Gates 1

Nickoli Gates

Professor Beadle

English 115

7 December 2017

Writing to New Heights

Practice makes perfect as the saying goes, and as for writing there could be no truer

statement. Since the beginning of the fall 2017 semester, I have had ample opportunity to

practice and hone my writing abilities into what they are now. From project space, to project

text, and furthermore to project media, I have been able to sit down with various peers and work

on improving my written communication skills. Although my abilities haven't taken a drastic

leap, I have improved in areas such as grammar and organization, as well as finding deeper

understandings and analyses within texts to better serve my thesis.

Two of the most simple but overlooked areas in which one can improve upon their

writing are grammar and syntax. Throughout the writing process it can be easy to overlook the

words that are right in front of them, and nowadays with reliance on spell check, it has become

all too common for misspelling and incorrect word usage to appear. Alongside that, many find it

difficult to properly organize a sentence, or in other words, they find it difficult to communicate

their ideas in the most clear, concise, and efficient manner. Though I never had horrid grammar

or improper syntax to begin with, one example of how I have improved them can be seen in my

project space essay. Originally I had written that essentially the UN decides on nuking Tokyo,

but the humanitarian efforts of the R&D counter team led by Rando prevail in stopping the beast

in its tracks before rationalized nuclear disaster, which I now see is a very convoluted way of

expressing my argument. When re-written, it appears as: Essentially the U.N. decides on nuking
 Gates 2

Tokyo, but because of the humanitarian efforts of the Yaguchi led R&D counter team, Japan

prevails in stopping Godzilla in his tracks without the consequences of rationalized nuclear

disaster. This sentence appears much clearer in content than its original counterpart.

Apart from grammar, organization, and syntax, another area of which I have improved in

is analysis of text, and therefore developing support for my thesis. This is an area that at the

beginning of the year I overlooked the importance of it, but now I realize that it is quite

impossible to have a good paper when you are lacking it. When writing Poetic Space for the

project space prompt, I sat down with an LRC tutor for the first time and we then proceeded to

look at my essay. To be frank, I did not understand the prompt as well as I had liked to, but all

the same one of the things I recall most from our conversation was the directive to be more

precise about how each paragraph relate to the thesis of the paper. Following project space was

project text in which I incorporated the LRC teachings. Knowing then that I needed to relate

back to my thesis on a more regular and obvious basis, I outlined my project text essay so that I

would have each paragraph starting off with a relation to my thesis. For example, in Godzilla:

The Evolution of Japanese Terror, my project text essay, my thesis was based on the idea that

Godzilla represented the evolution of Japan since his debut in 1954 specifically in areas such as

technology, lifestyle, government, and [overall] problems that Japan was facing. The first two

body paragraphs of that essay go on to talk about technology, and from there the 3rd talks about

an international relationship culture that is now more evident in Japanese lifestyle, and so on.

Continuing with my development of analysis, over the tenure of the course I was able to

learn to explain and argue my points more thoroughly. What is meant by this is that I have

learned to look deeper into the possibilities that each topic of my thesis could explore. For

Godzilla, I found a way to relate the evolutionary beast to topics such as technological
 Gates 3

advancement and government control of media content. In project space I learned to expand on

my argument of poetry being a rhetorical device in which I explain that the authors

communication of the beautiful, abstract, or even mundane and ugly, is a persuasion and

furthermore that the author writes poetry to communicate a way of perceiving the world,

making an argument that that way is in fact the way life should be viewed. I believe my

increased capacity to expand an argument and debate points that might not be so clear or evident

to be a great asset. Seeing all perspective and sides of an argument allows you to make sure that

your argument itself has been fully developed.

Through rigorous work on the assigned essays and projects, I have become a more

superior writer. I am able to communicate my ideas in a manner that can be made clear to a

larger and more vast majority of readers. I have also come to know how to deconstruct an

argument in order to assess its weak points and thus make them stronger. As a writer outside of

class, these skills are very valuable to me, and I will continue to use them throughout life.

Writing is simple when you just allow yourself to express the thoughts that linger in your head.

As Mark Twain said: the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a

large matter. tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.