Why I Learned For Writing An Essay

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

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.

Ron Padgett, the author of Creative Reading, recalls how he learned to read and write as though these things happened yesterday. Like Padgett, I tried recalling my reading and writing history.

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.

As a Salem Freshman, I was required to take a “Signature” Salem class; a class that was “signature” to Salem and Salem alone. These classes were chosen based on a survey given to students before they get their schedules and all of them are rather “worldly”. At the time, I was unaware that the this “Sign” Classes were fully graded and fleshed out classes. I simply chose a class that sounded incredibly interesting without thinking about how well I would actually perform in that field. I chose a class that offered to challenge the way I think about others and how they think; a class that could help me understand people more by showing me how they come to believe things. Despite my initial confusion and eventual grade, I admit that I don’t regret taking the class because what I learned in that classroom was something I don’t believe I would have ever experienced otherwise.

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).

Throughout the course English 101, I believe my writing skills have improved through understanding concepts such as rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, ethos, pathos, logos, and rhetorical analysis. Looking back at the semester, I reflect on my strengths and weaknesses. My strengths include my note taking skills and being attentive during class. Doing this, I was later able to use these notes to look back at while writing, which I found very useful. For example, for the essay Comparative Rhetorical Analysis, I took note of almost every piece of information Dr. Braun gave us, writing in the margins of the articles and highlighting important phrases. Because of this, writing came very easily to me not only for that essay but also others,

      Additionally, another weakness that I had when coming into English 101 was that I was a selfish writer. Like Trimble said, “His natural tendency as a writer is to think primarily of himself- hence to write primarily for himself.” (Trimble, 4) I was a writer who only cared about impressing one type of audience my professor and not writing to prove a point or expand my knowledge to several other audiences. However, after writing several unsatisfying essays I had come to realize that my style of writing was too narrow and boring. In this realization of writing I discovered that what matters the most is pleasing your audience (many not one), and

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

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.

Learning how to develop an outline before starting my essay is probably the biggest help. At the beginning, I thought you just start writing. I did not know to start with an outline. The outline helps me get my thoughts organized. I thought completing an outline would be redundant. Furthermore, the outline alone has improved my confidence.

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

Proficient writing is an essential skill in all aspects of academic and professional achievement. English 101, Introduction to Composition and Rhetoric, provided the framework to good writing, teaching me composition and rhetoric fundamentals, polishing up my grammar and style, and expressing a clear message. English 102, Composition, Rhetoric, and Research, continued to build on the skills I learned in English 101, focusing on the subject matter research process and employing various rhetorical and literary devices to better express a clear message to the reader. The course also improved my critical thinking capacity, allowing me to culturally evaluate my target audience, present logically flowing arguments using appropriate language and structure, and critically reviewing my writing projects for content and expression. Every writer inherently knows there’s always room to improve and I hold fast to this mindset in all academic, professional, and personal writing projects. English 102 has both challenged and inspired me to grow into a much better writer than before I began the class, providing the necessary skills to be not just a good writer, but a great writer.

This paper explores the various methods I have learned as a student in the introduction to research course. The skills and methods taught in this class have been presented through course textbooks, online articles and videos, and interaction with the professor. Other opportunities for learning the research skills and methods occurred through writing of papers, testing knowledge through quizzes, and through interactive discussion board threads and posts. In addition to acknowledging these learned methods, this paper also includes insight into how I will be able to proceed in future courses, applying this newly acquired knowledge of research along with a biblical worldview, and how to properly examine research methods against the consistency of biblical principles and ethics. The challenge in writing a paper like this has been to write it in the format of an APA article, as outlined within the APA Manuel. Much of the context throughout the paper may seem less than scholarly, given that this is a paper written by myself, about myself, but that context will align with the instructions for the assignment.