What I Learned In English

I always used to think of myself as a pretty mediocre writer. I knew I wasn’t absolutely terrible, but ideas tended to be scattered and I could go off on tangents forever. This was a problem in and of itself, but it also meant that I never really got to the point of the paper. So my writing was pretty much my wandering thoughts that I tried to connect, but they were still separate entities. I think that my writing has gotten a lot more organized and focused from this class. I have learned how to pick out information that’s important to me and use that to my advantage instead of looking at articles as a whole and trying to figure out an overall message; I’ve started to read more closely for pieces of information that really stick out to me. However, I do not think that I have really used the technique of “rhetorical reading” quite yet. I tend to use this technique more when an article explains an important issue to me or it really interests me in some way. For example, I read an article about tiger behavior for psychology and I really go into the article. Other than that, I tend to skim over articles for the general information and the idea of the paper and not really try to connect it to anything significant in my life, the world around me, or even the author. I also think planning out things and getting a couple of idea paragraphs written, like we do in class, really helps me in other classes to get a feel for what I want to write before I actually start putting all of my ideas and information into the paper.