Writing 105 Top Five

When I signed up for Writing 105 I genuinely thought I would be writing essay after essay every week, just like I always had in English and writing courses, however, I was pleasantly surprised when I was greeted with one of the most useful courses I've ever taken. I learned too much for it all to be mentioned, but some lessons were more important than others when it came to improving my writing skills, as well as teaching me skills that will benefit me greatly in the future.

Although it may seem like a broad topic, I believe I improved in no other area as much as I did with analysis. So many assignments this year incorporated analysis in one way or another, which led me to improve greatly in this area. Between the New Yorker Cover project, the Op-Doc assignment, and the Final Unit 2 Paper, analysis was incorporated into much of what we did. In the beginning of the year, I associated analysis with close reading and tedious work, however, as we progressed through Unit 2 and the remainder of the year, I began to enhance my analysis skills and truly understand what analysis is. These projects taught me how to look deeper, as well as how to analyze different media. Through analyzing artwork, songs, videos, and much more, my analysis skills only grew stronger. Analysis skills are needed not just in future schooling, but in real life as well.

Taking different perspectives into consideration is a big part of analysis, but on it’s own the skill is much more complicated. I didn’t use this to its full intent prior to using it more in projects such as the Final Argumentative Essay, however, throughout the year I learned to incorporate different perspectives into my writing. Recognizing different stakeholders and their perspectives in arguments made my writing and arguments much stronger throughout the year. Taking these different perspectives into consideration outside of writing allows me to gain more knowledge and educate myself on subjects before taking a side, a skill much needed in the real world.

Using different sources allows me to use other people’s perspectives directly from the source, however, at the start of the year I was unable to properly introduce my sources, leaving readers with no reason to believe the words of my sources. As the year progressed, I learned how to better incorporate my sources, but by the end of Unit 3, I was able to use rhetorical sourcing to smoothly introduce and list the credentials of the sources I used. This made the points I made in my writing much stronger and allowed for my essays to be more compelling. This is useful for writing assignments in the future, as it’s a much stronger way of introducing sources and works much better with many different formats.

Prior to this course, I had only ever written structured academic essays in my English classes, however, throughout this year we tackled several different formats. From the email at the very start of the year, to the very blog that this is being posted on, formats I had never truly experimented with were introduced to me. Life isn’t always going to be academic essays, but instead emails and informal writing, so tackling these formats was incredibly useful, especially as it allowed me to develop my writing style in these formats.

Speaking of style, the most important thing I learned this year was how to leave the five paragraph theme paper format behind. In the previous years I had always followed this format, but the entirety of this course allowed for me to truly craft my writing style and develop it into something that doesn’t sound as robotic and monotone as a five paragraph theme paper. Developing my own style allowed for me to better express myself and my ideas through my writing, which is my main takeaway from this course.