Dear Reader,
I
came into this English 115 not knowing what to expect to learn from this class.
Feeling like I already knew the basics of English, I should already know how to
write a strong and successful paper at college level, but I was wrong. There
was so much I had not learned about from my previous classes and all the
different styles of papers you can write. Me being a third year college student
in a freshman class made it very difficult for me in the first couple of weeks.
I didn’t think I knew everything there was to writing, but having an older
mentality than most of the students in the class I felt I had a slight
advantage in taking this English course, man was I wrong. Feeling like I had
seniority had kind of held me back in the beginning, but as the course went on,
I started to notice that I could learn a lot from this course because there was
still a lot of learning about writing that I never touched upon. My writing was
average when I began this course, but being naive I felt like it would be
advanced for an English 115 class, but I soon found out that it was actually a
little below average. This course has inspired me to improve my writing and
also how to read and comprehend effectively. I have always wanted to be a
stronger writer and in the past classes I have taken, it had all been the same
teaching methods so I was hoping that this class would really go into detail by
taking me through the process step-by-step of how to truly improve my English
fundamentals.
After
I had let my guard down and realized the amount of valuable information I could
learn from this class, I started to see a positive change. Whenever I read for
my English classes before, I would always read a line then have to go back to
certain lines because I would read sometimes and not comprehend any of it at
all. I had learned about annotating this semester, which had really helped me
read and retain the information I was reading about. Whenever I was confused by
what the author was saying or trying to say, I would write a question down and
then continue reading to see if the author had answered my question that I was
not too sure about before. I had written personal essays in my life time, but
none like in this class, the topics we wrote about were a lot more “personal”
and wasn’t just another assignment we had to do, but one that we enjoyed
writing and had taught me that writing could be fun and a way to express
ourselves. On top of writing meaningful personal essays, I learned how to look
into things in a lot more detailed perspective. Our second essay had a lot to
do with the social media, and I had no clue how in depth you can go into
something as small as a movie poster.
Many people just see a movie poster, but there can be so many little
things in there that can describe what the movie is about or is there to catch
a bystanders eye without them even noticing. I wrote my second essay about the
movie, Step Brothers and to most people
it is just an immature and funny movie and I even thought so at first before we
started talking about movies and media in class. I looked into depth about the
movie Step Brothers and saw that
behind all the immature jokes and scenes, there was a valuable lesson and moral
story behind it, which was to save and to hold on to the spirit of youth no
matter how old we become. I would have never looked into something this deep
before and write a whole essay on it. The last topic we are going over for our
third essay was some what challenging because I have always been a fan of using
technology, but being in this course I wanted to challenge myself, so I wrote a
paper in a opposing view from how I felt. I had a much harder time writing this
essay because it wasn’t feelings or information that I thought was true, but
having to do research to try and support my argument of how technology is
making us lazy. These three essays had taught me different styles of writing
and how to break them down and to construct them successfully. This course has also
taught me how to write an effective yet supportive thesis for my paper. I knew
what a thesis was before this class, but through this class I had realized how
important the thesis is for an essay because it is setting up and allowing the
reader know what your whole essay is going to be about. English 115 had
improved my writing and had opened my eyes a little more into the world of
writing and I can say that my writing has improved immensely from where it was
before looking through and editing my own papers throughout the semester. Not only had my mind of the writing
world increased exponentially, but I have learned so many different ways and
tips of how to read and comprehend what I was reading and how to set up a
strong paper with effective supporting evidence. In the future I will take all
these helpful tips whether it be now in college or when I have job because many
jobs include writing, whether it is for your job or to network with others.
Most jobs also rely on reading, which I will know how to comprehend more
efficiently and be able look into closer detail.
What
I have learned from English 115 will not only helps me for future references,
but also will help me learn now as a college student. Everywhere we go there is
something we have to read or write, it is how our universe communicates and
grows from each other. All my classes I have now, I have to read and write in.
So why do all colleges stress reading and writing if we are never going to use
it in the future? It is because no matter how old we get or where we go in
life, we will have to keep learning and growing and we can’t accomplish much
without the key component of writing and reading. This English 115 may be a
very miniscule thing in my life for the future, but what I have learned from this
class has taught me many tips to that I will take with me to help lead me in
the right direction and move on to bigger things in life. Sure this class was
just another class I took, but in a few years from now it will be like any
other class, most of us won’t remember exactly what we did exactly, but the
knowledge we gained and tips we learned has helped shaped and lead us one step
closer to where we stand today and what we will become tomorrow.
-Tyler Murata
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