Course Reflection
This semester flew right by and after all the assignments, projects, papers, and Tumblr posts that we all wrote I just want to do a happy dance. Walking into this class I thought we would have to do boring readings, long essays, and hard projects. I am not saying it was easy but I am saying that it was helpful, I walked out of that class knowing I did not just learn something I will never use again, I learned A LOT of strategies that I will continue to use for other classes, my future business, and even just for fun. The assigned readings throughout the semester were not hard or boring they were helpful and contributed to my writing process for each different assignment.
Some of the main ideas we read about are Formats and Modalities, Summary, Forming arguments, posing meaningful questions. For the most part I really do remember what I learned and was able to take away from those readings. I learned that summaries are more than just 4 to 5 sentence paragraphs and without realizing it we summarize our days when we talk to people and summarize other things but in writing there is more to it. I learned that in writing an argumentative essay you do not always need to win but sometimes you need to leave room for people to argue back and also be open minded toward others point of view. These things are meaningful to me and I will take that with me to other classes I will take in my university career.
In having different types of assignments most of them all had to do with developing an argument and supporting that argument with good evidence. Each reading was able to answer any questions I might have had before starting the assignments and after those readings were always good to look back at just to make things better. My least favorite readings were those types that I had to read over and over to understand. One was an article by Yancey and the only reason I did not like it is because it was intended for a different audience. That made it harder for me to follow what she was explaining but in the end once I understood I did realize that her article helped elaborate on chapter 10 and afterwards I was able to better comprehend the importance of arguments and the components used to structure an argument. I think just because I did struggle with the Lit Review I feel that more should be given to help students better understand what is wanted out of the assignment. I don't think that there needs to be revisions on the readings but maybe just providing more examples and other readings to support the chapters will maybe help a student who might struggle like I did.
I would recommend this class to anyone and I do have to say it was one of the only classes I really learned from. I am taking a handful of techniques and writing strategies with me after this semester, and for that I feel accomplished.
