Category: U5 Theory of Writing

Dear Professor,

Now let me start by saying this. I love writing. Am I good at it? No. Do I try? Yes. But writing have always been and still is a love-hate relationship. Going into your class, I had an understanding of writing essays and formats and the mumbo jumbo. All the clear cut “Intro. Body. Conclusion” essays that I had to make every other week like a machine. It really tarnished my love for writing. So the look on my face when you told me to forget all of that in the first day of class, was priceless. I felt free whereas the open lab posts helped get me back into the discipline of writing regularly, but in a way that I’ve never done before.

I would say the biggest opinion that changed about writing would be the literary sponsors. It was really confusing at first, yet it helped me reflect back to my old high school teacher.It made me reach out to her and it finally made me understand the meaning of literary sponsors and how they impact the writer. To be honest, writing that essay was really dreary, to be frank most of the assignments didn’t spark my interest. However, this assignment really did help me clear my hardwired mentality on formatting and how not every single piece of writing has to be in a “1. 2. 3.”format. Though I am still confused on how I am supposed to start my pieces of work, like this one. More and more practice will allow me to become a better writer and feel more confident when creating prices of writing.

Do I think that the things we learned in your class will help me in other classes? No particularly. Yet I still learned a lot about my literary sponsors, and It helped me realize there are a lot of other ways to write. But I still don’t understand how discords are going to affect me. I guess the saying “make of that what you will” is true in this sense. I believe it’s more about the students mentality towards information. For me I was taught to memorize formats and specific ways to do things and I am still moving into that mentality of thinking outside the box thanks to this class.

Writer’s block will always be my enemy, especially in super-specific topic like our “googlepedia” project. I still encounter the problem of knowing what I want to write on the tip of my tongue but never finding the right words to say it. To be honest that is why I am turning this letter in the day of the deadline. It is something I have to keep working on , especially if I want to succeed through my other english classes in the future. So I will be practicing throughout my summer vacation for my next incoming semester.

It was difficult to write this. You said you don’t lie and I don’t want to lie to you. I wanted to be frank with you This class was different from any other english class I have ever been in, and I thank you giving me the opportunity to be learn something that I couldn’t comprehend before. This is something I will keep with me as I continue my academic career, and even on. So thank you for that.

 

Dear Professor Blain,

This is my first spring semester in City Tech I am a freshman and going into this class I knew my writing wasn’t very strong and had doubts on what  people would think of my writing style and how it was going to affect me. Coming into this course I was scared till mid semester I wasn’t confident and I thought that there would be that one kid that would always have an answer and was a good writer . I was able to meet wonderful people such as Oscar and Alex who didn’t judge me but often helped me with what I struggled. Even when we dealt with classes being cancelled you professor were always on task and knew how to make class interesting. Writing wasn’t always my confront zone and didn’t choose to do it because of my own personal doubts. Coming into this class you have taught me to take a risk and expand into my research paper and what to do with writers block , I always thought that my professor or someone would judge my work but this class has taught me no-one should and you should be able to express how you are feeling towards someone or something. Although writing is all about improving I feel that this class had helped me expand more from what I generally expected to take from this class and I thank you professor for not only having patience but being able to correct me when I had to make changes its not always easy being able to write and for me writing was always tough because I would often switch my wording or what im about to write last minute just because im very insecure and always think that my idea later on is better then what I first started off with which then leads me to having writers block and staring a blank screen till I have something to start off with. I would still like to work on my grammar and the way I word some phrases because some words would not go in the proper structure or sentence. This class has taught me allot and would recommend it to anyone who is looking to step out of there writing confront zone and don’t know what to do when to come to writing its okay to struggle , I struggled my whole life and when I came into this class I’ve had improvements and I was able to structure myself better and know who I am as a writer. I wasn’t always a fan of writing but I always thought that writing was an escape of way to jot down things others couldn’t judge you because you expressed everything to a blank piece of paper. I love this course and honestly I would take it again

Sincerely,

Karla

Final Portfolio

Dear Professor Blain,

This was certainly one of my more interesting classes that i had so far, i personally didn’t start out too hot and the missed days did not make that any better for me but all in all i felt that it was the first English class ever in which i could actually write in the messy way that i am comfortable with and i really appreciated that because i dint feel like i was bound by the same format that i had to follow all my life. I am unsure if that was good for me however as i feel that my future professors will want me to go back to that old format but i am certainly happy that you provided that freedom for me because i never did like writing because of all of its rules but you said screw the rules just say whats on your mind no matter how it comes out and i really appreciated that so much. I will certainly take away from this class that despite me not ever liking writing, i will always think back to the short time period in which i actually felt comfortable writing. I am also forever grateful for the new things i learned such as writers block because it will further confuse me down the line but i know having it introduced to me will only make me a better writer will strive to try and learn these skills better, I also need work on citing but that’s another story. My view on writing has remained the same because i know that there are still so many forms out there so i will always feel confused and bound to rules of writing but i really thank you for providing me with a sense of security in the way i think and being able to actually present something in that format.

