Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Reflection Essay

I Can Write A Paper :)

English 250 consisted of experimenting with many different forms of communication: written, oral, visual, and electronic. I value the skills I have gained in all of these different forms of communication, but I would definitely say that the skills I have learned in written communication will be of the biggest benefit. Written communication is something that has always been “scary” to me because I never really knew how to do it. But, taking English 250 has helped me improve greatly when it comes to communicating my ideas in an essay. There are many different aspects of writing a paper that I have improved on by doing each of the assignments and projects.

The first thing I learned was to not use such “choppy” sentences; I need to make the sentences in my paper flow so that the reader isn’t stopping every few words because of a period. If a person would look at my first draft of assignment one and then compare it to my final draft of assignment one, they would see the difference. For example, in the first draft I say, “My uncle sneaks up behind the chair I am relaxing in. He tips it over and laughs. I scream,” versus my final draft where I say, “It is only the beginning of the first day and my Uncle Jeff has snuck up behind the chair I was trying to relax in and tipped it over backwards so he can laugh as my arms instinctively go up in the air and I scream.” As you can see, assignment one definitely taught me to put some “flow” into my sentences.

Assignment three is where I learned that I need to guide a reader through my paper by making connections for them from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. The technique I used to help me to do this was to go back and read my paper while asking myself, “Is this going to make sense to someone else?” If I thought that something didn’t connect, then I changed it. I think I am still a little weak at making connections, but I have improved and am aware that they are needed.

Sentence structure and word variation were two characteristics of writing a paper that I worked on during assignment five. I noticed that many times I would start a sentence the same way, i.e., “I went…/I researched,” or, “They have…/They need.” Along the same line, I saw that I was using the same words over and over again. For example, I used “improve” numerous times in my first draft of assignment five, but by the final draft I had replaced “improve” with words like “progress” or “get better.” After realizing the need for variation, I now write my paper (get all of my ideas written down), then go back and change words or sentence structure.

I can proudly say that writing a paper doesn’t scare me anymore or stress me out as much as it used to. Becoming confident in written communication is a relief to me, because I will use it in a lot of other classes here at Iowa State and in my life after being a student. The skills that I have learned in English 250 are probably more beneficial to me than any others I have learned in different classes this year. I am so glad to finally know how to write a paper!!!

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