Beauty: Improving Writing Skills

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

During the beginning of the English 101 when we began the writing process: I thought at first that we spent too much time on our essays but I soon realized how important it was spending time on the essays to improve them . The revisions that my teacher and classmates made on my essays were truly helpful for me because it allowed me to better my writing. For every week in the entire course we went over the MLA formatting process, annotating, citing within the essay, and how to make the paper flow better. I had the most troubles in this quarter when I started writing some of my essays for my portfolio because I didn’t have a clue how to start them at first. After a while of brainstorming ideas and seeing examples the teacher

English class has never been my strong suite. I always had to work twice as hard in English then I did in any other class. Writing paper always had me stressed and overwhelmed, I felt discouraged in my work. l never seemed to be able to get to the level I wanted to. I would try my hardest and paid attention in class, but when it came to writing the paper none of that seemed to help. I think that my experience in English Composition 1 has helped gain and grow in some areas, but I don’t think that it highlights a well-written college essay. Some elements that I worked to improving was introduction paragraphs, tone, style, and thesis statements.

English Composition I has developed my style of writing and my skills analyzing and researching topics to write a piece about a topic. Throughout the course, I got better at analyzing articles and pieces to get the meaning of the topic. With that improved skill I was more able to use the information given from the text and install it into my essays, with proper citation if needed. Before taking the English Composition course, I was not one to organize my essays in an ordeal order to clearly state the point of the work. Now with taking the course, I have learned to organize my essays, examine research for a topic, and develop an essay with proper mechanics, and revising skills. In writing my personal, review, analytical, and cultural

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

Initially, a writer should do an outline before starting any essay. An outline can help to organize his or her main points in order to build an introduction, body and conclusion. This method of pre writing was something that I had never been exposed to prior to receiving an example outline from Professor Vilceus. By studying the example, I went from zero knowledge about an outline to creating ones that made arranging essay material uncomplicated.

Outline, planning, revising, rough and final draft, grading. This is the typical process for writing an essay, I however as a young high school student never followed this. I started with an idea in my head and go on from there. I never considered a need to plan and prepare an outline, just to write a rough draft that I would have to revise, draft, and draft again. It would just be easier to start writing the final draft first right? No. This class has taught me many strategies on how to accustom my writing to a college level. Over the semester in this class I have grown, learned how to effectively draft, and experienced argumentative writing first hand.

Learning how to develop an outline before starting my essay is probably the biggest help. At the beginning, I thought you just start writing. I did not know to start with an outline. The outline helps me get my thoughts organized. I thought completing an outline would be redundant. Furthermore, the outline alone has improved my confidence.

You will spend less time searching for information and fixing any clutter. Efficiency is the main point of organization in a essay. Planning out your essay leaves you with time that you can use on more productive things in your essay like proofreading. Creating an outline will help organize your whole paper and keep track of what goes where making it a lot easier so then you only have to fill your paper with the information that you have researched. Outlines are great for people who have trouble putting their words onto paper and can make the whole process go much smoother. Organizing is not very difficult and in conclusion will help make your essay easier and faster to write.

My third area of choice is essay organization. I have written many essays in my school years, but I notice my organization of the body paragraphs may get confusing or mixed up. I even made a paragraph with two different topics put together and cause a confusing to my essay. If I want to improve on my writing, I need to know what I am doing wrong, and what can I do to fix it. I did some research on essay organization and found numerous reliable sites on how to structure an essay properly. However, I prefer Purdue Owl since it feels more trustworthy than the other sites. According to Purdue Owl, in order to make an effective essay, my organization needs to have the basics, introduction, body paragraph, and conclusion. In the introductory paragraph,

A major area for development and improvement revolves around effective note taking and essay planning/writing. As a Higher Education student you will be required to plan and produce countless essays in relation to the course you are studying, and a key point of reference to help with this would come from “The Guide to Learning and Study Skills for Higher Education and at Work” who give the following advice and tips: ‘Identify the purpose of the essay and who the audience (reader) is and what is required for both – structure your work and develop your arguments/main points – proof read your work and improve language, spelling, punctuation, grammar and style – review what you did and use feedback to improve your essay writing for the future’ (Bingham, R. and Drew, S. 2012 The guide to learning and study skills: For higher Education and at work).

Throughout this semester there are many skills that I have noticed have improved through the constant writing of essays for this class. The one that I find most noticeable is a habit I had long struggled with which was essentially my tendency to be over necessarily wordy when writing my essays. I believe that I was able to somewhat fix this subconsciously, just by knowing that I was no longer in high school, and could no longer get by with just attempting to fill up my word count. I also believe I have greatly improved in my topic selection. In high school I would throw caution to the wind and just pick whatever topic came to mind just in an effort to get it done. I have been much more calculated in college, and I believe that it has helped me write better essays. While these were the

Writing essays can be difficult when I don 't outline or brainstorm, instead I free write by typing what I am thinking. It would be useful to write an outline because sometimes while I’m typing I forget what I’m thinking. Brainstorming would help write essays faster and easier because the essay is there, just need to be explained and add points to the main topics. Some sentences of an essays may feel as if it’s incomplete and needs more detail to understand a sentence. In my “Perfect” essay, I could have written more, but I didn 't know what else to write. I felt as if I kept repeating myself and brainstorming would have been helpful.

During this semester, I have strengthened my writing by trying new writing techniques, learning about purpose, and finding new ways of combating writers block. My first essay in this class was less focused then the essays I wrote later in

Over the course of this past semester, my ability to write has improved tremendously. Prior to undertaking this course, my expertise in writing was not as fine-tuned as it should have been. I had never previously been enrolled in a class specifically tailored to writing-- which was quite clear. Upon reading my past works, it becomes apparent that my writing style consisted of fluff, small words, and inconsistently structured sentences. These problems have, for the most part, been remedied with the coursework I have tackled in College Writing. Rather than long, drawn out papers that take an eternity to reach the primary point, my recent work is much nicer in terms of composition and grammar. I credit these improvements to the three primary