Overall, I believe that this course has enhanced my writing. Previously, I never added an element of first person in my formal essays. I believe it was because in high school there was a bad connotation with it, but now I’ve learned that adding my own opinion enhances my essay and makes it more interesting and elaborate. I think it’s really useful to incorporate my own opinion throughout my essay to make it more personable and relatable. I’ve also found that the They Say, I Say book has helped me a lot in terms of structuring and formatting my thesis statements and topic sentences. This has majorly improved my writing and has allowed me to be more clear and concise with my ideas. Before, I always struggled with writing my thesis and topic sentences …show more content…
I actually wrote about it for my second essay. Although I did not agree with Gladwell’s opinion, I found his ideas to be really interesting and sparked my own countering ideas. His article by far gave me the most to write about because all of his points and ideas were laid out clearly and he explained himself nicely, which was really nice for countering. One of my favorite readings from They Say, I Say was “Why Women Can’t Have It All” by Anne-Marie Slaughter. I thought that her point of view was extremely valuable and fair. She gave her unbiased opinion and provided a unique opinion. I really enjoyed all the feminism and social equality based works. On the contrary, I really did not enjoy “Why Men Can’t Have It All” because I personally felt like the author was attacking Anne-Marie Slaughter and not accurately portraying her side on the situation. Ironically, it made me think about the chapter in They Say, I Say where they talk about how to properly portray the author’s opinions without skewing any information. Another essay I did not enjoy was “The Upside of Income Inequality” because while reading it I felt like the entire essay was contradicting itself and constantly had me conflicted and confused. Again, this ties back to the kind of person I am and how issues like income inequality I view as a bad thing that need to be restructured …show more content…
Learning about the Black Heritage Trail was so interesting and I probably would have never known about it if this essay was never assigned. While doing this assignment I really struggled with finding a suitable thesis to around, because looking at the Black Heritage Trail from the surface the first thing that comes to mind is racism. Racism is such a broad topic and it’s hard to argue something like “racism is bad” because that’s an obvious statement that has no room for arguing the opposite side. But then really thinking about the Black Heritage Trail made me think more about the time period as a whole and that’s when I came to the idea of writing about the juxtaposition between racism in the past and racism present day. Arguing that racism today is worse than racism in the past is an interesting notion that I got really into. Coming up with this idea was extremely challenging, seeing as it took me quite some time to form this
Most of us write in some form every day, so you would expect that most of us would be well practiced and pretty good at writing. I read and write all the time; I have been taken several college courses and nearly all of them require write of some form. However, before taking this class not only was I not a good writer, I knew I wasn’t a good writer. Now I am not saying that I am ready to write my first novel, but I certainly more confident in turning in my college papers. The content of this course and the style of teaching was incredibly beneficial to me. Throughout this course we had multiple assignments that were aimed to improve us as writers. I am sure that everyone took something different from this course, and I am sure that each student took more from some areas than others; however for me there were three major things that I saw that I benefited from most. Our weekly craft lessons, grammar plan, but most of all, observational learning.
I am currently an English 160 student who is hoping to move on to the next course, which is English 161. I understand the requirements for English 161. It require students to explore a topic in some depth and conduct independent research related to that topic. Conducting research allows students to learn what it is like to participate in academic culture, posing questions about important issues and developing an argument in response to what others have said. It expected students to learn the most valuable skill in college, which is critical thinking. Students have to be able to read challenging readings. Although I still have problems with English, I think I’m qualified to move on.
Entering this course I was worried because I have struggled with writing in the past, and writing has never been my strongest area. I feared writing classes in middle and high school, and had the same expectations for this course. I had wondered if I was ready for college English, and was worried that my skills and abilities would not be one the level they needed to be for college courses. My attitude and understanding of my writing process have both changed since the beginning of this semester. One thing that really helped my attitude and confidence was the fact that I was able to complete the assignments and get a decent grade. I was worried that I might not be able to do college level writing, and when I started completing the assignments and learning new ways to write my confidence and attitude changed. Another thing that really helped me throughout this course was that there was plenty of reading and information available to guide me through my assignments. I realized that there was more freedom when it comes to writing than I had experienced in high school. Being able to write more freely, and the freedom to choose what subjects I would write over made the assignments more enjoyable and easier to
In general, I like this course because it taught me a lot of great things, such as how to revise the essay in order to make it better. My writing has improved a lot throughout this year, I learned how to organize my essay’s structure, using the transition sandwich to perfect my writing. In the future, I hope to continue developing all the skills that I learned in this English class, and I will continue to go to the Writing Center to ask for help to perfect my writing. However, it is the end of the year, but it does not mean that this is the end of my writing.
