I really do not feel that my writing has improved significantly because of the assignments that we did in this class. I think that I understand MLA formatting a little more, but my writing skills have stayed pretty much the same. I did not get anything out of the “They Say, I Say” book, it confused me more than it helped me. I think that I learned more about music than writing in our, “Music and Culture” book. The questions that we answered just made me look at the individual essay (the content of the article) more closely than really focus on how they were written, I guess. The blogs were awful to write every week, and just made me more stressed out rather than more focused on improving my writing. It was really interesting reading everyone else's blogs to see what their opinions were, but responding to them was not anything that I looked forward too. I feel that I was an okay writer before I took this class, I am confident in my grammar and spelling skills, and I don't think that has changed. I really was not a fan of writing essays or blogs or anything else, and I dreaded taking an English class for the first time after high school. With the right topic, writing can sometimes be fun and interesting, but having to forcefully write about topics that did not interest me did not help me improve.
I actually really enjoyed (as far as this class goes) the PDR's. I like helping others out so this was my opportunity to help out my fellow classmates (or at least try to). I actually learned from those the most because the constructive criticism from my peers helped me understand what was wrong with my paper and helped me see both the good and the bad in my essays. I've always liked playing “teacher” in my younger days, so the PDR's gave me that chance to “grade” papers and compare and contrast my essays to the ones that I peer edited.
I think that I am still an okay writer and I do not think that I have improved or gotten worse. All-in-all, if MLA was not taken into account, I think that I can write quality work and am proud of some of the things that I have written in the course of this class. But overall I think that my writing skills have stayed the same, which is not a bad thing I guess.
Hey good job on your blog this week, I enjoyed reading it a lot.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you I also do not feel like my writing has really improved, but my understanding for MLA style writing has improved a little bit. I also did not like the They say I say book, it was really confusing. I did not like the way everything was set up in the book, it just made everything worse. And in the music and culture book I also feel like I learned more about music than writing. I did not get anything that will help me in my writing. I also did not like writing the blogs every week it just made me worry about all work even more than I should. We had way too much work every week and I feel like I could not try to do my best on the assignments because there were just too many and I could not spend too much time on one single assignment. The only thing that I liked from this class was the PDR, that is the only thing that I feel helped me out in this class. Again, good job on your blog.
Hey wow, I would have never guessed that you would think that you haven't improved. I have followed your blogs for a while and I have seen an inprovement. While reading over your research paper I saw the skills that you learned from your they say I say. You introduced qoutes way better in that Paper than the first Compare and Contrast essay.
ReplyDeleteFor alot of people they struggled with the Music and culture book. I'm not sure why. It was very contraversial as far as writing about music, however I believe that being forced to write about somnething you don't like would improve writing skills, this is why; When somone doesn't like something or is bored with something but then forced to elaboate on the topic, this makes the person find somthing if not 1 thing good to write about. I feel this enlightens us as individuals and stops us from being narrow minded if you will. Thanks for all your help in the PDR department, although all you have really ever told me is I can't spell, this I already knew. :) Good luck to you and don't sweat the small stuff, I bet you have an A .