As I look back at all of assignments that I have completed this semester, I feel that my writing has improved tremendously as a result of taking this English 103 course. Prior to starting this course, I thought that my writing was much better than it actually was, but my experiences with this course have shown me that I had a lot of room for improvement. I think that my level of critical thinking is pretty good, I am fairly well read on most subjects, and can understand and respond intelligently to different perspectives and opinions. However, being a good critical thinker or speaker is not the same as being a good critical thinking writer, and like I said, this challenging course has shown me that I need a lot of work.
This semester’s experience has helped me in many ways. One of the main reasons that I think that I have gained so much this semester is the material that we were assigned to read and write about. Almost everything that I have read has been based on extremely interesting topics, and has been very informational as well. The material has been the kind of stuff that I would probably read up on anyway, so it always kept me focused, interested, and eager to get to work on the assignments. I admit that I was challenged by the weekly Exploring Language chapter questions, which were not as difficult as they were long, and sometimes a bit tedious. However, these assignments, combined with the other assignments that were due that week, really taught me how to buckle down and sweat when it comes to getting your all of your work done on time.
The various types of assignments required for this course has helped to enhance my writing ability in many ways. Also, the many of the assignments have been different and challenging, such as the blogs and responses, Peer Draft Reviews, and the specific style essays like Synthesis and Rhetorical Analysis. All of these were completely new to me, especially the blogs and responses, so I have definitely learned a lot from these writing assignments. Another area where I learned a lot is with properly the citing sources that I use, which is a mandatory and very important element to almost any paper or essay. I was setting up my quotes and sources completely wrong, in a way that was confusing to readers. The Peer Draft Reviews within my Pardis group, as well as coaching and assistance from our instructor, has helped me see this. Also, I have learned to put the punctuation marks inside of the quotes, instead of on the outside (duh). In addition to the proper format of quoting citations, I also feel that I am much better at incorporating the quotes or information that I get from my sources in a much more creative way, such as using box quotes, and cleverly weaving quotes into sentences. I'm glad that I took this class, and all of this experience will help me tremendously as a writer, and will be beneficial as I continue my education and in my future career as a teacher.
I have to agree with you on the critical thinking questions. Those were super long! I always had at the least 2,000 words for one week’s worth of questions. I have never experienced such lengthy assignments, but they helped my writing so much. I have to say that they increased my critical thinking skills tremendously. While reading the other textbooks in class, like On Bullshit, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Invitation to a Beheading, and Animal Farm, I found myself writing in the margins about questions that I have and comments, and writing definitions to words I do not know the books themselves. I found this was a prime example of my critical thinking skills improving. I knew I might not remember all my thoughts or comments on the books later, so I made notes the books, and now I remember all the information a lot better, and I have interesting questions that I posed that I was able to incorporate into my essays. Those critical thinking questions might have been long and tedious, although they really improved my critical thinking, and I truly believe that I will never stop thinking this way. Right now, as I am responding to your blog, I am utilizing my critical thinking skills.
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