Personal Narrative: Improving Writing Skills

As my second semester in college comes to an end, composition two writing class gave me a great opportunity for me to improve my writing skills. It also gives me hope that in the next several years of college life I could become successful in many writing forms. In this semester, there was four main essays to write and also quizzes of different topics such as fallacies. It was a very good learning experience. I learn how to analyze different people’s writings, because not everyone writes the same. The text book of this class, Norton Field Guide, I can say helped me a lot. The articles in the text book are very interesting and allows me to read different forms of writing from persuasive to argumentative. I did not notice before, but I have started
to learn how to express my different ideas clearly and with a flow. As we know, there are many assignments to do during the semester.

During the semester I frowned every time a new essay topic was given out, but I feel very thankful and appreciate that the professor gave the class numerous chances to practice writing skills and it really helps to improve my formal speaking. However, this semester I had four papers to write. Three of them had to be a minimum seven hundred-fifty words and the last one had to be at least a thousand. These four papers I wrote, fast food helps, it’s a brother’s love, we do need blue, and can we really multi-task not only help me better understand complicated articles, but they also taught me to be creative and use my knowledge to support my points about the idea. My first essay assignment was about how has the spread of fast food chains affected American life and eating habits, and are the effects more positive of negative.
I took the side of fast food having more positive effects whether than negative, because it is convenient, cheap to purchase, and create jobs for the unemployed. My second writing was more of an evaluation of a movie called Brotherly Love. What became an obstacle was trying to form a cohesive thesis so every standard is mention and is easy to read. Next, was my evaluation of Tori Bosch’s argument. Bosch argues that the current zombie craze originates in part in the anxiety felt by white-collar workers in the current economic malaise that their skills are of no value. While I was evaluating her argument I had to choose a side, agree or disagree. Lastly, was a persuasive and documented essay about multi-tasking and how it really does not benefit people. I needed to get the audience on my side along with providing valid reasons of why they should even consider listening to me to build my credibility. In addition, we not only wrote, but also learned about logical fallacies. Before taking composition two I could tell you nothing about fallacies. But, now I have the ability to tell you what exactly a fallacy is while also naming different kinds like overstatement, oversimplification, and hasty generalization, just to name a few. All a fallacy is, is a failure in reasoning that renders an argument invalid. When I walked
into the class I have never heard of fallacies, and had no idea it was a part of English composition. Now that I am looking back at all the work I did, I now see that every essay and assignment was for a reason. I walked inside the class with no intentions of learning, but as time progressed it made me become more open-minded. I may not be the best writer but I will be ending the semester a stronger writer than before.