When I was in middle school, my ambition was to become a renowned author, like J. K. Rowling. Since that time, my academic focus has changed but my interest in story crafting and written reflection remains a part of my life. Creative fiction is where most of my writing ambitions lie. I enjoy the process of building fictitious world, characters, and scenarios, although, unfortunately, I have not yet found a story I am passionate enough about to turn into a long-term project. In high school and my first semester of college I have been exposed to more different styles of writing both through the given writing assignments and the books I have read. One of my biggest struggles when writing essays is making them compact, concise, and on topic. …show more content…
In high school, I elected to take an extra English class junior year because I hoped to improve upon my writing and analysis skills from the previous years. My favorite class that year was my Shakespeare class. In that class, we read, acted out, wrote about, and watched productions of four Shakespeare plays. The class was very small and our final project was to mesh two of the plays together and perform the resulting one act. In general, the writing required for that class was not classical essay writing, but was creative based and focused on play script themes. Since this was a relatively new medium for me, it was a bit more of a challenge than writing a standard essay. It was, however, closely linked to my summer experience in middle school many years prior. Through my work in theater, as an actress in elementary and middle school and as a behind the scenes crew member in high school, I was familiar with scripts and how they convey plot and context almost exclusively through dialogue. The Shakespeare class and my other creative writing related classes in high school were pushed me out of my writing comfort zone while allowing me to think creatively.
As anyone who has ever taken an English class knows, the backbone of most writing courses is a classical essay, with prescribed structures and a thesis
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
As I looked over my old writing, one noticeable difference popped out. Something you always emphasize is the importance of being specific. I realize now that this was something I struggled with at the beginning of English class. I examined my essays about True Diary and Mango Street, and came to understand, how much had changed. In “Junior’s Battle For Hope” I discussed huge themes of the book rather than choosing a focus. I had a paragraph about the alcoholism on the reservation and how it affected Junior, as well as a paragraph on Junior’s identity. Each of these could have a whole essay written about them, and I wasn’t able to do the subjects justice in such a short analysis. The next essay I wrote was “Sally, Control, and Female Perspective”
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.
From an early age I have been passionate about reading. Like seriously, when I was five years old I was upset that I didn’t get the newest Little Mermaid book for Christmas. However, I have never had an interest in writing. Unfortunately, as I plan to go to graduate school to obtain my Ph.D, I really cannot avoid it. Over the years, my lack of enthusiasm about writing has caused me to view most English classes as a chore, something I needed to do in order to advance to what I really wanted to do with my life. With the risk of sounding like a suck-up, this is one of the first English classes I have valued because I have felt like I improved some aspect of my writing in each essay.
Personally, from the class of English 1101, I have learned on how to use the writing processes effectively, where the first step is to have a pre-write, which focuses on brainstorming ideas form either the group or from individuals’ brain for the required topic. The second phase of the process is the thesis statement, which is the primary idea of the entire essay. I discovered that the thesis statement should be persuasive and truthful. The third step is on developing drafts, where it showed me on how to focus on content, organization, and style. Again, I noted that I must ask myself who is my audience, and what do they want or need to hear.
Essay writing is one of the basic skills needed to have when attending school. No matter how a student tries to reduce the amount of writing needed for an essay, they will have to master the method for your assignment. The writer could use an essay to either inform, persuade, or entertain the audience but if their essay is boring and dry the writer will not get the audience’s attention. The content should have a specific objective to reach a particular audience. When writing a good essay, everyone has a different opinion on the technics needed for the essay to be entertaining.
In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).
In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction because it was about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. All those things make effective writing because you have to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail of my experiences with reading and writing through my life. In the narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second grade class got the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts (Writing is Good).
Essays -- they are a fact of life in college, whether your major is Ballroom Dance or English Literature. This is something that can be quite intimidating to students without a lot of writing experience. However, there is a tool that provides a framework for all of that writing. The classic five paragraph essay is the foundation that everything from exam answers to Doctoral dissertations are built upon. This form can make your college career just a bit less stressful. The useful and versatile five paragraph essay format can be broken down into three easy pieces: introduction, body, and closing. A great deal of life's events start with an introduction, and those that do not probably should have! An introduction is a clear and concise way of
English class has never been my strong suite. I always had to work twice as hard in English then I did in any other class. Writing paper always had me stressed and overwhelmed, I felt discouraged in my work. l never seemed to be able to get to the level I wanted to. I would try my hardest and paid attention in class, but when it came to writing the paper none of that seemed to help. I think that my experience in English Composition 1 has helped gain and grow in some areas, but I don’t think that it highlights a well-written college essay. Some elements that I worked to improving was introduction paragraphs, tone, style, and thesis statements.
In the beginning of freshman year we were told to choose ten novels, within reason, that we found somewhat intriguing and given a list of essay topics that were broad enough to apply to any of the novels. I chose mostly classics because I thought they would help me in junior year for the New York State english regents exam. I read standard novels such as Frankenstein, Les Miserables and The Great Gatsby which at the time I considered relatively difficult to analyze because I usually struggled with development of themes and symbols. My solution was to read more essays and take notes of their development so I could apply it to my own writing. While I was able to establish a solid basis of my writing skills when dealing with literature, I was aware that narrative or persuasive essays were extremely difficult for me. My out of school readings were mostly playwrights since I was extremely intrigued
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
Writing an essay may seem like a huge obstacle to overcome, but with a plan of attack and a little organization, it can be easily completed. All it takes is seven easy steps.
Coming into college, I have had experience in writing analytical essays, research papers, and creative writing projects. For two years in a row I had the privilege to be taught by the same honor’s English teacher—Mr. McConahay. Mr. McConahay constantly stressed the importance of writing. He spent the past two years preparing us for college level writing because he knows that in college, writing is a big part of one’s English class. We wrote about American citizenship and what it meant to be a citizen of the world as well as a citizen of one’s community. Mr. McConahay valued structure and a good thesis the most out of anything. This writing was very difficult for me because my mind works more creatively than it does analytically. Academic writing has always been my weakest attribute when it came to schooling. I would much rather write a paper full of opinions or made up people rather than write a research paper. Though his class was hard for me, I noticed a difference in my writing as it improved over the course of the years. Mr.
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