For the entirety of my undergraduate career I had the distinct ability to successfully write research papers, critical essays and journal entries. On the whole I feel that my writing was successful due to the fact that I received excellent grades as well as glowing comments of support from my professors. Please understand that I am not boasting about my grade point average, class rank or even attempting to claim that I am a good writer. However, I do feel confident in my abilities to write papers that speak directly to the question at hand while simultaneously addressing, although not necessarily adhering to, the professor’s point of interest. I must credit much of my success as an undergraduate to Mr. M of the High School English Department. My outlook on academic writing was drastically altered during the fall of 1997 with the help of Mr. M and a writing course entitled College Prep II. Any High School Senior who wishes to matriculate at a four-year college or university can enroll in College Prep II. The purpose of the course, as if it weren’t obvious from the title, is to adequately prepare outgoing seniors to write effective research papers and essays at the college level. Before I delve into the specifics of the course itself, I must briefly acquaint you with the quirky Irishman mentioned above. Mr. M came across as the type of wise old Irishman you might run into in a quaint pub and spend hours sipping Guinness, telling jokes and exchanging personal experiences with. Perhaps the reason why College Prep II became such a welcomed challenge for my classmates and I had something to do with the high level of respect Mr. M showed us. Although we were nothing more than scared, immature high school seniors, he talked to us as if... ... middle of paper ... ...ard sentence structure or maybe even a few contradictory ideas would take our paper from a B+ to a C-. However, no one knew that Mr. M was not grading us solely upon our final draft, but on our ability to embrace writing as a continuous process where there is always room for improvement. Whatever the case, the methods Mr. M taught carried me through four years of college writing with relative ease, yet I never realized that I was adhering to his school of writing until I began to ponder this writing assignment. He did an excellent job emphasizing the technical structure of the process, while focusing intently on the personal or humanistic side to writing. Will my outlook on writing change during my future as a graduate student, straying from the ways of Mr. M? Probably, but I think a part of that process will always be in the back of my head, for better or for worse.
Transitioning from high school to college can be overwhelming. Before English 1301, I thought that I did not have to worry about being prepared for college. I quickly realized that my little background in writing essays was not going to be enough for college. Writing is not just something that I will use in English classes. In college, I will have to use effective writing skills in all my classes to complete research papers, essay tests and communicate to professors. Throughout my education, writing strategies persisted to be something that did not come easy to me. I dreaded writing because I could never find ways to get my thoughts down on paper. Ironically, a class that petrified me due to the amount of writing that was required ended up helping me in so many ways. English 1301 and my professor prepared me so much for college and real life.
My development as a writer has flourished throughout this semester. The first week of this fall semester started out with writing responses from our readings in the textbook. Looking back through and analyzing my reading responses at the semester to now; I noticed a substantial improvement in not only my grammar skills, but also my summarizing, and in-depth studying of writing adeptness. Another way I have progressed this semester is the vocabulary of my writing has significantly improved and become more scholarly. Another advancement I noticed was that the content of my work has matured, along with my organizational adeptness.
Throughout the semester i only learned few new things but i did improve and solidify my skill of writing. Before my first year of college my skills have always undermined by other high school english teachers and with that came disappointing grades. I am writing this paper as a reflection of the semester and the progress i have made as a writer. I now understand many things that my high school teachers have done a poor job demonstrating and i am grateful that i decided to take my own route in my education instead of their syllabus. I entered the semester with anxiety that i would perform as i did before but i clearly outdid my own expectations by receiving top grades on my essays.
A couple of weeks ago, the class was assigned a personal narrative essay and the prompt was to tell an interesting story of a specific experience that changed how you acted, thought, or felt. To be honest, I was awfully excited to write this essay because talking about myself is the easiest thing to write about sometimes. However, deciding what experience to talk about was challenging because I have already experienced so much in my seventeen years of being alive from dislocating my hip when I was three, to seeing my grandfather die in front of my eyes, from almost tripping off of the trail on the Grand Canyon, to meeting band members at an airport. Writing this essay brought me many challenges, I did not know what topic to choose, I had no
As a student, I have learned many different skills that I will take with me throughout my journey from this course. We have traversed many different types of writing styles, which any college student, or any person for that
My first college English class was ENC 1101 at the State College of Florida. In this course, I learned a vast amount of information about writing, reading, and grammar. When I first walked into ENC 1101 in August, I expected the class to be like any other English class in High School; with rushed busy work and a lot of useless tests and quizzes. However, throughout each week of the semester, Professor Knutsen’s class made me beg to differ. This class was not like any other high school English class. In this class I actually learned important information and did not do work just to complete it. This class had a few assignments here and there, enough to maintain, in order to learn proper information. I learned a lot in this class because I was not rushed to
Today is the day. It is the day I begin my Senior AP English class. I have been in a mix of sweat, tears, and adrenaline the build up to this day for more than nine months, since I’ve registered. I’ve never been an AP student, and still don’t feel quite like one. AP, it stands for ‘advanced placement’, though I’ve never felt exactly advanced in anything. Maybe as ‘advanced’ as the first person who discovered a feeble and lazy mule can be born between a male donkey and a female horse, but only to find it’s sympathetic uselessness in not being able to reproduce.
When I started my freshmen year, I had a college writing professor as a tutor. I achieved a majority of my college writing knowledge from my tutor over the course of two years. My writing was at a passable level, but I wanted to reach a higher step in my academic writing. I decided to take Bowling Green’s college writing course this year to gather the skills desired for me to move on. My goals this year were to widen my vocabulary and stretch my brain for critical thinking. My times in my writing course this year sprouted new
I’ve always had problems with my writing and I’m still having them. I can do any exercise in math but when it comes to write something my mind goes blank. With this course I can easily notice that my writing skills have improved. I took ENG 081 before this class and the teacher taught me completely different about some material we covered in this course.
I was at school on Friday ready for the game and I acted like I was dunking on people.And my friend was on my team and we were getting so hype and talking about it.I was happy that we were playing because I love basketball.
Unfortunately, my first semester in PATH is starting to come to a close. However, while we endured many time consuming tasks during our first semester in PATH, the class has been focusing mainly on enhancing our essays. My teacher had given us assignments such as MAPS, MASKS, essay tracking documents, essay checklists and rubrics to meliorate our essays into becoming the college standard. Even though some of these assignments were tedious tasks to undertake, they had benefited me in a way of enhancing the quality of my essay. If it was not for the portfolio process, my essay would not have met the criteria for my college composition teacher. My college composition teacher is particular when it comes to what she wants to see in our essays.
During the course of the semester, all of the writing and research skills I developed helps to strengthen my self-confidence in many areas and it aids me in achieving my goals for the future. By developing more effective research approaches for finding and citing sources, I advanced from an inexperienced writer to a confident writer with the suitable knowledge to create effective essays to capture my audience. Having confidence in my abilities to use the skills I learned will help me to become a success in college. With more practice and valuation of my strengths and weaknesses, I can continue to improve and become an excellent communicator in the future.
As I look back on my schooling I can’t believe how many papers I’ve written throughout my life. Naturally as I’ve grown up, my writing has developed from learning how to write sentences all the way up to the pages of essays that consist of deeper criteria. I know for a fact that I’m a better writer now than I was before. College writing is more challenging and I’ve had to learn how to adjust to it.
Over the period of time that I was in this course, I thought it would be a very simple and easy to finish class. But as time went on, I found myself to be demanded more of what I think, what I feel, what must be relied on my ability to understand the concepts and conventions of not only the essays, but of what goes on in the writers mind when writing.
Crank, V. (2012). From high school to college: Developing writing skills in the disciplines. WAC