Brandon Pettenati

Ms. Boyle

ENG 160

12/3/2021

 

Before taking this course I absolutely despised the subject of English. I suppose that was due to the courses I had taken throughout high school. In high school, the only essays I had got to write were essays based on books. This course gave me the opportunity to write about real-world topics, some that actually matter. During my time in this course, my process of writing a paper has stayed mostly the same. The only thing that I really do differently now is that I will typically try to come up with a plan before I begin writing. The two things that I feel I was the most successful at were my language and tone and my use of research and citation. I’d say that my sentences rarely ever were too simplistic or awkward-sounding; They always served a purpose in whatever I was writing. I’d also say that my research and citation were very good. The quotes I used were always in direct support of my argument. One thing that I would revise in my essays is how I argue my point. I always feel like I am sort of just saying you should do x because of y. I have good arguments and facts to back them up, but I can never find a good way to word them. Creating a digital portfolio did not particularly change my writing process. The way I see it is that I would never hand in a half-baked or desultory paper under my name to my instructor. If I am confident enough to give it to my instructor, then I am confident enough to share it with a larger audience. To me, it’s kind of the same thing as privacy is in modern society. There is pretty much no privacy anymore with the internet, social media, and all the technology that surrounds us, however, if you have nothing to hide then it is not a concern to you. I would say I now feel prepared to take on ENG 170. This course has ingrained the skills necessary to write research-based papers that were briefly touched on in high school. Although I am still not particularly enthralled about taking English courses, I would say I don’t mind it as much as I used to. I can easily say that I enjoyed this course a lot more than any English course I took in high school.