At the moment, before taking the English Composition Course my writing skills are rather intuitive, lacking profound theoretical knowledge. I have always been assured that certain rules and schemes may only disturb writers’ flight of thought and limit their opportunities for the realization of the creative concept. It is very difficult for me to meet all the format and style requirements set for creative work and to express everything I want in the same paper. I enjoy the process of creation and writing, I think this course will include a lot of interesting exercises. I hope it will come up to my expectations, but regardless my enthusiasm at the beginning will be useful for accomplishing the course objectives.
Amazingly, the author of the course uses an individual approach to every writer taking into consideration his/her traits and psychological peculiarities. Working through the inventory exercise, I learned that I am more emotional than rational and my reasoning is often subjective, focused on feelings and values. I think that it is useful for writing opinion essays or critiques but may become an obstacle while formulating arguments and finding logical links. In order to benefit from my emotional type of thinking, I would like to learn how to choose suitable examples from my own experience for supporting the main idea of the work and the right ways of including them in the main body. At the same time I would like to become more objective working at certain types of assignments, to learn how to present weighty arguments, to provide clear introductions and logical conclusions, in other words, to learn better ways for expressing my thoughts.
Rereading what I have written for Journal Entry, I concluded, that by taking the course I managed to improve my writing skills greatly. Though I was assured that the theoretical part is useless and the process of creation should not be limited by strict rules and schemes, when I was writing the first practical assignment, using the graphic organizers and the textbook, I changed my mind. Against my expectations, the textbook includes not strict rules, dos and don’ts, but rather useful hints and step-by-step instructions for successful writing. I can not say that my attitude to writing changed significantly before taking the course, but it helped to form the skills required for successful writing, though at the moment I understand that one must constantly work developing abilities and improving skills. I think that it is this course that has laid the foundation for my further development as a successful writer, but I still need to work hard to achieve perfection, if it is possible to achieve it.
Another point, which will be useful for my further study, is the inventory exercise, which concludes what type of learners I belong to. Taking into consideration the five aspects of my learning style was really useful while taking the course, as it helped to adapt the material to my personal peculiarities and to achieve the best possible results consequently. At the same time bearing in mind my weak points I knew to which assignments and approaches I was to pay more attention to become more flexible and develop my latent abilities. Thus, using my skills of persuasion, characteristic of emotional learners, I was successful at opinion essays and it was easy to improve my skills that were marked before taking the course. Being an independent learner according to the inventory results, I tried to be more active working in groups to develop my social intelligence and discover new ways of receiving information for further writing.
This English Composition Course helped me to become a careful and critical reader. It is very pleasant to admit that now I pay attention to the details in the text which I would have ignored previously. It helps me to find new logical links and choose better examples for supporting my ideas. Now it is much easier for me to analyze texts and to express my own opinion concerning them or some abstract notions. I think that I will use the step-by-step strategies of the course writing researches or creative works in other subjects as well.
The most valuable contributions of this course are its focus on individual learning preferences, practical use of visual aids and useful hints for successful writing. The material must be accessible for those who are not very knowledgeable in theory. Following the step-by-step instructions concerning the writing principles I managed to improve my writing style, form the skills of logical organization of my thoughts. I must admit that at the moment my reasoning seems to be much more objective and concluding became much easier for me. The least understandable part of the course was the detailed description of the rhetorical patterns of development.
In order to improve the course so it better accomplishes its objectives, the author could be offered to prepare practical assignments for every topic of the extensive instruction in reading. Perhaps, every learner could analyze his/her favorite book after learning these instructions. I think that writing an essay concerning the new details that he/she discovered in the book only after taking the course would be useful. It can not be denied that working with the material that is interesting for the students could achieve better results. In general, it is difficult to offer some improvements for the course that helped me to become more successful in writing because it combines a lot of strategies and can be adapted for students of different ages and levels.
Bibliography
McWhorter, Kathleen. Successful College Writing : Skills, Strategies, Learning Styles.Bedford/St.Martin’s. 2009: 1024.