How has my writing improved?

First, let me say that I do not think I have ever written as much as I have in English 103!  As stated before, it has been many years since I have been in school so this class has definitely pushed me into getting up to speed with current writing styles and requirements.  For instance, when I first logged on and saw all these references to MLA style I had no clue what Jennifer was talking about.  I had never heard of MLA before so I knew there was going to be a huge learning curve.

The practice of writing so much has been beneficial in many ways.  It has helped me with reaching down to come up with ideas to write about and expand on to meet minimum word or page requirements.  It has caused me to learn new things about style, organization, structure, grammar, etc.

The feedback from peers in the Peer Draft Reviews has been very helpful too.  Sometimes our writing makes sense to us because we know what idea we were trying to convey so we may not be looking at it from an audience perspective that might not know about the topic.  Therefore, the feedback from the PDR’s and from SmartThinking has been very helpful to me before submitting the assignment.  Providing PDR’s to classmates has also improved my proofreading skills.  The group concept also gives you more of a classroom experience providing a medium for interaction.

The Reading Discussion board has prompted critical thinking skills and has provided a forum to interact with online classmates.  I do think responding to one critical thinking question and posing one question each week would be sufficient though.  There are times between the discussion boards, essays, Exploring Language assignments, etc. that I feel that I have to be more concerned with producing quantity instead of quality.

The blogs have also stimulated creativity and critical thinking skills and I have enjoyed reading other blogs and responding to them.  I had never created a blog before so this was new territory for me.  Again, I feel that responding to one other blog each week would be sufficient so that we can concentrate more on the quality of our response instead of hurrying to get two done.    

The reading assignments have been very insightful and thought provoking.  Writing about our reading assignments has helped me with retention.  Many times I read something and have a hard time remembering what it was about because I don’t stay focused.  Knowing that I will be writing about it helps to keep my mind from wandering.  It encourages you to really try and understand the authors’ motives and viewpoint to be able to write about it.

I also like the multiple drafts that we have done for essays.  I think I have learned a lot more about how to improve my writing using this approach.  We are given ideas from peers or SmartThinking on how to improve our writing and given another chance before submitting the final.

This class has been a lot of work and very time consuming, but I do like to think that my writing skills have improved as a result of taking English 103.