English 276 Course Analysis Essay
Over the course of this spring semester in English 2760, I have substantially improved my knowledge and ability in professional writing. Improvement in these areas is crucial to progressing further into my academic and professional career. Professional writing was something until this class that I had little to no experience in. With all of this in mind, I am going to self-analyze my progression in revision, my application of what I have learned during the course of this class, and some key improvements that I have made.
As revealed in the introduction, revision was a crucial portion of this course. My process of revision changed greatly as I began to put more emphasis on what to include and exclude. The biggest improvement I made was identifying my audience and knowing the best information to include or exclude in my writings. For example, when writing a complaint letter to a company, it is important to send the letter directly to the company to which the letter is addressed. Most likely, the company does not want to read personal information, instead they prefer writing that is concise and to the point. When writing my letter to Yeti, I at first included information that was unimportant to the audience, like including specific uses for the cooler. Moreover, when doing my social media proposal, I realized that my issues are not enough for a company as large as Amazon to change, and that it would have to be a larger group that has had the same issue as me. A company like this has such a large base of consumers that this change would have to be made based on large crowds with the same issue. At first, when I completed this project, I did not include enough examples of large groups experiencing counterfeit products, instead I mostly included my personal experiences which mean little to a company this large. Another important aspect I learned was tone, this is something that is way more important than I realized at first. As tone sets the entire paper, it is important to establish this early as most of the writings in this class were written in a formal tone.
Additionally, I have been able to apply my knowledge gained from this class to objects in the real world. The best example of this is I recently wrote a letter to apply for an internship with an attorney in my hometown. In this letter, I applied learnings of introductions, such as including background information, purpose, and importance of the letter. Also, then I used information I learned on how to research properly to include information that would be relevant to my objective. Furthermore, the most important information that I applied for was the entire writing process. As I learned from readings in the course, I began to think of the writing process as a back and forth, in terms of using paper to record ideas and my computer to formulate these ideas into a piece of writing. This was crucial because I found that I was spending less time just staring at a computer screen and it allowed my ideas to flow out easier because I was able to write down ideas that I would then use my revision skills that I learned in the class. This application of the writing process was most applicable recently when I wrote my composition for my Spanish class. I utilized multiple pieces of paper as I had one for each body paragraph and I was then able to revise those ideas to decide which information to include or exclude, and this allowed for me to formulate a successful piece of writing.
With all this in mind, the strides I made in this class were enormous for my progression as a writer. A lot of the information really opened my eyes to the importance of different aspects of professional writing. I have been able to apply my learnings in revision, the writing process, tone and many other aspects to writings that will only benefit me in the future.
