Over the past year our class has learned many things that have helped make us better readers and writers. We have learned how to use common literary elements to help us read into a story beyond the text. From the first independent book we read to short stories we read together in class, we have all improved drastically as writers. The first thing we did in starting our English ten honors course was to pick an independent book to read over the summer. I picked The Da Vinci Code written by Dan Brown. Our assignment for this was to name three literary elements the author used well. I said that the best used literary elements used in this novel are point of view, symbolism, and foreshadowing. The reasoning behind each of these was written …show more content…
The improvement of writing speeches between these four months was drastic.
We also developed a better understanding of the literary element authors use in their writing. In January we wrote a paragraph explaining how and why authors use diction in their writing. Before doing this we went through an exercise of trying to put certain words into a poem to convey the mood. After this we read Snow Falling on Cedars and wrote an essay Explaining why and how Ishmael is the protagonist of the story. This was proven by showing how the conflict, climax, and the resolution were centered around him. We planned this out using a plot diagram to explain the climax, conflict, and resolution of the story. The main problems within this essay were possessives, along with the use of commas for appositives. The last piece of writing we did this year was on ten short stories we read in class. We did a plot diagram for each of these short stories to have a better understanding of all the parts of theme. This was similar to what we did with Snow Falling on Cedars. There were few mistakes in this piece besides a few proofreading errors. Over the course of English ten honors, you can see my writing and reading skills grow and improve. Over the past year our class has learned many things that have helped make us better readers and writers. We have learned how to use common literary elements to help us read into a story beyond the text. From the first independent book we read to
Everyone on the planet has a goal set in life, but only a handful attempt to improve to obtain their goal by studying the subject their goal is in. In my English class, English 101 this quarter I was astonished by how much I had progressed as a writer sharpening my writing skills and also learned a lot about writing that I hadn’t learned before. In my writing portfolio for this quarter I had to write an autobiography essay, a research essay, and this reflection essay to develop my writing skills better. The writing assignments were fun to do because it challenged me to work on essays of different styles that were new to me. The essay assignments helped me grow as a better writer that gave me the self-confidence and skills to take on the world on my own.
As the semester comes to a close, it is always interesting to look back and reflect on the events and opportunities my English class has given me throughout my first semester as a whole. At the beginning of this semester it was evident that I was feeling uncomfortable due to the adjustment that I was going through as a student moving to college. It was very difficult expressing myself through my writing since I was nervous about good impressions and my good grade. While this class was one of the most difficult courses that I have taken this far, it has become quite evident to me that I have grown a substantial amount as a writer and as a person; Especially, when it came to explaining my ideas, writing academic essays, and making arguments.
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.
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.
The past two semesters were great experiences. Within this past school year my knowledge as a reader and writer has improved. It felt like it was just yesterday, when I had a lot of difficulty writing and poor reading strategies. Now, as I said before, I am an improved writer and reader. The assignments and class activities over the two semesters were great benefits to me, and helped me make progress towards the first year learning goals.
Throughout the course of freshmen year I have developed different skills and opinions on writing. I feel I have created a more mature style of writing and a better understanding of literature. I have changed my view of writing over this semester and acquired a strong liking for it. The importance of writing has become more visible throughout the past few months. Writing is crucial in many aspects of a person’s life. I have grown to be a more powerful and well built writer throughout this course.
During this semester in English 107, I have progressed more as a writer. Before I went to University of Arizona, my writing was rigid. I wrote five-paragraph TOEFL style essay all the time in my high school life. After I attended in English 107, I was not confident about my writing skill. Throughout these three projects we have done, I become more and more confident about my writing skill than before. The Student Learning Outcomes also helped me to grow as a writer a lot. In these goals, I did well on several of them, but I still need to work on the other goals.
The assignments in this class have shown me that I’m a better writer than I initially thought. The assignments have where I have improved, areas where I still need to improve, and how skills developed here can transfer into other courses.
Within English 219, we have already learned a vital set of writing skills, that will allow for the improvement of essays, and summaries that must be written for future assessments. Some of these skills that would be relevant for achieving general writing improvement could be ideas such as thesis development, structuring and planning, or more specific examples when actually fleshing out the essay such as elements of grammar and style. Thesis development which is crucial so that ideas can be fully explained and related back to a point which can be interpreted as an overarching theme for the entire paper, and allows the reader to interpret the topic of not only the essay but of each paragraph. Taking a step back we looked in class at the subject
This year in Honors Freshman Literature and Composition, I have grown tremendously as a writer. My essays from the beginning of the year to the end have showed that I have greatly progressed in many skills that I have worked on. While I have acquired strengths this year, I also have weaknesses that I hope to improve next year in my writing.
We read How to Read Literature like a professor over the summer. This book wasn’t anything like the other two required readings; instead, it provided me with a glimpse into the thought process and mind of a Literature Major. The reading was informative and provided me with a plethora of new ways of helping analyze books and stories. Compared to what I knew before, this new accumulation of knowledge provided me with much more freedom while reading other books. Though there were many chapters which presented a new concept/idea to analyzing a story, the concepts that caught my eye were the symbolism of certain objects or events, the borrowing of ideas from older stories (intertextuality), and the meaning of weather and the seasons.
As a writer, I have improved greatly since the first exploratory narrative essay. There have been many challenges that I have faced in my writing, but I have dealt with them in the best way possible. Over the course of the three papers I have written, I have improved in the flow of the papers, as well as the content of the papers. This semester, I have managed to overcome most of the challenges in my writing and have grown as a writer because of it.
Throughout this semester in English 101, I have made a significant improvement on multiple things, including how to be an exceptional writer and thinker. English has always been one of my most favored subjects to study because to me it instructs students how to be intelligent, how to become a more creative and critical thinker, and be able to develop ethical values and imagination. You can express yourself more efficiently in English than you can in any other subject. This class has truly made me a more confident writer and helped me express myself in different ways through the different types of papers I wrote. By writing different types of papers I have improved multiple areas of my writing. I have grown as a student in diverse areas such
I assisted with Ms. Martin’s first period English I class on September 23, 2017. The class began with a bell ringer related to the short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Ronald Dahl which had been read in class. The assignment projected on the smartboard requested that students explain the difference between verbal, situational, and dramatic irony and find examples of each in the story. After a class discussion of their answers, the students drew a plot diagram in their interactive notebook. Then students mapped the story (identifying exposition, incremental action, climax, falling action and resolution). Earlier, Ms. taped a piece of paper with one of the story elements under one of the desks in each group. Students were asked to draw an illustration demonstrating that story element in the story.
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is one of the most successful and controversial novels of our time. Other authors have jumped on the bandwagon writing novels on Christian topics or treasure hunts or simply discussing The Da Vinci Code. Even the film industry has profited by using Brown’s strategies (and topics) in the successful movie National Treasure and by taking advantage of the Grail publicity in TV productions like The Blood of the (Knights) Templar. But which strategies does Brown use to make the reader enjoy reading The Da Vinci Code? In my essay, I would like to focus on his use of narrative techniques.