Esther Christodoss

Leigh Ann Moore

ENGL 1302.08

5 May 2017

My Final Words on English 1302

For about four months, I have been studying in a course called English 1302. I learned a

lot about my own English abilities and limitations during the semester. From start to finish, I was

able to improve my grammar, sentence structure, and how I came off as a writer to my audience.

I was also able to develop my writing voice over the course of all the papers I was assigned to

complete. Besides the days where I had to overdose on coffee to finish paragraphs in the morning

and days where I completely forgot about assignments I had to do, I enjoyed the community and

involvement in our classroom, and the course as a whole. I was able to improve in effective

communication because of helpful feedback from my instructor and my classmates, as well as

the essays I had to write.

Besides the grammatical and formatting errors I made, there was one thing I improved

with in this semester: clarity. I had always had issues with forming sentences that were either too

vague or did not compliment my essays at all. However, with the help of my instructor, I was

able to realize which sentences sounded awkward and needed improvement throughout this

course. I also received helpful feedback from my classmates in peer reviews; they pointed out

where my sentences sounded awkward, what information I might need to research more, and so

on. In my first major essay which concerned rhetorical analysis, I had a tendency to use

unnecessary words that reduced my authority and my clarity. An example of this would be in the
fourth paragraph of my rhetorical analysis draft, where I added the word from after escape,

which was unnecessary for me to add. After I received this feedback, I learned to watch for

words that I may not need in future essays. Through this and similar feedback, I improved in

writing.

While my peers and instructor helped me improve in my writing, the essays I had to write

themselves taught me a lot about aspects of writing. In my causal and proposal essay

assignments, I was able to tell the difference between listing causes and providing solutions to a

specific problem, as I previously found this a bit confusing. Both of these essays gave me more

experience in comparing and contrasting both causes and solutions. I also thought it was

interesting to have two major essay assignments that directly connected in a manner that made

the latter one resolve the previous one. These two essay assignments and the other essays I was

assigned to do helped me improve in effective communication.

In conclusion, while I have improved in writing from this course, I still have a long way

to go as a writer. I still make grammatical and clarification errors in my current essays and hope

to improve on them in the future. If I take any more English courses from this point on, I hope to

receive more feedback from classmates and instructors. Their feedback will help me improve as

a writer as it is easier for people who are not the authors of my essays to determine my errors. I

also hope for creative and challenging writing assignments like the ones I was given in this

course. Writing may not be my true passion, but I care about writing and I do not want to stop

my progress as a writer here. Through help and input from my peers and instructors, I have and

will continue to improve in effective communication.