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Gilles Aurelien

Emily Litle

English comp

May 5th, 2023

English Comp as A Freshman

Compared to the start of the semester my writing skills and understanding of writing have begun

to develop more. Coming into this semester I had not experienced many forms of writing, nor had I

explored much about the writing process. During the course it has helped me discover my own way

of writing and I have been able to pick up new skills.

The first thing that was introduced to me in this course was to understand the importance of the

writing process. This spring semester I learned a lot about the correct writing process to use when

writing a paper. I was first introduced to this when we had our Week 1 assignment paper 1. This

assignment showed me not to just jump straight into an assignment without a plan, you should

always create a plan, so you are aware of what approach you want to take towards the process of

writing the paper. Brainstorming your ideas will help you create a structure for the paper, and it is

something to build off when you feel stuck. Another thing I learned through writing this paper was

how to form a good introduction. Introductions are not a paragraph where you try to cram all the

information about the paper in one but, they are for engaging the reader and trying to find

connections to the reader and your paper. The next stage of progression for me was cooperating with

the revising step into my work. After you submit a rough draft, you must revise it. The thing I found

most useful about this stage was peer review paper 1. When reading over your work it isnt about

spotting minor mistakes like grammar and spelling although they are crucial, it’s about providing

ideas that could develop/improve your paper. This feedback process made me aware of the

differences between revise and edit. Revise is to look at the purpose of the paper and the message

you are trying to portray. However, it is also for finding weak points in the paper where you can add

more detail and provide more engagement for the reader. Editing is making minor tweaks like
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adjusting the structure and correcting grammar. The peer review process made me realise how

important it is to not only look overwork yourself but also seek the opinion of others as it could help

expand your ideas.

During the semester I was also taught about the different forms of writing. Like I mentioned before

peer reviews were a useful process, but they also allowed us the explore the different types of

rhetorical techniques we could use in our papers. Before taking this course, I had little knowledge on

these topics but after we did a PowerPoint in class on all the rhetorical techniques/strategies I gained

more understanding of how I could implement them into my work. One of the exercises we did in

class was to pick a photo and explain how they show Logos, Ethos and Pathos. This class exercise

helped me realise that there are a lot of positives to using rhetorical techniques in your work.

Rhetorical strategies give speeches color, intrigue, and excitement. Your work will be more

interesting, exciting, and flavored with rhetorical tactics. You can use rhetorical devices to increase

interest in your writing as well as to clarify material, add humor, underline certain passages or

concepts, or create a more memorable piece of writing.

Routing back to the writing process as a class, we took part in a group activity which helped us form

our Paper 2 class discussion post. was put up for the class to submit a post of their topic choices and

why we chose them but, we also had to interact with one another explaining why their paper topic

choice might have inspired or given them ideas. Personally, this activity helped me massively. I

wanted to do a specific advert which sparked my interests, and although the advertisement was

complex, I didn’t want to shy away from the challenge. Before writing the paper, I was unsure of how

I was going to engage the audience for people who aren’t interested in soccer however, other people

doing the similar adverts explained in the post how they were going to engage the reader, and this

gave me confidence as I was able to form more ideas.

As the semester continued, we were introduced to annotated bibliographies. I would say this was

the point in the year where I started to struggle and need extra help since I had never done topics

like this before. Paper 3: Annotated bibliography was an assignment where we could pick our own
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research topic and find legitimate sources to back up our research point. I chose my research topic to

be, are the effects of social media bad on mental health. One of the challenges I had with this

assignment was finding good articles which were easy to read. This ended up taking longer than

expected but because I had chosen a better topic, I was able to find more information at a quicker

rate. A major point to take from this paper was the way I finish my evaluation paragraphs. In this

assignment I had the tendency to end the paragraphs on a negitive which could be seen as a

weakness point for the sources I chose. When summarizing something you must make sure to

conclude the details like what the purpose is and what they are trying to prove in the sources.

MLA formatting is something that I let myself down in through some assignments this spring. At

the start of the course, we did an assignment reminding us how to do MLA format for the future

assignments we were going to be set. There is a drop box on the class syllabus on D2l called MLA

materials. This drop box guided me to make sure the structure looked correct and so I hopefully

wouldn’t drop points because on my format as this was something I did.

The final pieces of work that helped me through the English Composition course were the Journals

1 – 10. Doing these weekly journals helped me get my views across on a lot of topics that I think but

don’t talk about therefore, it was nice to see the opinions I received in the feedback about the topics

I would write my journals on. The journals also reminded me to keep on top of work because once I

knew I had journals every week it became routine for me to get them done on a weekend.