Upon taking this English course I had no idea as to how much reading, writing and critical thinking would be involved. To say the least, this course has turned out to be very high maintenance. With all of the reading, writing, and critical thinking involved I would have to say that my writing skills have improved tremendously. I started out feeling very uncomfortable with the magnitude of writing that was expected of me in this course and ended up feeling quite at ease with it and actually enjoying it.
I think one of the things that helped me out the most was a chapter in our Exploring language book called Writers on Writing. The essays in that chapter gave me a lot of good ideas on how to personalize my writing. One of the first things that I learned was to write in the same way that I talk to somebody. There is no need to use fancy words and clichés to keep your audience interested if you do not use them in your daily conversations. When using big words and clichés in your writing it makes your writing seem artificial and you run the risk of losing your audience. Writing needs to sound personal and sincere to be taken seriously.
The next thing I learned is to be direct and to the point. This means you need to say what needs to be said and go on to your next point. Do not beat a dead horse, if you know what I mean. To be direct and to the point you should have a well organized thought out idea of what you want to say. When this is done make sure your writing is organized and thought out and not just thrown together in a hasty way. If it is, your audience will be able to tell and you risk losing your reader’s attention and your point will be lost.
One of the last things I learned was to have fun with your writing and write about things that interest you. When you do this your enthusiasm for your writing will be carried over to your audience. This will keep your audience interested and hanging on your every word. You should also make sure your writing is grammatically correct. It can be very frustrating for your audience to see blaring grammatical mistakes and typographical errors. When your subject and verb do not agree this, too, can be distracting to your audience.
Always proofread your writing for errors and use your spell checker as well. Writing can be fun and we can learn what we think and feel by writing. Do not be scared of it, if you do not like what you wrote, the good thing is you can always start over and try again. The last thing I learned is not to be afraid of writing, it may sound overwhelming to have to write an essay, so break it down into manageable pieces and concentrate on doing just a little at a time, then before you know it the essay is done and you ate the elephant using one bite at a time!
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I can not agree more. I had no idea the amount of reading writing and critical thinking this course would involve either. There are times when I think there is no way possible for me to manage all of the reading and writing assignments that we have, and as soon as I do finish we have more! To say the least, this is the most challenging course I have taken yet at least workload wise. You could not have said it better, it is very high maintenance, but all in all my writing has greatly improved from it. Wow, thinking back at the begging of the course the writers on writing section was very helpful for me too. I think that it is important to remember that great writing does not have to be complex writing and also being direct is the easiest way to stay on target. I also agree that writing is way easier when you can choose topics that interest you. That is one thing that I like about our blogging assignments—that is that we can somewhat choose what we want to write about. I enjoyed reading your blog and learning about your experiences in this class.
ReplyDeleteAndrea, it is nice to know that none of us are suffering alone. I have to agree that this was – is – a high-maintenance class. I especially appreciate all of the positive feedback I have received from you. It is always nice to receive kudos from one’s peers. But even more important as was the case when you pointed out the blunder I made about writing my essay on Old Major’s speech instead of Napoleon’s rhetoric in our group peer review. I was ready to go to print, but after you pointed it out I asked Jennifer if this was OK? And she said I needed to stick to the prompt. Thanks to you I was able to correct this just in time.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is important to have fun when you write; being stressed out does very little for the creativity juices. Fortunately most of the writing assignments made it easy to have fun while writing them. All except for the timed writing exam – I didn’t have time to have fun! But all in all, it has been an enjoyable class. Not to beat a dead horse, but I’m trying not to use too many cliché’s either. ;)
You took the words right out of my mouth. This class is beyond high maintenance. I think we’ve all learned how we don’t need to use “big words” in order to write productively. Although we had a million things due each week it kind of kept us busy and kept our brain going. I couldn’t have agreed with you more on your blog. As challenging as this class may be it has definitely improved our writing as well as thinking. I have always enjoyed reading your blog and group discussions.
ReplyDeleteYou said that it is important to have fun with your writing but sometimes it was a bit under pressure to have fun, no? All in all this class was VERY interesting, it has taught us how to be better readers and writers in many different ways. It was also nice to have the peer draft reviews for us to have different perspective from people. Writing can be stressful but if we are interested in something it is easy as cake. Writing the way you would talk to someone, that is something that is definitely the case. By writing the way you talk, everyone will understand rather then having a dictionary near by.=)