The Philosophy Of English 101

During this semester, the realization of my past was that I have often skimmed through parts of the writing process to get the job done. Not being an avid reader often hindered my writing abilities. This class most definitely made me realize that the entire writing process is important and having peer reviews also helped significantly and certainly made a difference in the result of my work. Taking the time to read, brainstorm my thoughts, write an outline, rough draft after rough draft, reading constructive criticism of others helped in the revisions of my papers’ reaching the best possible outcome. When selecting English 102, I knew I would be challenged, but to what extent I was unsure. If like past English courses that were taken learning to write essays would be the goal. Once realizing that my work would be shared with others, providing informed information

As spring semester began, the anxiety pushed into my life. Since I knew I was going to be the youngest in the class, I was concerned if people were even going to talk to me. I expected to come into the stressful English 101 class as a relatively inexperienced writer; however, I was astounded when I started writing my first college essay. Our topic “monsters” has taught me ways to analyze and compare certain people and objects. My recommendation for those entering this composition class is to not wait until the last minute and ask as many questions as you can to reach your goal towards fantastic essays. Although spring semester is coming to an end, I will continue to improve my writing skills and reasoning as I advance in my English and college career.

I would like to think that I had some significant growth as a writer in my first semester as a college student. My rhetorical analysis essay, persuasive essay, and reflective analysis essay were all very different from each other in how I approached them and felt about them, but each one helped me grow as a writer in different ways. The rhetorical analysis was my first college essay so I felt some extreme self-imposed pressure to do well on it. I really enjoy writing persuasive essays because it causes you to form your own opinions and support them with evidence. My least favorite essay would most likely have to be the reflective analysis essay. I absolutely despise sharing my thoughts and emotions with people, let alone writing them. Beginning the essay was extremely difficult for me. However, I did found it to be the easiest essay to write once I had all my ideas gathered together. The point is, these three essays all had their pros and cons to them, but nonetheless, they each helped me grow as a writer in their own way, which helped me reach many of the stated outcomes for this class. This paper examines some of my work in these essays and describes how I was able to reach some of the course objectives.

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.

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

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.

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.

Education. Why is it such an easy word to understand but such a tedious task to accomplish? We come from a society that hands out education easily, however that education comes with a price. Jean Anyon explains this process through her research in From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. Anyon dissects the socio-economic class that determines the types of instruction students receive. Through her research one can compare her findings to Mike Rose’s narrative, I Just Wanna Be Average, to be true and insightful. Rose speaks of his high school life as an underachiever as well as his ability to break free from the mold that he was once placed in. Comprehending both Anyon and Rose, I, myself, have come face to face with the

Applying the writing skills learned in English 101, which includes determining audience and purpose, organization, and grammar and mechanic usage, is also a major goal for students in their second semester of freshman English. The ability for a writer to determine their audience and purpose is essential for all writing. In my proposal essay advocating a plan to stop texting and driving I said “As the number of collisions from cell phone related distractions rises, something must be done to significantly reduce the regularity of this event. This problem affects all age groups, sexes, and ethnicities and it is in our hands as drivers to create safer, more responsible roadways.” In these two sentences, I stated the purpose of my argument which

Throughout the school year of 2015-2016 at the Founders Academy, I have wrote numerous essays, with generally positive results. Several of the essays exceeded expectations, while others reached expectations to a modest extent, but all of the essays were supported by the writing skills that I had learned that year, regardless of my strengths or weaknesses with these skills. These techniques vary extensively, from comparing and contrasting ideas in a text to editing and revising essays for quality results, which is proven in my writing portfolio.

Coming into English 101 as a freshman art student with only the standard amount of high school writing experience under my belt, this course initially was a bit of a struggle. Though many of my art classes include writing interpretive essays and analysing visual works of art, being able to interpret and analyze a written article proved to be a whole different and difficult procedure for me. Over the course of the class we had to read three major articles and respond to each one by writing an interpretive essay. In writing these essays we aimed at improving our writing skills in efforts to be able to analyze and interpret specific text, maintain a controlling purpose, and demonstrate awareness of rhetorical situations.

Sometimes when you write an essay you feel so confident about it that you think it might bring you your fifteen minutes of fame. However, most times it just brings you fifteen minutes of disappointment when you see the grade you got. Writing is not an easy process. Just like any other skill, it requires lots of attention and lots of learning. In a way, writing is like a business. If you continue to work on it and learn new things about it, it will grow and prosper, but if you become stagnant in your learning and operations you are sure to lose everything that you’ve worked for. In that sense, Writing 101 has allowed me to continue to learn more about writing, which in turn has drastically improved it. Throughout this Writing 101 course, my

The English language is particularly complex in almost all aspects. Many of the words in the English language have different meanings for the same word. This is not unlike the definition of the different levels of usage. McCrimmon defines the three levels, formal, moderate, and colloquial, by their sentence structure, diction, and tone (McCrimmon 193). ¹ Using McCrimmon’s definitions, authors can determine what type of writing is applicable to each of the three levels. For the formal writings, an adequate example of where readers can find it is in a professional journal, and an appropriate place to find an example of the moderate level is in a weekly news magazine. Also, the best place to look for an example of the colloquial level is in certain sections of the newspaper. All of the levels of usage apply to these different types of writings and assist in defining what each level involves.

English as a discipline encompasses various divisions: literature, poetry, linguistics, creative writing, rhetoric, etc. The writing across the discipline varies as each effective piece of writing is reliant on the rhetorical principles, specifically purpose and audience. I will explore what writing looks like in the discipline of English and how rhetoric is applied to the media.

This first semester at the University of Akron has flown by. I learned many new writing concepts that helped me become a better writer. English composition was a required class that I had to take in order to get my degree. Although this class was required I still wanted to take this class to become more knowledgeable about writing. Coming into English Composition I was worried about all of the papers and the workload that I would have to complete. I knew that I was going to have to write a lot more than I previously had in highschool, but I was unsure of just how much. The works that I decided to include in my portfolio comprise of my Literacy Narrative, Image Analysis Paper, and essay titled Mayas Hardships based on Maya’s experiences in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I selected these works because I felt that they are the ones that require the most improvement to them. The papers i've chosen show how far I’ve came In English Composition.