How English Composition Affects My Writing

When writing responses to prompts for other classes this term, I have been unknowingly using elements of writing that I have picked up in my English Composition class. These elements include;

• clarifying claims of each paragraph and concluding ideas in paragraphs
• providing information but avoiding too much summarization
• analyzing different texts for one prompt

I realize that I have been stating a claim within the first couple of sentences of each paragraph and that I relate the ends of those paragraphs back to that claim, a writing habit that I learned in Michael J. Cripps’ class. Reflecting on a paper I wrote for my British Literature class about a specific text, I also notice that I try to avoid unnecessary summarization of what takes place in the text, which I too learned to do in English Composition. Foranother essay for which I had to analyze three different stories and identify their differences and similarities, I took a similar approach to writing it that I had done for the Gee and Cuddy paper given at the beginning of the term. Dealing with different texts and studying them closely was not foreign to me since I had already done similar work in English Composition. I am pleased with the grades I have received for my British Literature class assignments, and I can attribute that to employing ways of writing that I studied while in English Composition.