Dear Professor Alshabasy, 

 

Coming into this class my confidence in writing long papers was low and I wasn’t sure of many strategies to effectively complete paper tasks such as persuade. Although I wrote many effective papers in highschool in classes such as AP Capstone, I never formed many concrete strategies to repeatedly succeed in long papers, aside from the basics.

 

My writing process has changed in the sense that I have a better ability to plan out what I am writing and that I now have a set of strategies in order to persuade a reader on the topic I am writing about.

 

The essay prompt that gave me the most trouble was the open ended research paper because it was difficult to figure out a research question that was not too broad or narrow and was something I was genuinely interested in and enjoyed. I enjoyed the persuasive movie review the most because it gave us an opportunity to be a bit more creative in our writing and to fully express our opinions without the need for sources to back it up.

 

I sharpened my skills of planning out papers and structuring papers in a way that is most effective for prompt. Although it was fairly simple project, my biggest challenge was the oral presentation because it was fairly open ended and I didnt want to feel like I was doing something completely different from everyone else. I will continue to work on these by applying the knowledge I have learned about writing papers in this class to writing papers in other classes.

 

The skills I have learned this semester can be applied to other classes because many of the same principles of writing papers will carry over to other classes, for example utilizing a counterclaim to strengthen my own argument. 

 

Other “soft” skills this class has taught me was the ability to participate effectively with other students and looks papers objectively, knowing what can be improved in my own writing. Also this class made me slightly more comfortable participating in class discussion as many of the lectures were oriented around student discussion.

 

Thank you,

Alex Connelly