Advanced Writing Skills in English - Essay Example

I have always thought of the advanced writing skills as about a huge advantage that can be used in a variety of spheres, every day and professional life. Since school I have been applying efforts to improve my competence as a writer, achieve fluency and make the writing process be always about pleasure and fun rather than a tiresome obligation. Subsequently, before the beginning of the course, I regarded English 105 a great opportunity to gain precious knowledge and practice that are necessary to polish my writing skills. Eventually, the course has met my expectations as far as I managed to learn a lot of useful information, received a great opportunity to reconsider my prior approaches to writing and focus on mistakes as well as looked at writing from a completely different perspective. To start with, from my former classes I was acquainted with some theoretical knowledge and thought I am capable of differentiating between the types of writings and genres. However, when being asked to adjust my own writing to the corresponding standards, I would necessarily make a list of mistakes. At the same time, although knowing that creating a kind of a text is actually a process, I always omitted stages of writing bullet points, drafting thesis, re-reading and making possible adjustments. The problem was that I did not have an opportunity to see a real use of such approach to work, did not realizing that my score can, in fact, be improved. Another problem that I have always encountered touches upon my time management skills, which are also under the constant process of improvement by me. Without a doubt, English 105 helped me with these two aspects. Firstly, I have learned to take a more systemized and more thoughtful approach to writing. Today I realize that this process consists of certain concrete and steps that are to be taken in the process of creating a successful writing. They are not boring requirements, but conditions of producing a good and readable content. Prior, my writing skills lacked the component of planning and structuring which made the process of writing quite chaotic and random. Obviously, this negatively affected the results since my texts could be confusing and the ones that lack logical sequence of ideas. Apart from that, writing assignments could put a kind of a stress on me – it was difficult to organize my thoughts and put them in an order that would make sense. However, this was the problem of the lack of order that prevented me from developing my ideas step by step in a logical manner. Secondly, it could sound strange to me before, but the more time I took for preparation and thinking over the subject prior to getting started, the faster I would finish the task. This is where I made a significant step in my time management, analytical and research skills. I have learned that gathering information about a subject or considering my own view on an issue, discovering why I think in a particular way – all is important. Only by evaluating information and constantly questioning its relevance and importance one can create a valuable and unique piece of writing. Subsequently, I know now how to delimit the primary and the secondary information and what role both of them should be given in a text. Apart from that, reflecting upon the course and what I managed to lean during it, I would like to mention first the part which I liked the most and which gave to me the most – rhetoric. In my opinion, knowing its basics is the first step to seeing the text as it really is in contrast to – seeing it in a way the author wanted it to look like. The following is an important aspect of literal competence, I believe. At first, rhetoric seemed to me complicated as it was difficult to reveal those parts of writing that had certain implications appealing to egos, pathos, and logos. I realized that they had to be there but could not find them in a significant amount. However, with enough practicing it took not much time to learn to detect rhetorical techniques and be able to use them in writing. The following topic engaged me a lot because it shows how the audience can be manipulated when an author knows what buttons to push. It also touches upon psychology of people due to illustrating that the process of making judgments is a complex one and is likely to be influenced not by logical conclusions but by emotions and values as well. Knowing it, one can construct discourses, depending on certain goals and intentions. Therefore, another aspect which I learned and which I consider to be off the specific importance is the fact that text is a multilayered system, comprising of direct and hidden meanings. It is often subjective and reflects much of the personality of the author. Text is more than a carrier of certain explicit meanings, but is rather a complex organism that bears a range of implicit meanings and hidden messages that are to be discovered. Knowing that these meanings are there and being able to search for them, using the right tools and techniques are the conditions of making the process of working with the text critical. This is what enables one to extract the full range of information and meanings from the text, and as a result, a maximum of use out of it. Not be deluded by the cover page, but know how to read between the lines is, to my mind, a crucial skill that adds to one’s general intelligence and literate competence. Furthermore, the course pushed me towards important realization: there is a huge difference between the amount of books and various kinds of literature one reads and the quality of reading. What I mean here is that consuming books in huge amounts is not an advantage and a good in itself. Instead, how thoughtfully a person engages in reading is what matters the most. It defines the effectiveness of reading. The reason I am rising this question is my strong confidence in the use and importance of English courses, for not only a person whose profession is going to be connected with working with texts, but for anyone who considers himself a thinking person. Therefore, I am confident that English 105 appeared to be of the great use for me and I do not regret the time I spent making a sense of its essentials. To sum up, I believe that English 105 appeared to be extremely useful for me and I already see significant improvements in my writing skills. I had a good chance to make sense of the different types of writing, such as argument, proposal, and informative presentation as well as practice them paying attention at corresponding techniques, purpose of writing, intended audience, and other crucial differences. Moreover, I learned to actually think while working with a text, either reading and analyzing or creating it: to analyze text in its context, including the personality of the author, his/her possible bias and intentions, the time during which the text was created with its possible ideology and everything that could leave its imprint on a text. As a whole, I feel that there are still many things that I have to master and I will continue polishing my writing skills, but English 105 gave me a solid ground that brings me nearer to always effective and fluent writing. Read More