Prior to arriving at Berkeley, I initially had trouble with applying critical thinking skills into interpreting texts and providing meaningful analysis on my essays. Before I encountered a college-level English class in my academic career, I would only showcase minimal, simple explanations that were clearly apparent to the readers without providing any significant observations about the text. I interpreted critical thinking as a crucial, important element in not just English classes, but in any class that required writing essays and understanding the content the textbook. Since I had trouble with developing my critical thinking skills, it was hard for me to develop a strong thesis because like how critical thinking is important in any class one encounters in their academic career, a strong thesis is important because the entire baseline and foundation of a student’s essay revolves around the thesis as well as be able to provide evidence to back up one’s argument. Because these problems would constantly follow me around in any class I encountered, I felt an extreme sense of low confidence that I would not be able to advance as a critical thinker in advanced college classes. However, it was not until the College Writing R1A program thankfully gave me the opportunity to further develop my skills as a reader and a writer in my classes.
Coming in College Writing R1A, I was afraid that my writing was not up to par with the standards and expectations of college level writing.
“The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year” reflected my writing experience while I transitioned from elementary writer to a critical writer. Sommers and Saltz write, “freshmen need to see themselves as novice in a world that demands ‘something more and deeper’ from their writing than high school” (Sommers and Saltz 134). This line highlights the hardship that most students face when trying to write successfully. My earlier written works were much weaker than my current pieces because I often wrote for the sake of passing the class. While developing my writing, I focused on the new ideas that were introduced rather than limiting my argument to familiar techniques and ideas. Because of my new attitude towards writing, I began to demand
How volcanic lightning came to be. Zeus, (The king of the gods) promised Hephaestus that his creation of fire would be the hottest and most worshiped creation in the land. Zeus then asked the Cyclops to make a lightning bolt, hotter than fire and more worshiped than anything in the land. Zeus got the lightning bolt that was hotter than fire and worshiped more than anything but he didn’t let Hephaestus find out what he had for he was worried he would be really angry since he Zeus had promised.
In “Expectations for College Writing,” the author indicates the importance of thinking and communicating to succeed after college. A writer’s style acknowledges a social or academic expression. A writer’s skill to rationalize ideas and think critically demonstrates an essential technique for enhancing communication in the work environment.
Why do some college freshmen find it harder to write an essay in college than in high school?” College freshmen usually struggle with the transition from high school writing to college writing. They do not know that the writing in college has a lot of differences. They also do not know that college writing has different rules. These students get confused with these rules. There are many other reasons cause these struggles. There are different styles in writing, for example: In college writing in college need to be done with at least two pages or more unlike in high school which takes four to six paragraphs. As a first-year student and English is my second language, I am really struggling to write a paragraph, spending hours to finish
Words are an essential part of everyone's life, from the time a baby is born words are encouraged to stimulate their growth because simply being able to say "milk" or "mama" provides the baby with a huge amount of power. In fact, they were even used to
The importance of college-level writing is a topic that is very much backed up and accompanied by facts and studies. Writing in the college-level is needed in order to master college work in any class. Basically all classes require you to more than likely submit some kind of research paper or essay. Writing for Learning to Improve Students’ Comprehension at the College Level by Fahad Alharbi as well as Luiza Costa Ribeiro, Writing Essays at College: Why it’s Important both go into detail on how important writing at this level is and all the skills learned for during and after college. As well on how you can benefit from them.
