Personal learning experiences and insights

English have learned valuable communication and writing skills in this English course and will be able to apply what I have learned toward other academic classes as well as throughout my personal and professional life. From information on plagiarism to thorough tips on writing research papers, the content of this class has been comprehensive and challenging too. My writing has become much better since taking this course, and so has my researching and critical thinking skills. I always knew that writing research papers demands a considerable amount of time, energy, and concentration. Researching a topic can be tedious work, involving hours of library hunting. Organizing our thoughts is one of the most important steps in the process. We learned how to create clear outlines before writing so that our paper would be more focused and organized. My writing flows well when I follow my topic outlines, and outlines make it easier for me to write solid transitions between sentences. Another helpful tip I learned in this class regarding writing research papers was to narrow a topic so that the paper can be highly focused. Developing a clear thesis can compel the reader's attention and make the paper interesting. In this class, we learned how to develop a topic for research that is not too generalized, but one that is also accessible.

Also, we learned how to write effective persuasive and argumentative papers. Persuasive writing uses rhetorical techniques such as appealing to the reader's emotions as well as to logic. Also, we have to create ethos, or credibility. I found that learning about pathos, logos, and ethos were some of the most valuable lessons gained from this English course. Persuasive papers have different formats from research papers, although both use some of the same writing and research techniques. For example, persuasive papers should also be well-organized and focused on a thesis, but the purpose in a persuasive paper is not only to form a solid opinion and back it up with fact, but also to try to change the minds of our readers.

A appreciate the fact that this English course also included sections on writing effective narrative papers. I found narrative papers to be fun to write because they involve storytelling and rich descriptive language. I feel more creative writing narrative papers, which is why I prefer writing them, as opposed to research papers. When we write narrative papers, I can draw from personal experience, which makes the writing process easier than it is during the process of writing a research paper. Also, the techniques of writing narrative papers differ from the techniques of writing research and persuasive papers. Organization and focus is important, but the paper can be less formal in a narrative essay.

A found literary analysis papers to be among the most difficult to write. I found it very helpful to encounter some of the common techniques for approaching literary criticism. Learning about the different formats such as MLA was helpful, and I do feel that I have improved in my writing skills after learning some of the proper techniques of writing literary analysis papers. Because I do enjoy reading, I feel that my writing will improve as I write more about literature in the future.