My writing has greatly
improved since the beginning of the semester; due to the time I spent learning
in this English 1010 class. Something that was beneficial was how we were
required to write a blog thus, we were able to receive a lot of practice writing.
The informative paper also helped me learn to write a flowing essay. Often
times, I find that my weakness in writing is that I can’t completely
consolidate all my ideas into one cohesive thought on paper. With the blog I
was able to learn to research a topic and then properly formulate a summary
paragraph. Being able to write proper paragraphs improved my writing immensely.
And finally with the many lessons in class and practice with the assignments; I
was able to write a proper argumentative essay. I found that because of
new background knowledge that it was easier for me to write my final essay. All
of the skills I have acquired in this class will help me with my future college
essays.
Exploring Big Ideas
was the title of the blog I wrote for this semester. I took a risk making my
topic very broad, but it allowed me to review all kinds of interesting
materials. This assignment was effective because it required us to write twice
every week. Everyone knows that the best way to get better at something is to
practice; this blog was my constant practice. One of my first posts was titled,
“Why I should be President.” I began with this topic because it reviewed one of
my biggest ideas. I discovered while writing this entry, that I could write
about how I perceive a vision or a dream in a way that was entertaining or
interesting to read. We learned in class about using attention getters so that
the reader would be hooked or interested in what we had to say. I tried to use
many of the literary devices we researched about in class to make it more
interesting and creative. Also the literary devices such as: allusion and
metaphor where helpful in formulating a deep idea. These literary devices
helped me learn how to convince a reader, that what I had to say would provide
insight and value.
For the informative paper I
based my topic with an overall scientific view, on the question of; where big
ideas come from? Something I discover to be to my disadvantage is the large
topics I pick for my essays. I learned in a class discussion that topics are
like a box that all of our topics within our writing must fit. For an example I
will use the topic sentence for my informational essay titled, Origins of
Influential Thought. “Unintentionally the misconceptions have been made, that
big ideas easily come only to the naturally intelligent from random thoughts.
In reality big ideas can come to anyone who has a personal drive to put forth
effort by using specific techniques. Drawn from the lives of great scientists
and inventors, this essay will explore the truth of where big ideas come from.”
I have outlined in my thesis or claim all of the materials that will be
reviewed in my essay. I talked about identifying misconceptions, discovering
where big ideas come from, and about the insights found in the lives of
scientists and inventors. By consolidating what I am going to talk about I then
had a road map to help me write my essay.
Picking a topic for my argumentative essay was
the most difficult part of this assignment. I originally was going to write
about the issues with teaching the Big Bang Theory in schools; but I found the
topic too hard to initially research and understand let alone find enough
solidified evidence to write about. I finally chose to write about somewhere along
the lines of the difficulties surrounding the Common Core State Standards.
However, because I now had limited time and allot of miscellaneous evidence
articles, I in a way wrote this essay backwards. Instead of starting with my
introductive paragraph I started by separating out the evidence and then
writing specific isolated paragraphs. After I had all my evidence written and
separated into different arguments; I then tied them all together for an
argument against the Common Core. By going backward I knew exactly what my
thesis statement needed to contain in order to properly write about the issue.
The added advantage I discovered about this unconventional form of writing is
that I had more than enough to write about. I didn’t have to worry about having
enough to argue about, and was able to unintentionally exceed the seven page
goal.
Through the course of the semester my writing has improved within
my ability to write proper fluent thoughts, flowing essays, and concise ideas.
Thank you Professor for a great college class!
