English 110A Reflective Report

I was surprised to find myself put into English 110A, when I received my schedule on the orientation day, for two reasons: it never occurred to me that composition is taught at college level, and I am not an English or a literature major. When I hear writing, I cringe. I am not a writer; I cannot compose good writings according to my secondary education experiences. So, when our professor asked us on the first day of class about our expectations of this class, my first thought was: I just want to pass. However, my perspective changed over the course of this semester because of my learning experiences in the class lectures, the textbook, and the peer editing workshops. Different techniques were introduced in the lectures, which were very beneficial in helping us enhance our skills. My secondary school teachers used to tell me that my sentences were way too long, and that I abused the use of comma. I did not understand why until we had lectures on clauses and punctuations. I finally got to know that the excessively long sentences are called run-on lines, and how appropriate use of punctuations can fix this problem. Therefore, these two lessons are the most rewarding to me, as they dealt with the issue I have had with my writing for years.

It has really made essay writing more accessible by providing readers with a series of templates, and a variety of strategies regarding argumentative writing. The take-home message from this book for me is the importance of word choice- choosing an accurate signal verb that reflects action. I used to look up synonyms on an online thesaurus and choose the first word that came up without paying much attention to the part of speech, or the connotation of the word. My writings didn’t make sense as a result. Therefore, I now look up the denotation, connotation, and usage of synonyms before deciding which word has the closest meaning to what I am trying to