Kevin Randolph
Randy Koch
English 101.35
10 May 2013
Title
I believe English 101 improved my writing. I learned how to write different types
of essays and learned rules to make those essays more interesting and how to make them
flow better. I also learned different parts of the writing process and how to go about
completing them. I spent a lot of time on argumentative essays, but I feel like I could still
get better at using sources and citing them correctly. This is something that I will need to
review in the future in order to improve. I learned how to improve my essay writing, but
didn’t work much in other media or forms of writing. Overall, this course helped to
improve my writing and it will be helpful to me in the future.
Goal 1 is compose for particular audiences and purposes. This was part of the
requirement for all essays, but I feel I could work on this more. This was easiest to do in
argumentative essays, because the audience is those who disagree with you. In the
evaluative essay, the audience is readers of Phillipe Legrain’s argument, the author who
wrote in favor of open immigration. In the last paragraph of my evaluative essay I wrote,
“This exemplifies why readers should always look closely at arguments and evidence that
supports them before trusting the writer and accepting their opinion as the truth.” This
statement is something that applies to readers directly. It is harder to determine a specific
audience in narrative and descriptive essays, because it is meant for a more general and
could be read by anyone. For these essays, I just used a lot of details in order to help
understand the point of the essay such as, “He was relatively short, about 5’6” and had
short brown hair which stood up in every direction imaginable. He wore rectangular,
black glasses, which sat, crookedly on top of his long nose.” I learned about Goal 1 this
semester, although I could work on it more.
We spent a lot of time on Goal 2 this semester, although not as much related to
specific genres. Each essay was required to have certain things to vary the sentences of
the essay and make the writing more interesting. Using interesting action verbs instead of
weak helping verbs and specific details is an example of this. For instance, in the
narrative essay instead of writing something like “the farm was hot,” I wrote, “The farm’s
285 acres of mostly open field offered little protection the sweltering heat and skin
scorching rays.” I also learned how to vary sentence structure using things like colons
and semicolons. Here is an example from my descriptive essay: “Everyday, he wore the
same thing: a t-shirt and blue jeans.” I learned that using these things make a paper more
interesting and I believe it has improved my writing.
I learned a lot this semester as far as Goal 3 goes. I wrote three essays that used
evidence: the undocumented argument essay, the argument evaluation essay, and the
documented argument essay. I learned the parts of an argument, which are claims,
reasons, and evidence and the five types of evidence. In the argument evaluation essay, I
broke down three types of evidence. I looked critically at the author’s use of statistics,
real life examples, and hypothetical situations. This helped me learn a lot about evidence
and taught me how to figure out if it was effective or not. Because I had to take apart the
argument piece by piece and think critically about each part. In the documented essay, I
used that lesson to choose effective evidence for my own paper, as well as other things I
learned in class and in the library. I used quote such as this one. “The financial return is
pretty low,” says Rob Williams, a member of Waitsfield Elementary School board of
education in Vermont, “and the price of giving corporate marketers access to our kids in
school is high” (Moore). In order to this, I also had to cite sources and use them correctly
within paragraphs; this is something that, although I’d learned it before, I was able to get
better at this year in English.
I worked on some parts of Goal 4 this semester, but not others. I wrote essays in
various different genres, including narrative, descriptive, and argumentative and learned a
lot about the different styles. It seemed we spent the most time on argumentative, which
is probably the most difficult style. I did not work in any non-print genres such as
PowerPoint or blogs; we only wrote essays. Also, all sources were obtained from free
internet sources, library databases, or our textbook. Some parts of Goal 4 were completed
but not others.
Goal 5 is describe and apply appropriate writing processes both individually and
in collaboration. The different parts of the writing process were definitely used. Each
assignment was broken down into the separate parts. I learned that drafting is an
important step and how to do it more effectively. First drafts are never exactly what you
want your paper to be like, but you can improve your paper through the other steps. One
way in which we did was the rough draft peer evaluation forms. This allowed the class to
revise rough drafts well and also work together. This gave me experience working in
collaboration, as did the professor’s office hours.
My experience with English 101 will help me in the future, in college and other
areas. It served as a useful overview of how to write well, especially for essays used often
in college. It improved my writing overall by teaching me varied techniques from each of
the 5 goals.
Works Cited
Moore, April. “A Balancing Act.” American School Board Journal. 194.5. (2007): 28-30.
05 May 2013.