I came into this class with a background of business writing training. I was taught to get right to the point, and cut out anything that was unnecessary. So when I read that I would be writing essays every day, and that they would have a word limit, I was very intimidated. After the first few essays, I started to get the hang of non-business writing. Now I was able to free-write and add detail to minor events without fearing penalty. A new world of writing was opening up to me as I completed every essay for this class. Looking back, I have learned many things from this English writing class.
The main thing that I learned from this class was revision. It is not that I was unable to revise my writings before I had this class, but that I only knew how to trim stuff from my papers. I was real good at editing things from my writings, and now I am able to actually add stuff. My revision skills are now more about clarifying points for my reader's sake, and not about editing out stuff that may be too wordy or confusing. Now I understand that my readers are not always going to be upper management with no time to waste. Some of my writings will be for people who are looking to read my topic because it interests or pertains to them.
While writing for an audience that actually has time to spend, I have had to shape my writings to their needs. I used unity as a basis for each essay that I wrote. After each essay, I reread and ask "is there anything that is not unified with the thesis statement?" This question makes me really look in depth at my writing. If something is not in complete unity, I do not have to cut it out. I can revise it to fit the thesis and keep it in the essay.
The type of essay that I found the most difficult to keep in unity was the illustrative essay. It was very hard to describe events and topics colorfully without straying from the thesis statement. However in the illustrative essay, I was able to go into detail on the points that I presented. This was a very good exercise to break me of business writing. Also, this is gave me a chance to write about something that I was interested in.
I actually was able to write about things that I wanted to with most of the essays. I really liked this, because writing is an art form. I used to draw, and hated to have to draw something that I did not want to draw. It made it seem like work, instead of fun. The same idea is true with writing. I find that I actually enjoy writing about topics that I choose. If a topic is assigned to me, there is a good chance that I will not be able to relate to the topic. If that happens, how can I put any kind of passion into the writing?
If I am able to relate to my topic, I find that writing up to and past the word limit is a simple task. Also, I tend to have time to go back and clarify topics. Since this was a summer course, time was always a factor. If I had time to go back and review an essay, I found that I was able to go back and add writing techniques into it. I really liked using dialogue, because it really seemed to bring the writing to life. Also, I loved using synonyms to help describe the point that I am trying to get across.
This is why i really liked the compare and contrast essay. I like that I was able to pick what I was comparing and contrasting more. This allowed me to already have to knowledge about my topic, so I could focus my efforts on improving my writing skills, and using newly learned writing techniques. A lot of the essays took me a while to write because I had to do prewriting exercises to gather information about a topic. This made my focus lean away from using new techniques.
This class was a great experience for learning and demonstrating new writing techniques. It definitely pulled me away from briefness of business writings, and showed me a new world of detail that can be explored. In the future, I plan to use just about everything that I learned in this class to achieve my personal goals for the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment