Dear Reader,

 

During my time in English 170: Writing and Rhetoric, I learned that it is best to explore one’s curiosity rather than just pay it no mind and toss it to the side. By exploring curiosity, it is possible to venture down avenues of thought that would otherwise be left abandoned. One example of this was the first brief assignment. In this assignment I was tasked to research ritual items from a given theme. The theme I was tasked with was the occult. At first, I was skeptical about this theme as I had barely known anything about the occult, thinking that it was just about magic spells and witchcraft. However, by exploring my curiosity on the occult I found out that it also pertains to the supernatural, magical properties, and branches into religion. This moved my thought process towards longevity and the duration of items and ideas such as, religious beliefs, ritual items, and culture. I eventually settled on gunpowder, a man made object that’s been around since the 10th century and remains an important object in contemporary society. 

Revision was a large part of my writing process. For example, whilst writing my cultural essay I found myself coming back to the draft multiple times and finding new points to add or a better way to establish a premade argument. These constant revisions were crucial in my writing process because I was able to mold my writing into something that I could be proud of and accurately represents my writing prowess.

Throughout my research I learned that it is very beneficial to be thorough when analyzing your sources. Many sources may fit an argument but it’s important to be able to discern which is best for the argument that is being presented. This helped me find sources that were more applicable to my specific topic rather than a subtopic of my idea leading to me losing sight of the main goal of my cultural essay.

After this course I feel like I’ve really grown when it comes to paragraph structure and thesis statements. Learning about quotation sandwiches changed the way I view paragraphs and has allowed me to construct paragraphs that are persuasive and well-written. Additionally, the thesis “formula” has made writing a thesis statement easier and allows me to jump into my topic quicker rather than taking days to figure out how I’m going to approach my prompt.

I feel I still need to grow in setting up my drafts. I’m not the biggest fan of writing so drafts have always been hard for me. However, writing drafts this semester has really helped me with my writing and catching grammatical errors and confusing sentence structure that usually happens on the first draft.

This has led me to believe that I have made a lot of progress with my research, writing, and idea generation this semester. I’ve gained more confidence in my ability to write at the college level and in professional settings.

 

Sincerely,

Angelo Fardella