Writing is something that I always enjoyed doing because I get the opportunity to express myself or explain information in my own way. Whether it was writing about myself, or writing an informative paper, it gave me the chance to be creative, even in the small ways. I am fortunate enough to say that the teachers I’ve had in high school helped me to get to where I am today. Due to their passion for teaching and helpful advice, they brought me to the place where I am content with my writing which is why I’m able to say that I've made most of my improvements in high school. Organization was something I always seemed to get a hang of throughout the duration of my high school writing career. Upon taking this class, my organization skills have improved even more with the help of effective pre-writing, outlining and annotating.
In high school, we were only allowed to write according to the 5-Paragraph format, along with a 3-point claim. This was likely due to the fact that the K-12 education system was heavily saturated with standardized testing. In a thesis for a DBQ that I wrote for my US2 class, I stated, “Therefore, the effects of the divide in American politics is that it affects Americans socially, economically, and politically.” I understand that this was an informative paper; however, with this format, I wasn’t able to truly expand on the topic the way that I would be able to now in English 1030. In other words, I wasn’t given much autonomy in regards to my style of writing and I wasn’t able to think outside the lines. It was also very similar in high school English classes where we also had to stick to the same formatting. In one of my essays I stated, “Within this poem, the author makes use of literary devices such as imagery, simile, and diction to capture their interpretation of the myth of Icarus.” I’ll have to admit that the 3-point thesis did make it easier in terms of what I was going to write; which resulted in my organization skills being easy to perfect. However, I didn’t notice all the limitations until I sought higher education. Currently, our essays have an overall claim that we prove/argue, and we include sub claims which allows me as a writer to dive deeper into the topic. Therefore, as a result of the focus being mainly on writing the actual essay and revising, rather than pre-writing and outlining, my writing is much more flavorful as I am now able to explore different writing formats.
Although organization was something that always came easy to me, pre-writing, outlining, and annotating helped to further sharpen my skills. In high school, I felt that I was always making an extra step by only annotating which allowed me to further comprehend the given text. Annotating also helped me by jotting down my thoughts at the very moment that I read this text which allows me to not only better remember the information but I can also copy and paste what I stated in my annotations into my paper itself. Fortunately, Professor Taylor introduced me to effective prewriting and annotating which aided heavily in my writing. This is because, as I previously stated, English 1030 has taken me on a journey when it came to breaking away from the typical 5-Paragraph essays which challenged me to write more in depth and adapt to the new standard of organization. Thus, pre-writing and outlining were a requirement for these types of essays. For example, the first that I wrote in this class, Professor Taylor assigned a couple of questions for the class to answer which would help to lead us in the right direction when writing our Summary Analysis essay. These were questions such as, “ID the main idea/ claim in Graff’s Hidden Intellectualism”, “Decide if you agree/ disagree fully/ or somewhat agree”, “Think of your reasoning: Why do you agree or disagree?”, and etc. This prewriting exercise was very helpful because it helped me to be able to gather the thoughts that were only relevant to the text. It also gave me ideas of what should and shouldn’t be included in my paper.
When it came to organization, one of the main things that improved was the fluidity of my writing. To be more specific, the Argumentative Essay was more in depth than the Rhetorical Analysis Essay. For example, for the Analysis Essay, I often made the mistake of being very repetitive with my paragraph closings. Professor Taylor stated, “In order to continue to improve, keep working on varying your paragraph endings and watch out for overuse of block quotes” (Taylor). She also stated, “Try to vary your sentence structure so that each paragraph does not end the same way” (Taylor). I kept using “thus” and “therefore” which is something that I’ve been doing since I was in high school. As I read this comment, I immediately knew what she was talking about and certainly kept that in mind while writing the Argumentative Essay. The way I solved this problem was by paying attention to the example essays that Professor Taylor posted. I realized that she closed off her paragraphs without using “thus” and “therefore”; I did the same. As a result, my essays did not sound as repetitive and I was able remain concise and assertive.
As a whole, I appreciate all of what I have learned during this semester in my English 1030 class. Learning how to effectively outline, prewrite, and annotate has helped me to better organize my essays on a large scale. The way that I will continue to improve is by remembering how much these skills contribute to the overall performance of my writing. Organization is something that I will need to take into consideration because if one’s writing is repetitive, out of order, or rigid, it can pollute the effectiveness of the writing and also be very distracting to the reader. These skills will help me with my research papers, my college thesis, and maybe even a book that I may want to publish in the future. Organization is a skill that can take me very far in life.