Before taking Critical Writing and Research Literary Studies, my writing, while rather average, was enough to enable success in composition and survey courses; however, it was not advanced enough for this class. The writings for composition or survey classes were organized, but lacked a depth or clear argument. While the topics would be clear and covered, there would be little to no in-depth analysis and more of a skimming above the surface. Even in longer papers, the depth of my argument was never really deep enough, and while it was enough for the beginning courses, it clearly became a
When I graduated high school, I already knew that I wanted to attend college other than going to the work force. I heard stories about college being fun and it is one of the greatest accomplishment a person can achieve. So, I began college right after high school. As I entered college, I learned that I will have to focus more on writing papers than having fun. In high school my teachers did not prepare me for college essays. I feel like I learned a lot more failing on my college writing assignment than passing on the essays in high school. Well now I have approached the end of the semester of college, and I am exhausted from the constant writing assignments. Although the assignments were difficult like I said it was also helpful. Each assignment helped me in different ways. The assignments helped me improved with my grammar, time management, and how to process before I begin writing. In English 1010 I had different types of writing assignments. I had to write a literacy narrative paper, analysis paper, research paper, and lastly an autoethnography paper which I am doing now. An autoethnography is when the author uses self reflects to write about their experiences about writing a paper. English is not the only subject that I had writing assignments in. I also had to write assignment in my business class. My English teacher had informed me that I will have to do an autoethnography. So, I used my paper in my business class to reflect on how I write by
Successful College Writing and Writing Arguments are both textbooks I’ve had to spend a lot of time reading over the course of my college adventure thus far. Some things that I’ve never given a lot of thought to in regards to textbooks are questions like “Why did they put that there?”, or “Why did they choose that font, color or layout?” It is easy as a student to take for granted the thought and planning that goes into a textbook that will aid you over the course of your learning experience. In my writings, I would like to explore the two books from cover to end and take a look at the table of contents along with preface, chapter layouts, colors, fonts and images/graphics/charts used within the books comparing them against each
When it comes to evaluating myself and if I am prepared for my first college writing course I believe that I am prepared to take my first college writing course. Before joining my ESC 021 class with Professor Kraft I felt that I was prepared and that I would be able to complete assignments without difficulty, but I was so used to the one on one sessions where I would go over the little mistakes or find ways to produce an exceptional essay that I forgot that I was own my own now. Through the short time in ESC 021 I learned my weaknesses and strengths as a writer. I now have the ability to receive feedback and effectively use my feedback to better my assignments.
College Composition has helped me grow tremendously as a writer. While I am still not where I want to be as a writer, Comp 1 has given me the push in the right direction that high school never did. When I was in high school I had about a month total of grammar over those 4 years so writing was not a big part of my life at that point. Due to that, I knew coming into Comp 1 that I would struggle to produce something worth reading at first. Through countless revisions and reflections on each paper I have learned so much about the process of writing in such a short time.
Chapter 2 of Successful College Writing written by Kathleen McWhorter focused on several different points. However, the main core of the chapter is mostly focused* on college writing and what is expected of it. It mentions* how college introduces you to new forms of writing, and also using sources to support your information and arguments in your essays. This chapter not only mentions the new writing styles you will experience, but also how to be successful in them by giving you helpful tips and aiding you in figuring out your learning style.
After the annihilation of the Persians in 479 B.C., Athens commanded Greece politically, financially and socially
China has had the new population control for almost 36 years, composed by the one-child policy and prohibited excess reproduction. The birth control plan has received praise on reducing the population, but also received criticism over the late 20th century. In 1979, couples were forced to pledge not to give second birth or bear any more children (Feng, 2014). From 1979 to 2015, while the population growth rate has reduced substantially, this implementation has been tremendously restructured how Chinese families value family structure, child preferences, marriage, parenting, living arrangements, and eldercare. This one child policy has transformed into a problematic system for the Chinese family to maintain their traditional value, and also introduced new problems to the family.
Over the course of this past semester, my ability to write has improved tremendously. Prior to undertaking this course, my expertise in writing was not as fine-tuned as it should have been. I had never previously been enrolled in a class specifically tailored to writing-- which was quite clear. Upon reading my past works, it becomes apparent that my writing style consisted of fluff, small words, and inconsistently structured sentences. These problems have, for the most part, been remedied with the coursework I have tackled in College Writing. Rather than long, drawn out papers that take an eternity to reach the primary point, my recent work is much nicer in terms of composition and grammar. I credit these improvements to the three primary