings of them.
In “Reflective Writing and Revision Process”, Sandra Giles talks about the importance of reflective writing. She mentions that before she thought reflective writing was a waste of time and she just wrote her it to please her teacher, but it was not supposed to be like that. Reflective writing is supposed to talk about purpose of the essay, and then sets goals for revision. Through reflections, the students can change their audience if needed, make changes about the writing styles and the words choice, as well as figuring out the problems within their essays to improve them. The professors can also give feedbacks after reading their students’ memos and reflections. Throughout the whole essay, Giles includes several samples of reflective writings.
On February 22, 2016 author John Warner published an article on Just Visiting entitled “Kill the 5-Paragraph Essay.” Warner creatively talks about how rudimentary of a structure this type of essay holds. Writers are locked inside a cage of regulations and guidelines making them unable to write the essay as they please, but rather having to piece together regulated sentences and paragraphs because that’s what they have been told would score high on certain test questions. The article targets people of all kinds, but is more directed towards early college aged students. The purpose behind this article is to get them to expand their horizon, disregard all the regulations they have been previously taught and start to write in a much more open-minded sense.
Every day, all day we subconsciously breakdown our thoughts and process information to make a uniform decision in any given situation. Each person is different, so naturally the thought process will vary depending on the individual. The components that build an essay, create the “feel” of the essay so to speak. Those components are the thesis statement, transition sentences, and the structures or tone of the essay. In the essays, “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott and “How Not to Say the Wrong Thing” by Berry Goldman and Susan Silk, the authors describes effective ways to process and analyze a situation in the most compelling way possible.
English Composition I has developed my style of writing and my skills analyzing and researching topics to write a piece about a topic. Throughout the course, I got better at analyzing articles and pieces to get the meaning of the topic. With that improved skill I was more able to use the information given from the text and install it into my essays, with proper citation if needed. Before taking the English Composition course, I was not one to organize my essays in an ordeal order to clearly state the point of the work. Now with taking the course, I have learned to organize my essays, examine research for a topic, and develop an essay with proper mechanics, and revising skills. In writing my personal, review, analytical, and cultural
With an improvement in writing, there also comes an improvement in reading. The first reading assigned to us, “The Banking Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire, was one of the more difficult pieces of writing I had been asked to analyze throughout my career as a student. This course has provided me with the resources and skills to break apart readings piece by piece and understand them as well as apply them to my own life. I slowly became a better reader, finally realizing the use of annotations and the importance of re-reading texts until you can understand them. A better understanding of the readings gave me the ability to produce essays that are well developed
Throughout my coursework, I have always motivated to be a thinker. Moreover, I have greatly sharpened my critical analysis skills. Instead of focusing on biographic background or focusing on proposed meaning, I have learned to deliberately ask “why” during the essay that I read thru the articles. I have to criticize into the context as deeply as possible and clarify the details to develop my satisfying close read. I also have learned to identify the different of writing styles and synthesize two essays, and provide my thesis statement in which I indicate what I learned about this topic. As an engineering major, I consider that reality has changed over time. I have learned to appreciate that now there is a new meaning for the modern things emerged.
I feel that I am a very smart student, or I would not have made it this far; and I already knew the definition of an essay; which is a piece of writing with a point or argument. Yet at the beginning of the semester I had never really given much thought to how many different types of essays there were, and I knew very little about the components that would make these sort of writings a success. However, during the semester I learned that an essay can be written from any perspective, yet it is most commonly written in the view of the first person, or third person. Likewise I knew that an essay is composed of an introductory, three bodies, and a conclusion, but there is so much more to an essay. For example the first paragraph of an essay's primary purpose is to introduce the thesis and
Sylvia, from “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, and I have experienced a very similar realization of our naivety. The good grades came easy in my high school English classes. I assumed they would in English 1102 as well, but I could not have been more wrong. This class has been especially trying, but I can honestly say that I have grown as a result of it. The unexpected bad grades I received influenced me to fully grasp and understand the errors I made throughout my essays, in order to create clear works that exhibit all of the necessary requirements. I intend to portray my strengths and weaknesses in my portfolio by specifically discussing my complications with introductions, generalizations, and grammatical errors.
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).
In high school I got the opportunity to be involved in honors and AP English classes. Throughout those classes I was able to learn how to annotate, format (is key to writing a good essay), proper citations, personal words should not be added such as “I”, “we”, “us” “our”. To annotate was to skim over and just write what you understand about the text in the margin. If you could have the format of the “beginning, middle, and end” then writing a two page/1,000 word minimum did not apply to grading. In writing a good essay, proper citations were a big chunk of writing an essay. Though, I never learned how to properly cite in the time given to learn it because I was not as advanced as other students. When writing an essay we were also never allowed to use personal words because that meant it would take away from the meaning and credibility of your essay. In my opinion writing in high school
I have learned many things throughout the course of the term, including such things as: how to write an essay and how to improve on essays that I have already written, how to locate and composite better research through the use of numerous resources found at the campus library, the internet, and the “Common Sense” textbook, how to cite research, examples, and quotations properly within the contents of my research paper as well as document it accurately according to MLA standards. Through the exploration of the “Subjects and Strategies” textbook, I have learned nine different methods used when writing an effective essay and how the different writing styles affect the overall theme and tone of the essay when used properly. This past
In the beginning of the course I had a pretty good mindset when it came to writing essays even though I still struggled here and there I found that writing hooks and my body paragraphs were my greatest strengths. First, I find body paragraphs easy to write because unlike writing my introductions not only did I have examples and information ready to help
My experience with English has changed drastically from middle school to college. Being in middle school I have really had to do much of a big paper, but as I progressed through college I’ve realized there much more that has to be added. I had always wondered why middle school was so easy but as years went on, I realized that advancing to college there’s a lot more requirements and importance to writing. In middle school, I was young and just starting to really realize what an essay was and after high school I really understood what an essay consists of. No matter how