Jordan Wiertzema
Mr.Neuburger
ENG 102 – 118
14 May 2013
Reflective
Essay Final
In ENG 102 my skills as a writer have grown throughout
the semester and as a result I can now write with a higher degree of quality.
The class taught me many things about academic writing and in my opinion has
been the most informative English class that I have taken. An example of how
this class has improved my skills as a writer includes creating a research
paper, which isn’t bad when looked at from a certain perspective. Also there
were many general rules to writing which have been taught that I feel will
improve my writing on essays and other writing assignments in other classes in
the future. Furthermore, the use of technology in the class made ENG 102 much
more enjoyable. Overall the class was one of my more favorite classes that I
took this semester.
Throughout the course of the semester the class has been
assigned multiple assignments each different and with a purpose to improve our
writing. Everything was very easy to follow and the structure for the assignments
was very clear and well laid out. The free writes that were mainly done during
the beginning of the semester I thought were a good idea and I enjoyed being
able to write about whatever was on our minds instead of having to respond to a
prompt of some kind. The response essays to the short stories that we read in
the beginning of the semester also helped to improve my skills as a writer in
many ways. Learning the structure to writing a strong and short response essay
was probably one of the most useful things I could take away from this class.
Learning to construct a strong thesis statement and then the best ways to
support that thesis statement proved invaluable information to me. I actually
used the format used for the response essays in this class writing essays and
answering essay questions on tests for other classes. As a result of doing so I
was able to achieve nearly perfect scores on all of them, which is why I
consider learning that format one of the most useful bits of information I can
take away from ENG 102.
However learning the format to a strong essay and writing
in general has not been the only thing that has enlightened me. Learning how to
construct and put together a research paper I believe will also prove to be
another skill I will take away from this class to use in my future academic
career. As I plan on eventually majoring in psychology learning how to
effectively construct a research paper is actually quite important. Before this
class, the thought of putting together a research paper was not a pleasant
thought at all. I viewed a research paper as more complicated than it actually
was. Being guided through the process the majority of the way I enjoyed because
while we were being tested in our abilities as writers, the emphasis was more
on learning how to put everything together correctly. This is something that I
believe more classes should do. The instructor should try to focus on ensuring
that the core ideas are understood and that the class as a whole walks away
with a very good base of knowledge to use in the future; which I believe to be
true in this particular case.
In addition to the useful information on how to construct
both research papers and write essays in general, technology helped improve the
quality of my writing as well. The websites that have been shared with us over
the semester have been proven to be extremely useful. One of these websites EasyBib.com
showed itself to be invaluable when writing the research paper. Having the
capability to produce a full and accurate works cited page easily without much
input saved time and was very helpful. I plan on using the site on other
projects and papers in the future. Another site using Digolet allowed me to
store and organize the sources I collected when writing the research paper
which was very useful. Having all my sources grouped in one location and having
them organized as well made writing the research paper flow much more smoothly.
Thus, technology greatly helped me to complete the assignments in this class
and have been proven to be effective enough that I plan to use it in the
future.
In conclusion, this class has taught me many useful
techniques in writing and has advanced my skills as a writer in my own opinion.
The ways in which the class has been guided throughout the semester has helped
me learn how to write effectively. One use of technology used in the class I did
not like though. The technology I am referring to is Twitter, which I didn’t
like very much at all. The reasoning behind using Twitter to conduct class
discussions is strong, as in open class discussions only a few people may speak
out. However, I did not fully understand how to use it, which may be user error
but I still disliked it. Other than that I can’t think of any other thing that
I disliked about this class. Overall I believe I will be walking away from ENG
102 with useful information that I can use to improve my writing in the future.
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