English 1010: The Importance Of Critical Thinking

The first section of your syllabus entitled “What We’re Doing in This Course, and Why” intrigued me. Specifically, due to its mention of the concept of rhetorical thinking being used to figure out what to say and how to say it. To me, this section encompasses all disciplines who tend to use different words to describe how you present an argument both in a correct and incorrect manner (framing, bias, logical fallacies ect.). I’m interested to see how different disciplines utilize this skill from simply being as bland and logical as possible such as in a scientific paper, or to making an effort to persuade an audience in a speech such as in a debate.

When registering for this class, a wave of worry ran through me, because I had minimal skill when it came to writing, particularly in the field of formal writing. The high school I attended was academically poor, we never wrote formal papers, just informal book and movie responses. Therefore I was apprehensive about this class. This course was quite intricate, but I attend skills that will aid me for the rest of my academic career. Rhetorical knowledge, critical inquiry, process, and conventions are all concepts I have acquired. To display my understanding of the four-course outcomes, I selected my summary and rhetorical analysis of Bruno Bettelheim's "Fairy Tales and the Existential Predicament," and my in-class writing "Seattle Versus the

First I want to say welcome to New York, the city of my birth. You are going to experience NYC like never before. I also want to say welcome to LaGuardia, a school that has done nothing, but give me a great college experience. Like most students, many of us has had to take English 101 and I will tell you firsthand how valuable this class is. You won’t learn about how to be a good writer, but how to become a great one. In this class I’ve transformed my writing from novice to expert and I am very proud to say that. Most importantly above all you will learn about yourself in ways that you never thought. That’s through the writings and projects we’ve done on others identity. The writings that shape our own identity were through blogs we’d have

My experience in English 1010 was great. My writing skills were very poor at the beginning of the semester. I did not know how to write correct sentence structure. I had great difficulties making my sentences flow smoothly and clearly. I was not able to edit a paragraph for mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. I also had a problem in balancing the words in a pair, so that they have the same kind of structure, this will make a sentence clearly and easy to read. Parallel sentences that follow read more smoothly than the nonparallel ones. I have a great problem putting matching words and ideas into matching structures. Some of my sentences were fragments with incomplete phrases. English 1010 class helped to improve and change my level of writing.

Over the course of the semester, my main goal was to become a more precise writer and develop my identity as a writer. According too, the Portfolio Letter assignment sheet, becoming a better writer consists of precise planning, draft and revising. It also includes understanding a variety of academic genres by examining the basic characteristics that defines each type. In order too efficiently meet my goal of becoming a better writer, it was very important to have my work evaluated by others and myself as well. The use of rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking, reading and writing all are the important aspects in this course. All of which helped tremendously with becoming a more precise writer and developing my identity as a writer.

We have reached the end of the semester unconsciously. During this semester, we’ve practiced and improved our writing by outlining, composing, editing, and revising. Throughout the process, I discovered my strengths and weaknesses, meanwhile, I tried hard to refine my writing skills.

During the course of English 102, I took this year of the spring semester. I have accomplished a variety of goals I once thought were impossible. I have not only grown as a writer and a student but as an individual as well. I feel that through my experience of this English course, I have achieved knowledge and self-confidence to step out into the real world. In putting together my portfolio, I could definitely see that I have made an incredible progress from the foundation of this class. My practice of grammar, words and the general structure of my papers has improved massively. Reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, as well as things I have learned in my own writing process is a big accomplishment.

As a College freshman in his second semester, I have learned to deal with the challenges that I have to deal with peaceful, yet exhilarating moment when my mind engages with an author’s thoughts on a page. As John Dewey states “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” What Dewey insists is from my early days in high school to my first year in college as a freshman, I wanted to know the full concept of English; however, I have now realized this subject would fill in my void of English with noteworthy complexities. This was not the case for most of my second semester in Montgomery College; I always had trouble in various parts of the subject, such as development in thesis statement, sentence writing and reflecting on previous essays.

In the beginning of the course, my writing was not as strong as it is now. I can look back at my very first paper, the Academic Summary, and point out all of the minor and major mistakes I had made. Certain details were left out, my thesis was not

My writing process has changed tremendously over the course of this class. I feel more accomplished, confident and I feel sometimes that my ideas and thoughts just come in to my mind out of nowhere and I start writing about anything now. I pay attention to my punctuation and grammar more as I have polished them more now, not only when I write but then others write as well. I am constantly looking for errors and I highly think this is helping me a lot in my career. The comments from my instructor, the online material, my research, the online writing center and comments from other students in the discussion boards have helped me so much to improve my writing skills.

Writing essays and other types of posts has always been difficult for me. But, throughout this composition class, I have learned many interesting and new things about the different types of writing styles. When starting this class, I considered myself to be an average writer with run-of-the-mill vocabulary, ordinary sentence structure and typical finished products. This class has helped me greatly improve my writing skills in a variety of ways. I have learned multiple things by taking this class, such as new ways to approach writing and that there is much that I still need to learn about composition.

In previous courses, my writing skills have been mediocre or just enough to pass the class. Throughout the duration of this course, I have written a variety of papers using different techniques and skills. Previously I would write assuming that the only audience would be my instructor. This course has helped me realize that there are many steps and skills involved with writing a well-organized and easy to comprehend essay. My expectations coming into the course were high and remained high throughout the duration of the course. The essays I wrote in the class really challenged me to progress in my writing skills.

My journey in this English 3001 course during the past ten weeks, and over the course of taking is English class I have grown and learned more that I thought it is necessary for me to know as a student. I have improved in my overall writing skills because if you look at my second in-class essay and the rest of my essay you will see that I have made progress and improvement compare to my diagnostic essay and the first in-class essay. Moreover, now that I have completed the English course my skills are better that I am capable to meet the university standard writing requirements. This English course additionally taught me how powerful the composed word and language can be. This quarter my ability to compose essays and express my thoughts, ideas,

The method of research, citing facts, and brainstorming ideas was very intense in this class. Reading various arguments debating the topic I want to write on, was very challenging and time consuming. In this reflection essay I want to show how researching process was vital on changing my writing style. Also, what I’ve learned in English 105 class after a great summer semester with lots of material to learn from. Researching was drastically important, making every paper I made heavily based on research. Research is in fact the scientific method of writing and the way to make a certain topic clear with the support of citation.

Teaching today has become a very interesting job for soon-to-be or current teachers due to the high culture diversity in their classrooms. Teacher not only have to be well prepared to present quality education but also to be able to accommodate for all the students needs regardless of origin, color or race. The important point is not teaching different children but due to their different backgrounds they learn differently; thus, the teachers now need to become aware of the students’ cultures in their classroom as soon as possible.