Sincerely,

Emilio

Jawad Awada

 

Dear Professor,

 

Well the semester is over now and it’s been quite the experience. I’m going to get to the writing part of the course in a bit but I just wanted to say this was one of the most interesting classes I’ve ever had, having all those days that resulted in no classes (snow day, evacuation and being locked out of class) and you were able to do a great job at being able to present the material in such a smooth way having all the events that occurred. I was the type of kid that enjoyed writing and this class was really enjoyable when it came to that concept. Before taking this class I had no idea what literacy sponsors were along with many other types of writings that were taught in this class. Usually when i’m given a new material that I don’t know anything about it takes a bit for me to understand it but that was not the case at all in this class, I was able to catch on real quick which made it a very enjoyable class for me. The relationship I have with writing is very important because it’s not just important in an English class, it’s inserted in every class and plays a big role in chasing what we came here to achieve (graduating). I did a lot of writing back in high school and it was something that I did not like in the beginning, but after doing it so many times I slowly started to like it a lot. I entered this class not knowing all the different types of writings and after exploring all the ideas that were given to me I was able to open my mind more and have a sense of more freedom in what and how I write. The only concern I might have when it comes to writing is that I tend to get repetitive and sometimes I add too much details which would make the reader lost but it’s something that I’ve been working towards improving on. Overall I feel like I learned a lot in this class and that all my questions that I had about writing were answered (i’m being totally honest when I say that I learned a lot taking this class). I’m glad I chose this class and I look forward towards my next English class.

 

Sincerely, Jawad                  

Dear Professor,

Learning what I learned in this class has definitely helped my writing out but it especially made me enjoy writing a little bit more than I used to before. From the “Bad Ideas About Writing” I really learned that not restricting myself to the things that I thought were standard in writing before, makes the writing much easier to do and enjoy. Prior to coming to this class writing essays have always been like a chore to me, something I don’t fell like doing but it must be done. Through my understanding that the restrictions placed on my writing at a young age were really just a standard for public school work really made the writing experience an all around better form of work that I have come to enjoy. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed speaking my mind onto whatever I wrote like with my individual report on the battle royale genre. Without removing the limiters that had been placed on me, the piece would not have been as good as I think it is now.

In essay writing classes like English and history I think what I learned will prove to be useful. I think I am already well versed in writing document based writing pieces so being able to incorporate myself into it may make the writing better.

Sometimes I do wonder if what I’m saying can be considered the wrong thing to say. I think that it’s moreso the way people interpret certain things but that is something that I always think about when speaking in real life and writing. Something else  I worry about when writing is if I go on for too long. I remember you said that make my writing as long as it needs to be nut it is still pretty hard to judge how much should be said based off of that alone. That may be something that comes to me with time but for right now I find it much easier to have a specific word count to look out for.

 

Dear professor,

Before joining this class and learning about writer’s block, literacy sponsors, bad ideas about writing,  I didn’t know how to start writing and how to do brainstorming and how to express myself. I often fail to catch reader’s attention. However,My writing was meaningless and full of incorrect words.

As an immigrant to USA, I had no idea about specific rules of writing. By taking this class with you, It helps me to understand that writing should be simple, accurate and grammatically correct to catch reader’s attention .

Throughout the whole semester learning about genres helps me to choose a topic, knowing about googlepedia helps me to do brainstorming and writer’s block helps me to find out what is blocking me to write is limited vocabulary. I should increase my knowledge of vocabularies and  make my writing interesting to hold reader’s attention and also need to work on my grammar. I have to practice a lot on my writing and there are lot of things I need to adopt and learn eventually. I believe there is no limit of learning so I’ll keep learning throughout my whole life.

Moreover,The memories of this writing class is a wonderful journey with you. At the end, I realize that how beautifully you change the way of my writing and help me to discover myself as a writer. You put stairs for us to reach the main goal of this class which is essay writing and truly in future it will help me a lot as a base of my professional writing.

sincerely

Nazwa Munia

Before I learn about things like writer’s block, literacy sponsors, bad ideas about writing, I often couldn’t catch reader’s attention on writing. Also, I don’t know that what most important things I should focus on when I wrote something. However, After learning genres, I knew that I could use different strategies to express my idea, such as newspaper, and music. Hence, in this project, I used op-ed to persuade readers to trust my information about climate change. Furthermore, I used this way to propagandize how could human prevent global warming. During the process of op-ed, I got even more confused on typesetting, because I wanted to know that how to organize my information put into paper which could make readers look more clear rather than messy. I think learning about these things will help me in college because in the college, there would be lots of project which should present to classmates. After I learning these things, I could do different type of presentation as my project, that would be creative. Otherwise, I still would like to continue to work on my English which is grammar, because sometimes readers maybe understand what is idea which I want to express, while, I could use better words to instead that. And also, if I didn’t improve my English, my course’s grade wouldn’t be high. Certainly, in America, I had to learn more English for daily life.

BE HONEST!

This is my first semester in your class and you probably have a perspective of how I write, I would like to improve more my writing. I feel like I am still lacking in my writing that attracts the reader and forces them to read more. I find my writing in like a pattern and I know that isn’t engaging for a reader. There are many things I would like to fix about my writing. I’m not one of those students who love writing, I can’t write my whole life onto a paper. However, I find writing both a challenge and learning experience. It allows me to get information in my brain and forces me to express all that information in the form of comprehensive sentences. But when I get to a topic that I know about it that’s when I believe my best work comes from. I feel like I can have more improvement in my writing if I include more comprehensive vocabulary which will allow the reader to be more involved in the reading. But to be honest in this course I was able to see more improvement in my writing, I can’t complain that at all.