English
29 April 2013
Pardon my Back By not knowing I needed English and not taking writing seriously I ended up being where I belong in English 050. After many years of not being in college, I wanted to go back to become an electrician. Being that it wasn’t acknowledged that I was in college before, I had to take the placement test. It was a long test with math and writing on it and the math was first. I took the math seriously because I thought I needed it for my major, but the writing part I slacked on and ended up not placing out. By not taking the writing section seriously, it caused me to have to take English 050 before I could move forward into the English I need for my major. It was a shock to me because I didn’t know writing was necessary for my major. There wasn’t anything I could do but take it and give it everything I had from beginning to the end. This is the start of how I found out that English is something I enjoy doing and how it ended being where I felt the most comfortable. From the beginning of the class my strengths and weaknesses came flying out like a bat out of hell. My first paper was a narrative essay that I did quite well on but my punctuation needed some attention. I wrote the essay on a friend of mine who has been through some ups and downs in his life but ended up turning things around and doing well. I also had some grammar problems but I know that it was just me not paying attention and going over my paper enough before turning it in. When I got it back, I made the corrections in punctuation and tried to learn from the mistakes I had made.
I learned that brainstorming was something that helped me in many ways. Brainstorming helps me to get my ideas down on paper to refer back to when I was stuck writing my essays. Not only did I just jot down what I wanted to write about, I also put my ideas in order so I would know how or at least have an idea of how I wanted my paper to be structured. Brainstorming is something that I learned from this class and will use in the future. It keeps me from getting writer’s block and having to stop writing to figure out what to write about next.
Learning in class and working in the text book helped me with my punctuation. I was having problems with commas and semicolons and where they should be placed in a sentence. This type of writing came from me not continuing to use them outside of doing an essay for college. At Indiana University of PA in 2003 I took a college writing class and did well in it, but once I was finished I stopped writing and over time I lost it. Being in 050 has taught me to practice writing and like anything in life over time you will get better. I can say that over the semester with the help of Professor Keenan, I have gotten better with my writing in the area of punctuation. It is up to me to continue the progress and become the best writer I can become.
I saw progress in all of my papers and in one way or another I got better in writing. My first essay was a narrative essay that I wrote called Good to Bad to Better. I wrote about a friend and how his life took a turn for the worst but he eventually turned things around to do better. I turned this essay in and I was missing commas, misspelling words, and used words that I should not have. I corrected these mistakes and learned from them. I thought my second paper, a descriptive essay on New York City, was