Quinn McNamara
English 1010 F 9:00-12:00
Professor McKeever
December 12, 2012
Word Count: 758
Ending a Great Semester
Professor McKeever it has been a pleasure to be in your class through the
first semester. Throughout this course I have learned a lot about writing essays
and how to improve. Until this class I had not known all about the different
guidelines to different style essays. This course also opened my mind to let
myself go when writing because when doing those thoughts come easier. Most
importantly creativity which helped me was gained through your
teachings.
At the beginning of the course I thought of myself as a fairly decent
writer. I had enough skill to write essays and fulfill the requests of them but,
I knew I could do better. My biggest weaknesses were sentence structure, thesis
statements, and creativity. I wasn’t terrible at these things but I knew they
could get better. What I believed really helped me was smart thinking. The
revising that the tutors did really helped me find my strengths and take notice
of weaknesses to target. Also this allowed a different opinion to be given so I
could get more ideas and to see a reaction from a reader. As other essays came
along I felt I was getting better and better learning from mistakes made. My
sentence structure was becoming stronger and less punctuation mistakes. Yet
these weren’t as important to the creativity factor I learned in this course.
Creativity was the most important skill that I learned. This is because it made
writing a whole lot easier in the sense of coming up with ideas which then
became more fluent. Lastly, learning about different styles of essays and their
guidelines helped a lot. Following the guidelines helped me from putting
unnecessary parts in the writings. They also all around just helped make my
essays stronger so, I could see what to add to the essay or what I should take
out. All these aspects contributed to me becoming a better writer as the course
went on and could be seen in my essays.
For my final portfolio I have included my best works of the semester. All
of them show my development as a writer and growth in essays. The essay where I
noticed everything I learned was coming together is the evaluating an argument
essay. It showed my development with creativity by getting known facts about the
topic and incorporating them into the essay. My strength to this essay was going
outside the box and throwing facts in backing my argument that normally wouldn’t
be thought of. My points made in the paper also were very significant, making my
opinion pretty bold.
The next essay I felt was one of my best works is the second argument
paper. The essay consisted of picking a topic and arguing your stand on it. In
my argument paper I could tell that I was getting better at organization and
getting my point across. Getting the point across is important to keeping the
reader interested and to have them wanting more information. Also in this essay
I became better at citations and putting in quotes to spruce up my point being
given. This paper showed my growth in argumentative essays because I was getting
bolder with my argument.
Lastly
the essay I thought was the most enjoyable to do was the review. I felt this way
because it had me take up the job of a critic. Analyzing a movie and doing a
review on it was all about finding aspects that made the movie good or bad.
While doing this paper I was able to capture the point of the film and get
creative in doing a review on it. Doing this helped me become a better
summarizer by being able to see something and make a clear purpose to it.
Reviewing the movie had me finding parts in the movie that were significant in
the development of the story line. Overall this helped me become a better writer
in the sense of finding different ways to paint a picture of something being
reviewed.
I want to thank you for a great learning experience. Everything I learned
will help me keep developing as a writer in the future. The way you taught was
helpful in bringing out my creative side that I was missing for a while. My
skills at essay writing definitely have become sharper and I intend to keep use
of them. Once again I want to thank you for opening my mind
more.
English 1010 F 9:00-12:00
Professor McKeever
December 12, 2012
Word Count: 758
Ending a Great Semester
Professor McKeever it has been a pleasure to be in your class through the
first semester. Throughout this course I have learned a lot about writing essays
and how to improve. Until this class I had not known all about the different
guidelines to different style essays. This course also opened my mind to let
myself go when writing because when doing those thoughts come easier. Most
importantly creativity which helped me was gained through your
teachings.
At the beginning of the course I thought of myself as a fairly decent
writer. I had enough skill to write essays and fulfill the requests of them but,
I knew I could do better. My biggest weaknesses were sentence structure, thesis
statements, and creativity. I wasn’t terrible at these things but I knew they
could get better. What I believed really helped me was smart thinking. The
revising that the tutors did really helped me find my strengths and take notice
of weaknesses to target. Also this allowed a different opinion to be given so I
could get more ideas and to see a reaction from a reader. As other essays came
along I felt I was getting better and better learning from mistakes made. My
sentence structure was becoming stronger and less punctuation mistakes. Yet
these weren’t as important to the creativity factor I learned in this course.
Creativity was the most important skill that I learned. This is because it made
writing a whole lot easier in the sense of coming up with ideas which then
became more fluent. Lastly, learning about different styles of essays and their
guidelines helped a lot. Following the guidelines helped me from putting
unnecessary parts in the writings. They also all around just helped make my
essays stronger so, I could see what to add to the essay or what I should take
out. All these aspects contributed to me becoming a better writer as the course
went on and could be seen in my essays.
For my final portfolio I have included my best works of the semester. All
of them show my development as a writer and growth in essays. The essay where I
noticed everything I learned was coming together is the evaluating an argument
essay. It showed my development with creativity by getting known facts about the
topic and incorporating them into the essay. My strength to this essay was going
outside the box and throwing facts in backing my argument that normally wouldn’t
be thought of. My points made in the paper also were very significant, making my
opinion pretty bold.
The next essay I felt was one of my best works is the second argument
paper. The essay consisted of picking a topic and arguing your stand on it. In
my argument paper I could tell that I was getting better at organization and
getting my point across. Getting the point across is important to keeping the
reader interested and to have them wanting more information. Also in this essay
I became better at citations and putting in quotes to spruce up my point being
given. This paper showed my growth in argumentative essays because I was getting
bolder with my argument.
Lastly
the essay I thought was the most enjoyable to do was the review. I felt this way
because it had me take up the job of a critic. Analyzing a movie and doing a
review on it was all about finding aspects that made the movie good or bad.
While doing this paper I was able to capture the point of the film and get
creative in doing a review on it. Doing this helped me become a better
summarizer by being able to see something and make a clear purpose to it.
Reviewing the movie had me finding parts in the movie that were significant in
the development of the story line. Overall this helped me become a better writer
in the sense of finding different ways to paint a picture of something being
reviewed.
I want to thank you for a great learning experience. Everything I learned
will help me keep developing as a writer in the future. The way you taught was
helpful in bringing out my creative side that I was missing for a while. My
skills at essay writing definitely have become sharper and I intend to keep use
of them. Once again I want to thank you for opening my mind
more.