Emma Donnelly

Emily Litle

English 121

12 December 2017

Development As a Writer

In English 121 my writing has developed from the start of the semester right up to just

now, and I hope it continues to develop. Before I started english 121 I had thought I had

discovered my writing style, but I realized there are many ways to write a paper, with a variety of

techniques to make it a well written one. I have been able to further discover my writing style in

this class and gain a lot more knowledge on things such as, citing, paraphrasing, different writing

ways, Ethos, Pathos and Logos and many more that I will discuss in this paper.

For me personally, my favourite thing I learned and used as a writer was revision.

Revising my paper once I had written my first draft, but not me personally, a peer. Peer review

helped me as a writer as I got to get feedback from other students who had wrote papers on the

same topic themselves. They helped me to discover new ideas and change and improve parts of

my paper. They allowed their ideas to bounce off my paper and help me realize mistakes and

changes I could make to better the paper. In class, I learned through the Peer Review Workshop

Literacy Narrative Workshop the importance of revision. Not only does revising your paper help

to pick out mistakes but it allows you to come up with new ideas, and even better ones. Not only

does it help you add more information, but remove unnecessary information that may be in there.

At the start of the semester I learned how to set up my page correctly in the format of

MLA. I had never done this previously in scotland, nor had I even heard of it, so it was

something I had to completely learn from scratch. I wanted to jump straight into writing my
paper and get started with all my thoughts and ideas but i had to set up my page correctly first.

The MLA Format is important because it provides a consistent format for writing papers. It also

guides us in documenting and citing our sources. Which was also another thing I learned to do in

this class, citing my work so that I did not get penalised for plagiarizing someone else. The

handout in class, Avoiding Plagiarism, and MLA Basics gave me all the information I needed to

know on how to cite and set up my page correctly. We were also given a slideshow on d2l, Using

Sources, this gave us information on paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting, and MLA citation

style. All things that were new to me being an international student.

Now that I learned how to set up my page, I could begin to type paper. But I also learned

in English 121 that I could not just start typing, I had to go through a process. The first thing in

the writing process is the pre writing. This included, brainstorming my ideas onto a sheet of

paper, writing down all my ideas and getting everything I am thinking about down, ready for me

to start. I was able to get my best literacy ideas down. Since i had lots of ideas in my head it was

hard to get my best ones into the paper. But this step allowed me to sit down, get all my ideas

down and begin writing.

As well as setting up my page, learning to cite and the writing process, I also learned

different writing styles. We completed a visual culture paper, a summary paper, an annotated

bibliography and a argumentative paper. My favourite one to write was the argumentative paper,

as it enabled me to put lots of emotion and fight into my writing. The one I struggled the most

with was the summary paper, I found it difficult to summarise and paraphrase another essay and

turn it in it my own but with help from slides and handouts I was able to write the paper and get a

grade over 85% on it.

 Throughout the semester I also learned a lot about rhetorical analysis. Ethos, Pathos and

Logos. I had not known much about this topic area before but I gained a large amount of

knowledge over the semester. I felt I gained a lot more about rhetorical analysis when I went

over a paper in class called, Rhetorical Analysis by writing centre. In order to know what each

were, Ethos, Pathos and Logos, we had to define them. Then the worksheet then went on to

discuss, how an author argues, rather than what he argues. In other words we had to the author's

writing using the rhetorical keys. This was an important skill I learned as I could use it in almost

every paper, to connect to the readers.

As a freshman, I feel as this semester in English 121 closes, that I have really been able to

develop my knowledge and skills as a writer. Not only in my papers, but before and after. Setting

up my page, citing and then going on to revise it and edit it. I have not only grown as a writer,

but truly discovered my own writing style, what suits me. The amount of information I have

learnt over this semester will benefit me in all classes where i have to write papers as I will be

able to connect with my reader. Seeing my writing change and develop over this semester makes

me excited to continue to write and take what i have learned into my second semester of English

122.