My understanding of writing is that it is a very important skill to have in life.

Just about any job

you will hold will require you to share your thoughts and opinions or someone else’s thoughts
and opinions, on a written level. Outside of the work setting, writing will be a crucial part of your
daily life as you will always need to communicate your thoughts with others. Writing offers us an
easy, quick and effective way of communication. For me personally, writing is very important. I
used to believe that writing wasn’t something I needed to go to multiple years of schooling for. I
always thought that a basic understanding was enough and that since I wasn’t planning on
becoming an author, librarian or editor, I didn’t need to possess a very high level of writing. Now
I understand that it is a very important skill to have that I will use writing in just about every facet
of life. It’s a way to express your feelings, hopes and desires on a professional and personal
level.

It was at the start of the school year before my first English class at ASU that I didn't believe
writing was very important. But after that class and coming into this semester, I understood that
writing was crucial. It was something that I knew I needed to push myself in as it was only
gonna help me. I knew that the increased ability to communicate myself in a multitude of ways
to other people was going to be very important. Looking back at this second semester and
thinking about what I’ve learned and how I feel now, I wouldn't say my view of writing has
changed. If anything, I think that what I’ve learned this semester has only reinforced my positive
belief in writing. This class has taught me a ton of new strategies and techniques that will help
me communicate my thoughts on a high level in a lot of different ways.

Throughout this semester, this class used a ton of different activities and learning methods to try
and teach us the information. Out of all the activities we did I thought interacting with my
classmates over the course of the semester has contributed the most to my overall
understanding of writing. It was really interesting to see how other people interpret and use the
information that was presented to us in class. It was really beneficial to be able to gather my
own thoughts and opinions on the new material we were learning and then talk to other people
and see what they thought. This way I was able to get multiple viewpoints and see the situation
from multiple angles. This allowed me to learn at a very high level and definitely contributed
most to my learning this semester.

Out of the projects we did I really enjoyed Writing Project 1: Visual Analysis. Nowadays we are
constantly surrounded by ads and visual art, sometimes it can be overwhelming and tough to
understand what it all means. That's why I highly value the skill of analyzing visual art to see
how the individual elements come together to form one cohesive message. In this project that's
exactly what we did. I took an anti vaping ad campaign and analyzed the elements of the ad to
see what they were all working towards. I was able to understand how different elements such
as text, color schemes, and layouts affect the message of the ad. This was my favorite project in
this class because the skills we learned from it are very practical and can be used in everyday
life.

I believe I have a good relationship with writing after this class. I have confidence in my abilities
and feel as if I can write at an above average level. I believe some of my strong points are
creating a solid thesis and strong talking points to back up those points. I’m proud and glad that
I have this ability because it makes it a lot easier to write essays. Once you have a solid thesis
and strong talking points, it creates a strong spine for your essay. One thing that I think I can
work on in the future is my ability to analyze text at a deeper level. A lot of the times I only
analyze the surface level of the text and fail to find the deeper meaning. This can lead to my
writing being boring or one dimensional so this is definitely something that I want to work on. I
also want to continue to work on my understanding of APA formatting. I often make little
mistakes in my formatting and I believe this is something that I can easily fix. It is also important
to get a good grasp of APA formatting since this is the main format used in higher level writing.

Throughout this course I have improved my ability to write. A lot of the skills I have learned can
be applied to situations inside and outside of the classroom. Inside the classroom, I can use
skills such as thesis generation and APA formatting. Creating a strong thesis is important to
writing an essay because it sets the rest of your essay up and if you have a weak thesis, then
the rest of your essay will be weak. Since I have developed that skill very well, it will greatly help
me in future classes. APA formatting will also help me in future classroom settings since APA is
the main format used in higher level writing. Outside of the classroom, critical thinking and text
analysis will be very beneficial skills to have. Critical thinking is something that I will use in just
about every facet of life, it will help me make better decisions and function at a higher level. Text
analysis doesn't just mean books. This can be ads, tv shows, music videos, billboards anything.
I will be able to break these down into their individual elements and see how they all come
together to form one message. Since the types of text I just mentioned are everywhere, this is a
skill that is extremely practical and will be used a lot.