I feel as though this class has helped me become a more polished and professional writer. When I first entered English 110, I was extremely unsure and lacked confidence in my writing. I believe that this point can be partly attributed to the fact that I had always had my instructors holding my hand and helping me through the writing process in high school. My senior English teacher always reminded us that college would be much more challenging than her class was and then she would go on to tell us stories of professors who gave out zeros for tiny oversights within a paper. This combined with general apprehension about college life left me terrified. I had always been a strong writer in high school; I know how to form an argument and support
When we look at the issue of racism from a politically correct, nineties perspective, evidence of the oppression of black people may be obscured by the ways in which our society deals with the inequalities that still exist. There are no apparent laws that prohibit or limit opportunities for blacks in our society today, yet there is a sense that all things are not fair and equal. How can we acknowledge or just simply note how past ideologies are still perpetuated in our society today? We can examine conditions of the present day in consideration of events in the past, and draw correlations between old and modern modes of thinking. Attitudes of racism within the institutions of education, employment and government are less blatant now than in the day of Frederick Douglass, none the less, these attitudes prevail.
Throughout the semester I have learned an astounding amount of information. The English 101 curriculum has not only taught me how to write in general, but also taught me a variety of ways to get my point across to the reader. Before I took English 101 I was an average writer at best, but now that I am taking a class that focuses on writing strategies I feel that I have been able to improve as a writer. During the course we were taught how to write an informative essay as well as how to write a persuasive essay. The type of writing that this class has taught me will most definitely help me with future classes as well as my future in the real world. Throughout the English 101 course I have been able to improve as a writer by composing essays
English has never been my best subject. Reading books can be exciting, but the writing aspect of English can be dreadful. Somehow, however, I passed all my advanced English classes with at least a B, and my teachers always considered me to be “above average.” My impartiality toward English shifted to an indifference near the end of my high school career; my indifference then shifted to appreciation. This appreciation is attributed to American Studies and Honors Writing, the most difficult English classes at Belleville East Township High School. American Studies and Honors Writing have strengthened my writing skills beyond what I believed possible. I still do not believe that I am the best writer, and English may never be my best or favorite
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.
English 111 was different from what I expected a college English course to be. I was expecting to have to read books and analyze the meaning of the themes. I found it challenging to have to analyze different websites and design our own. This was different from what I experienced in high school English classes. This course required that I expand beyond my comfort zone when writing essays. This required that I put more time and dedication into projects. It allowed me to learn valuable skills to use in other courses in college and I learned what abilities I need to concentrate on. I carry with me the abilities to use rhetoric devices to analyze websites, research techniques to polish the ethos of my papers, and the knowledge that I need to refine using other sources of media (i.e. websites, PowerPoints, etc.) to present an argument from English 111.
Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe that I developed my own personal style a bit from this. At the beginning of the semester my writing was quite choppy and there was plenty of room for improvement in the overall flow of my essays. Now, I use several different tactics such as outlining to create better connections between paragraphs. I believe I was able to move beyond many of the high school ways of writing and make general improvements to my essays.
Slavery's twin legacies to the present are the social and economic inferiority it conferred upon blacks and the cultural racism it instilled in whites. Both continue to haunt our society. Therefore, treating slavery's enduring legacy is necessarily controversial. Unlike slavery, racism is not over yet. (Loewen 143)
Over the course of the semester, I feel that I have grown as a writer in many ways. When I came into the class, there were skills I had that I already excelled at. During my time in class, I have come to improve on those skills even more. Before I took this class I didn’t even realise what I was good at. This is the first class where I felt I received feedback on my writing that helped me to actually review my work in see what areas I lacked in and where I succeeded. Some of the skills I had shocked me as I didn’t think I had those capabilities in me.
Writing is an important and useful way to communicate with people. Without an essential writing skill, people may have difficulty communicating with others. In Pace University, English Department focuses on improving students writing by adding a workshop class to improve students ' writing. Over the course of the semester, I have learned a better technique and tips from Professor Boylan, reading an essay from authors and class discussion. Writing had always been one of my weaknesses, but it was challenging to take that initial step past high school. When I am first taking English 120, I have decided to take all the help that are available to minimize grammar mistakes, better sentence structures, and better vocabularies usage. Reading an article or essay before every class improves my vocabulary usage, Doing discourse community essay shows me a way to express my feeling about being
Much like Benjamin Franklin believed, I feel that a person should take advantage of the time the person has in life with activities a person wants to do or needs to do. A person should not spend much time on activities the person does not want to do. Life is way too short to concern oneself with work or other activities one wants nothing to do with all the time. When possible, I try to forget about my responsibility and just let go of the ‘things’ that do not matter to me. I think a person should try to occupy oneself with something productive, worthwhile, or necessary at all times. Even though a person’s life is left up to a person to live, I cannot imagine thinking that I owe my time to society through working a job that I simply despise. I am a compassionate person, but I do not owe anyone anything regarding my time.