I always thought that I was a talented writer. By writing, I mean conveying my thoughts or ideas in ways that people found interesting and fun. Writing came easy to me, and I could write pages of original ideas and thoughts in a matter of minutes. It was fun and easy - not something I had to work hard at.
That was until I entered into the tenth grade. That year in Honors AP English, my whole writing style was turned upside down. We were no longer writing the "In my opinion." or "I think." papers. We were writing critical and analytical essays. We actually had to prove and support our ideas - something totally new to me. Of course, with my writing "expertise," I thought this would be no problem at all. That year, everything changed, and six years later, I still use the techniques that I learned in that class. In classes prior to this, teachers had always stressed the ideas of pre-writing, drafts, and editing. But because writing always came so easy to me and I excelled at it, these were just practices I completed to humor the teacher. I had no use for them. They didn't seem to have any effect on my writing at all. However, that changed when I entered the tenth grade class.
The teacher of the class was the department head, Mrs. K. We called her "the K'ster." She was a fairly short, roly-poly woman - the kind that are supposed to be so nice and call you "sweetie" and "dear." But she didn't. She wasn't mean, but she didn't take excuses, and that was made very clear to us early on. If we didn't work in her Honors AP class, we could kiss our seat goodbye. According to her, there was a list of people just waiting to get into the class. The K'ster always carried around a water bottle. Every time she spoke, she would get two words ou...
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...writing assignment." This feeling has stuck with me for years. However, now I can whip off a theoretical paper in no time flat! In fact, I have fine-tuned my system so well that, depending on the assignment, I can sometimes skip writing down my brainstorming, and just think about the ideas for a couple of days until they blossom.
As much as I didn't like the K'ster, she forced me to deal with a new type of writing with which I had a very difficult time. Because of her, I now have a system of writing that works for me, and can be applied to almost any type of analytical assignment that can be given. However, I have the opposite problem now. I can write analytical and theoretical essays very easily, but writing creatively is difficult. I'm out of practice. I don't know where to start.I don't feel good about the ideas.The same excuses I had when I started tenth grade.
However, these techniques that I fostered as a child proved lacking when I entered middle school. It turns out that in comparison to my previous writing, I was no longer writing for my own self-improvement or joy; I was now writing to please someone who was grading the work. After many dissatisfying remarks about my writing, the self-conscious feelings I had as a child crept up on me once again. I felt the need to impress and be perfect. For every paper I wrote from then on, there was that little voice in the back of my head telling me that I had to try twice as hard because English was my second language. For a very long time, I was not able to write a paper without scrutinizing it harshly. “The oppressor,” as Anne Lammot states in “Bird by Bird,” kept me from what I truly wanted to write and made me focus on the unattainable goal of being perfect. Perfection is something that “… limit[s] us…[and] keep[s] us from experiencing life” (Lammott 30). The purpose was not to write for me, but for others, and that was my flaw; I was just writing to please. Technicality was my only worry and I did not worry if what I was writing actually had
This is how you train your unconscienced to kick in creatively.” (Lamott 96) This is overall good advice for most. Some or all of us get distracted by many things chores, life, kids, work, cat that won’t stop meowing even a simple list that Lammot states is “Nurse Ratchet like listing of things that must be done right this moment” (96). The author says that we need to ignore all distractions no matter how much our brain may scream at us to get the other work done or something bad will happen we must persevere to finish or at least start the paper. Or else it will never get done and you will be putting together a Frankenstein like paper at two in the morning.
Once I reached high school my love for writing dimmed. I was taught a formula on how to write the perfect essay. The dreaded five paragraph essay was engraved in my brain: An intro with a hook, a thesis, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Constantly being told my creativity wasn’t formal, so when I wrote papers it was more facts and evidence and less short stories and experiences. My writing became dull to me and reading over my papers and stories was a dread because I could see the drastic amount of lost creativity. Although I still received high praise it felt as if the papers I was writing wasn’t
I did not have a firm writing philosophy before this semester, but I to some degree I understood the importance writing can have on a situation. Now I understand that writing has two outcomes: gaining support or losing support. When writing an essay it is best if the writing is as specific as possible. This way the audience is hopefully not left with a confused opinion about the topic. Since the beginning of the semester I have put a conscious effort to change my writing style. Instead of the box format that is learned in high school I try to use a more graceful approach while still being organized. Also, I evaluate the credibility of a source before I use the information to support my thesis and understand the roles of using ethos, pathos, and logos. My assignments are now written with more developed thought by elaborating on ideas in the body paragraphs. By participating in the assignments throughout the semester I have accomplished, to different extents, the objectives for the English Composition 101 course. My writing has improved in multiple areas such as knowing who my audience is, and how writing drafts and making revisions help me evaluate the effectiveness of my essay. I am also aware that academic writing differs from day-to-day writing because for academic writing I need to present the most credible evidence in an organized format. Furthermore, I now can effectively evaluate my writing to know where I can improve.
