FInal Words

I have progressed profoundly during my experience in this class and mostly for my writing skills. Before I entered this class I only knew how to write creative stories and expository essays but I learned a completely new approach to writing. I learned how to write an effective argumentative essay throughout the span of a few months. First of all I didn't really even know what an argumentative essay was and how I was supposed to write it. However, with the process of writing two argumentative essays almost simultaneously I have definitely progressed in my skills as a diverse writer.

When I wrote essays in high school I didn't really pay too much attention to the research aspect. However, throughout this class I have learned when trying to prove a point knowing your information is definitely an advantage. The extensive amount of research we did for our argumentative essays was tedious but it definitely helped us gain a better understanding of how researching is the most important part of an argumentative essay. When arguing something you obviously need evidence and searching for other other's opinions is essential to a strong thesis.

The length of a paper was another aspect that I had to get used to. Throughout high school I stuck to the 5-body paragraph format, which is great but it does not have to be crucial in an argumentative essay. When I realized the length of our two papers had to be in between 2-4 pages I began to hyperventilate. When I write I can go on for days and write a 20-page essay yet most of it would be excess fluff that is not necessary. I learned to eliminate extra information that I did not need in my papers and that really helped me create a paper that was simple and to the point.

All in all, this class was a great experience for me to gain confidence in my writing abilities and be able to produce great papers that leave a person thinking for days or maybe even months. I really enjoyed it as a core class. I would also personally like to thank Professor Thompson for being a great, down-to-earth professor and especially cooperating with our morning classes filled with tired students who just did not want to speak.

"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out."  ~Author Unknown

Development As A Thinker/Writer

I think the process of writing two essays and working on them simultaneously was the most rewarding aspect of this class. The reason being we had to seriously think about the argument and relate it to textual evidence and the relating part for me was quite challenging. In high school I would write four pages in a matter of hours but in high school we didn't have to dig down so deep into research to prove our claims. I think that writing these two essays was definitely a wake up call for me to understand a meaning of writing a paper rather than barfing a paper that is lengthy but not exactly accurate. The four page requirement was hard for me to maintain because when I want to argue something I could write a 20 page essay for all that matters. So limiting myself to four pages was very difficult but at the same time due to the page limit you are able to stick to what is important for the essay and eliminate the extra fluff.

As far as critical thinking, I felt I was thinking critically throughout the entire quarter because argumentative papers really require you to think. We had to think critically about our resources and how they prove our claims, we had to think critically on how to incorporate quotes from those resources and we also had to think critically about how to generally make this paper the best it can be through the various draft processes. So there was a lot of thinking going on for my part. Critical thinking and writing an argumentative essay go hand in hand and I think this course definitely taught me how to be good at doing both.

Development As a Writer

I feel I have truly developed as an argumentative writer throughout this quarter. I have improved my ability to create an argument AND back it up with supporting evidence that relates. To be honest, when Professor Thompson assigned the class the first essay I was utterly confused. I didn't really know how to base an argument or what the argument would be or how to how find evidence. I had a lot going on and I was overwhelmed. However as the weeks began to pass and we then received our second essay prompt I knew exactly what to do and how to do it. Some would say, well "duh cuz' you already did one," but I feel the entire process of starting from scratch also truly helped me as a writer to develop my skills.

Close reading was a skill I truly developed in tremendously throughout this quarter due to the extensive research we had to do for our two essays. An activity that helped with the close reading of some of the texts such as "Blogging" by Jill Walker Rettberg and Kathleen C. West's article, was creating a precis for the texts as a class. A precis basically summarizes what the text is about and that really helped me to understand it better and be able to apply it to my essays. As for the research aspect of this class, the class we had where the librarian came in and showed us what databases to use for research and how to use them was quite helpful. That class was also very useful because it kind of gave us a direction as to where to start the research aspect of our essays.

Revision

In class today we just watched a man who rapped about the process of "Performance," "Feedback," and "Revision." He rapped about how one can alter the context of what they are talking about just by the process of revising. He rapped about Darwin's theory and in the process he was basically revising his rap as he was saying it. This context  of revising can also be applied to academic writing because revision is the key aspect of creating a paper that has been tried and tested many times but then the resulting outcome is a paper that one is proud of. I was new to this weeks-long revision process and I didn't quite understand why we had to keep changing our essay but I now know that it is extremely important to do so. The revision process helps us to gain various perspectives from others and that insight and combined human knowledge is greatly beneficial to an a paper that is especially based on argument.