I admit I am a poor essay writer. If I write a good essay it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. When it comes to essay writing and dedication, I just can’t seem to find much motivation for it. When I took English 101 I learned A LOT of writing skills from my professor. I am not sure if it was because we wrote about six essays in her class or if she really taught me stuff I didn’t know. I think it could be a mixture of both. I am thankful though for learning so much in her class because I really feel like I left her class with good knowledge on writing. After taking that class, I had the courage to take this class “Critical Approach Read and Write Research”. All I was thinking was “this is the class I have to really focus on in order to keep up a good grade.” This class has been a lot of work but it is not as bad as I thought it would be. I am keeping up with all the work. When it came time to the first essay I did a lot better than I thought. I think that was due to the extra reading and writing assignments we took part in class. Doing group work and discussion boards really help express your ideas and see what other people think. Group work really helps a lot because you see the knowledge your group has about the topic and you see how much the other group knows about their topic. All this helps me to better understand the assignment and what we are talking about in the assignment. Essay writing is one of the ways in which I have seen my writing improve. PDR’s are a huge help in my writing skills because it gives you another view point on how your essay is being read. I really value what my classmates have to say about my papers. Their input is important because it gives you an eye to point out the little things. After this class is over, I HOPE my writing skills and impeccable and over the top! Since that is not very realistic, I just wish my writing is at the level in which it needs to be in order to be successful in future class and college academics.
I think by doing all the extra work in the class helps improve my critical thinking writing and reading skills. By doing essays, blogging, blog responses, group work, discussion boards, and all the extra things we do makes a quantum change in our writing skills.
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Nice Job Ashlin, I do agree with you that when you look at the course in the beginning you see it as being a lot of hard work and dedication but the work wasn’t all that bad. All the work that we have done I believe was not any wasted work. You look at the books we read, reading discussion and the group work; it has all helped everyone I believe to become better writers. I always thought that English courses were made to be hard and difficult but as time went on I started to like it because it challenges but it does not discourage. Its not always about how much work we do but the quality of the work. The one thing that i worry about is does the work that we have done make us better writers? The answer to that is yes because the work challenges us and to think critically about what we write. That I believe is a combination of our peers and our instructors. If you have people that are willing to help and give feedback that makes you better everyone benefits from it. This class has done wonders i believe for everyone in this class and the results reflect that.
ReplyDeleteIt’s funny how you start by admitting you are a poor essay writer. Isn’t that one of the reason we are taking English class? I am one of them, too. Unlike you, I do not see the value from group work much; however, I agree other comments are always good for us to look back into our paper and see where we can improve more. I enjoy the instructor’s comments and the tutor’s comments very much as they are more specific to what the weakness and strength of my paper, and how I can improve them in detail. I do not think you have to “HOPE my writing skills and impeccable and over the top!” With the work load in this class, I am sure we all will improve our writing skills as well as our communication skill.
ReplyDeleteYou also raised a good point about improving the critical thinking in writing and reading skills. I admit the class’s requirements got me to pay more attention and exercise more critical thinking in those areas. Of course, in our daily tasks, we have to use our critical thinking to solve problems at home and at work, but how we can using them effectively is another story, and that’s what I have gained from all the classes this semester.