I consider myself a very dedicated person, because even though I didn’t like writing, I did well at it by fighting against whatever was stopping me from liking it. As time passed I conceived that reading and writing is a combination of important tools that are essential for life, something that everyone needs to be successful. Once I realized how important reading and writing was, I started to feel a passion for writing poems, songs and stories.
Writing is so much easier when you don’t have a ridiculous amount of guidelines you have to follow. With literary freedom, we are able to express ourselves more than if we have to follow a specific set of rules for every thing we write. This is one downfall for high school English. We have to order our papers in a specific sequence while writing about a topic that is chosen for us. This English composition class changed all of that. We were able to write about anything that related to the given type of essay, which greatly improved our ability to fully immerse ourselves into every paper. This greatly affected my writing thoughts about writing; they changed from hating to write for school to actually enjoying it because I was able to find new things about my self while deepening my knowledge for writing.
I do not consider myself a writer, it is something that I neither enjoy doing nor am I a good writer. I believe a lot of my poor writing skill has to do with the fact that I only began to enjoy reading about four to five years ago. According to Stephen King in On Writing, in order to be a good writer you must read a lot and write a lot; and I am only just starting to read for pleasure.
Fallowing the process of wring leads the writer to a better connection with their readers; it helps a writer get better in wring about anything. For some students, it is litter hard to get use to this process but after writing a couple of papers using this process, it should get easier. It is not hard after couple times of using it. It might be a bit hard for kinds in the elementary, maybe just because they don’t take writing any serious. Or it’s just the fact that they don’t enjoy the topic of the writing that the teacher had assigned them to write about. Once a person gets in high school writing becomes one of their close friend. The writing process is always needed, in writing a college essay, class essay or even writing for something different.
The writing process is always taught as a set way of doing things when, in fact, it is a process that requires personal methods that work for each individual person. It is a necessary lesson to teach in school but there should not be so much emphasis on following the exact way that is taught. It is a contrived process that was probably created by a group of scholars who didn’t even follow these exact rules. If anything, they all did variations of the ideas and then met in the middle with what should be taught. I am in no way saying that the guidelines are wrong but they need to be exactly that, guidelines, instead of a rut that students get stuck in.
The writing view for me has changed this semester in the sense of the multiple drafts and doing it in bits and pieces and making it
Writing is a way in which a person can express their thoughts and ideas through the use of words. Everybody has their own writing styles. Some may consider theirs as inspirational while others think of it to be bad. Writing requires a lot of patience and time. In my case, writing has never been my favorite thing to do. I am no Shakespeare and I never will be, writing has always made me feel uncomfortable. In the past, I had always considered writing to be one of the most difficult tasks. I often wrote about topics that were not of my interest. I rarely did any writing out of school or for leisure as most people do. I only wrote because the teacher asked us to. Writing has always been forced onto me. Even though my writing isn't that great, I've felt that I've never been given the freedom to express my voice. Academic writing has always made me anxious. And, anxiety had resulted in my procrastination. Even though I consider writing to be one of the toughest tasks, I've felt that giving myself enough time to think allows me to do better. Silence helps me think beyond horizons. However, the fear of impressing someone, the anxiety and frustration is what makes me a developing writer.
All through our academic years we were taught how to write. Starting with elementary, when the form of writing was first introduced, it consisted of compositions with simple prompts about our weekends. Now, that there was an idea of how to write, middle school English teachers began teaching students a writing format. This format is commonly known as the five-paragraph essay, which entailed an introduction, three supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The five-paragraph essay began being strongly implemented in high school and it leads to many debates whether or not it benefited students proceeding into college. I believe the five-paragraph format was helpful for high school students starting out, but is not as beneficial to freshman
Looking back to my experiences in English 101, I believe that there exists a slight gap between high school and college level writing. In high school, my teachers never completely enforced formatting of our papers too much. They tended to place more emphasis on the actual content of our writing, versus the framework of the paper. After taking this English 101 course, I now believe that I have a strong grasp of what is expected when composing formal papers, MLA formatting, in-text citations and all. I used to have a slight fear of college writing exactly for this reason. After being taught the ropes, I now know that although formatting may be highly specific, it is very doable.
Another one of my strengths as a writer and a student is my determination to complete every assignment to the best of my ability. I have never been the type of student that does not get her work done, whether it be an essay for English or a workbook page for Geometry. I work diligently in all my classes and aim to learn as much as I can from every assignment. Since English is not my best subject, I work twice as hard to improve every day and bring out the best writer in me. My determination is what drove me to enhance my weaknesses and polish my strengths.
Writing is an important part of everyone’s life, whether we use it in school, in the workplace, as a hobby or in personal communication. It is important to have this skill because it helps us as writers to express feelings and thoughts to other people in a reasonably permanent form. Formal writing forms like essays, research papers, and articles stimulates critically thinking. This helps the writer to learn how to interpret the world around him/her in a meaningful way. In college, professors motivate students to write in a formal, coherent manner, without losing their own voice in the process. Improving your writing skills is important, in every English class that’s the main teaching point; to help students improve their writing skills. Throughout my college experience I have acknowledge that