Since international students may be the ones that struggle the most with writing assignments, all of the rules and principles that Reid talks about in her essay “Ten Ways to Think About Writing” will benefit
“The End of the College Essay” by Rebecca Schuman examines the struggle of the common college essay. I agree that the college essay is a hassle to the student and the professor because the student spends so long only to receive negative feedback from the professor. I do not believe every essay results in this, although from my past experiences that has been the outcome. Mrs. Schuman states the negative effects of essays by saying “Most students enter college barely able to string three sentences together—and they leave it that way, too.” I appreciate when I able to get knowledge from a class and able to get constructive criticism from my professor.
In this essay I will review how I have improved as a writer, my greatest challenges, and how has my writing changed from how it was at the start of class to now. Reflection is a powerful thing, I can still remember how it felt being asked to write an essay on my first day of class. I was so scared, would I be able to use correct punctuation and how bad will it affect my grade if I am not? I was so excited when the professor said it was just to see that we can write conformed sentences not to critique our grammar and punctuation.
I came into my first college writing class feeling prepared thanks to you and your investment in me as a student in your AP Lang class. I developed as a writer more than I ever had in your class, and it definitely helped me in my college writing class this semester. I already knew how important it was to revise and continuously critically think about my writing, as well as the importance of multiple drafts and peer review. My English 110 class this semester was very similar to yours because we also did multiple drafts where I could revise my paper as many times as needed. The big difference was that the focus was on different genres and how to appeal to those, which was something new compared to my high school English courses.
Throughout the semester we have worked on multiple unit papers. Each paper had different categories of learning objectives to accomplish. These categories consist of rhetorical knowledge, critical reading/critical thinking, academic writing conventions, and the writing process. Two essays that I found to be helpful in completing the course objectives were the unit 2 and unit 3 essays. I met some of the course objectives, but also struggled with some.
At the beginning of the exam, one is presented with a writing prompt, where you are expected to formulate a well developed essay. Generally, these prompts are simple and basic. With these prompts, one typically pulls previously learned information from school to back up your argument. Because the essay only takes place in one day, there is no time for revision. This introduces a problem because writing is supposed to be a developmental process.
As I begin to look back over these past few weeks at Bethel University, I have learned a few things. A few of the things I’ve learned was this APA style of writing, which was something very new to me. I’ve learned how to do a correct in-text citation, proper grammar, proper comma placement, and also that this is not something I can procrastinate on and wait until the last minute to try and do. Next, as I review Unit One, the very first post for this class I had a few errors that Mrs. Cindy pointed out to me.
Looking back through my days of writing in high school there was a lot I did not understand about the writing process. My writing was much unstructured and overall very poor compared to what it is today after this class. I believe that I have always been a good writer I just have not had the tools and knowledge to create a well written and knowledgeable paper. This course has helped me to meet the learning outcomes of learning to conduct factual research, making original and unbiased papers, writing different genres of papers in a professional way, correctly implementing the academic writing process, learning proper grammar and mechanics, and implementing critical thinking skills into my drafts.
While I was doing my observation with officer Barabasch I think that being able to communicate with each other worked very well. He was really good talking to me and he always asked me if I had any question or if I needed anything. The one thing that I think would have been more successful if I had stayed longer or tried to go back one more day to see how else he communicated with people because we didn’t talk to many people. The one thing that I am really proud of is telling officer Barabasch my story and how I wasn’t scared to share it with him.
Through my participation in numerous events I have been able to show my concern for my community members, and community. After high school I volunteered as a researcher at the DuPage County Historical Society during the summer of 2014. For my community I dedicated my free time looking up questions and interests of the citizens. After countless hours of research, I wrote up thorough answers to the citizen’s questions.
The comments from my instructor, the online material, my research, the online writing center and comments from other students in the discussion boards have helped me so much to improve my writing skills. In the writing process, the step that I feel I have improved a lot is editing, as I am constantly reading my writings and editing them as I finish them, over and over again before I publish them. The steps in the writing process that I like the most are finding a topic in the Pre-writing step and Drafting. I like having a lot of ideas floating around and think about which idea is the best and the most exciting topic to talk about.
My Writing Experience In previous courses, my writing skills have been mediocre or just enough to pass the class. Throughout the duration of this course, I have written a variety of papers using different techniques and skills. Previously I would write assuming that the only audience would be my instructor. This course has helped me realize that there are many steps and skills involved with writing a well-organized and easy to comprehend essay.
There are other areas in my writing that I have improved on. I have improved on my grammar, verb constructions, use of verb tenses and organizational skills to make my writing flow better when reading. My overall progress in completing this ten weeks course was wonderful. Every steps and skills I learned in this English class will help me to improve on my writing skills in my other classes and will also help me in my future
Actually, if I’m being honest, my family sucks at writing. I was never placed in any special writing classes, but only the standard classes for school. I joined Intermediate composition to excel in my writing for my future. From this class, I’ve broadened my vocabulary and found new ways to check my pieces that I have wrote. I could always use more work with grammar because I have always struggled with that concept.
Using peer feedback is nothing new to a student and it would seem like a law in English. In F2F Studio, what makes it different is that the peer review is almost an assignment within itself, merely skimming an essay and only stating the “good” parts is no longer successful is an essay revision. Standard peer review in F2F requires not only to give constructive feedback but to read deeper and help your classmate right explicitly what you know they are trying to say. It is a visually new technique that makes students go much further than annotation within the text. Writing had become a culture within the class and made it more complex than what one would ever think it would
