Essay on Writing Skills:
Good writing skills are the keys to success in many fields and occupations. They not only help to be more precise in delivering the topic but also evaluate the writer in terms of the personal traits of character, level of expertise in the sphere, and the point of view. With good writing skills, one can establish credibility and become an authority for the readers. This will not probably occur if the author has no experience in writing and presenting own attitude to the audience.
Impressions about the Class
At first, I felt very pleased to receive feedback for all the work I have been involved in. Feedback is extremely valuable if you do not feel you are enough professional in something. I liked the way the papers were evaluated and the comments obtained. They were very encouraging and cheering, and this allowed concentrating on the next task, which usually exceeded in complexity. Besides, I received a lot of useful advices on how to improve my writing and following them resulted in higher grades and even more positive evaluation. Weekly discussions made the whole idea of writing clearer for me. The expertise of other people was another source for personal improvement.
During the course, several other things have been encouraging and stimulating. The main thing I learnt at once was the role of the literature and works of other authors. They are the main sources for the vocabulary to be used in the essays and idea for the writings. Reading books has always been the way to enrich the outlook, start thinking out of the box, train creativity and communication skills. That’s why the course readings were considerably helpful throughout the proceeding assignments. They increased my knowledge of the subject matter and provided me with hints on brainstorming and writing. The discussions provided examples of other writings and their analysis, that’s why I could learn not only on my own but also on the mistakes of others.
The approach of the course based on critical thinking was really considered and deliberated. As for me, critical thinking was a tool to create the sense and the meaning of the work. I am glad that the assignments made me apply logic and let me appear credible and precise in delivering the messages to the audience. Each essay should have a plot and discuss the defined topic. If the structure is not followed, the attempts in being persuasive are worthless. Besides, relevance and significance of the topic play a very important role in establishing oneself as an experienced writer. I suppose that critical thinking may help me later in personal life and academic issues. Knowing how to evaluate and analyze, as for me, is one of the core skills in brainstorming and organizing the work.
It was enough surprising to refer to personal life experience during this course. On the one hand, do I have enough experience to be able to discuss the topic? Is it worth of talking about it and construct the essay on its basis? On the other hand, how do I make the audience feel placing each reader in my shoes? Do the attitudes of the audience vary when I describe the situation from the perspective of a participant and a usual observer? I feel that such descriptions are about provoking individual opinion rather than encouraging using templates and stereotypes for the given cases. Basically, a good writer has to have personal point of view and be ready to dispute it.
Personal Improvement
Through the course, I have been much experimenting with the personal style in writing and supporting skills. A lot of work has been dedicated to the improvement of the structure and organization in each essay and increasing their readability. Other considerable changes in the papers referred to punctuation and word order.
I suppose that the main difficulty I had was in highlighting the central idea and constructing the whole essay around it. I learned to stick more to the main statement in the paper and explain it while focusing on the main points in the right order. First of all, I try to develop the focus and then proceed with other parts. Introduction has to define the topic of discussion and the rest should provide evidence and support to the main idea. As I found out, only deep and thorough revision can really help in avoiding repetitions, inaccuracies, and complexities in the sentences. When solving the aforementioned problem, I have been also using the textbook and the technique of reading aloud. In combination, the techniques appeared to be highly effective.
I worked a lot on being persuasive in the essays. I have been trying to increase my credibility by providing examples, describing my personal experience in details, and making conclusions for each particular situation mentioned. I felt like nothing should be left unexplained, and this helped me to be clear and accurate in reasoning. I’ve been using brainstorming not only for the whole topic but also for the sub-topics in the essays because I aimed more at empirical research rather than the literature-based one.
As it turned out, complex statements are not always clever and simple statements are not always senseless. I understood that making a simple and clever statement is the best option and tried to stick to it all the time. Even though the creation of such statement is not an easy task, complexity is not the solution in most of the cases. Paragraph development is a much more valuable technique that helps to construct the plot and avoid useless and complex sentences.
In order to achieve even better results, I tried to replace as many words as I can with the synonyms in terms of each essay. I also started to check the order of the sentences and the plot of the paragraph by reading the first and the last sentences in each paragraph. As far as I understand, they should give an overall idea of what I am writing about in the given passage. If the idea of the paragraph is traced, then the sentence organization is satisfactory.
I acknowledge that using commas and some other punctuation signs has always been my weakness to certain extent, although I find the problem in the lack of revision – the thoughts should be written down as quickly as possible, and the ideas go further leaving the paragraphs without checking. If I forget to return to them, small inaccuracies can later be found as a result.
I admired the idea with the portfolio. As a result of my writing skills enhancement, I had to choose two best essays for my portfolio from what I have written throughout the course. And it was not an easy task as I felt at first. I would say that each essay that I have written had some strong parts but none of them could be considered the best in general. It was obvious that revision and rework were necessary for the two chosen essays. And the portfolio became a result of the intensive course weeks reflecting the new knowledge and acquired skills.
Course Improvement
So that I have already mentioned some facts concerning my personal achievements during the course, I would like now to make some comments about the course itself. Here I will briefly talk about the way to make the class better. The main suggestion about the course improvement I have is about the issuance of the topics. I feel lucky that I had enough experience to elaborate on the essays, although I could probably lack some experience in case the topics were different. Inventing is a nice tool to stimulate creativity but it does not allow for a well-established credibility and would not probably be welcomed. Besides, it is worth of paying students’ attention to the essays where deep revision and adding new supporting arguments should take place. The students have to be aware beforehand that there should be enough information and expertise concerning the topic they choose. Otherwise, they can run out of ideas and evidence when developing the paragraphs in the essays. In such case, the number of the strong essays can probably decline after they are revised.
Becoming a Better Writer
I really believe that I have become a better writer. Greater achievements come with experience, and experience is taken from the attempts and repetitions. I improved in focusing on the topic structure, sentence organization, paragraph development, word choosing, providing evidence and many other things, which are the keys to enhancing the writing skills. I obtained necessary feedback and support, which allowed for greater results and better understanding of the course and its concepts. I grasped the main concepts of active reading, brainstorming, critical thinking, and many other.
They all certainly contributed to the broadening of my vision of many things and processes in life. Therefore, I think that some of these disciplines in terms of the course can find application later in my professional life and reflect my development not only as a writer.
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