Posted on May 7, 2019
At the beginning of this semester I was confident in my writing ability. Like any skill I knew it could be improved upon, but I had always viewed myself as being talented writer. Writing has always been the easiest way for me to express my thoughts and creativity. The only exercise the left side of my brain gets is through my writing. However, if I were to say my writing hasn’t changed over this semester I’d be the worst of liars.
In regards to rhetoric, my ability to make an argument through the written word has increased drastically. My ability to cite, make claims, generate interest, and succinctly describe my point of view have been strengthened thanks to my professor. These blog posts in particular have greatly helped with the last of those abilities. My academic writing now has a greater degree of certainty; I now know what forms are appropriate for which prompts and I’ve been given invention strategies to make the generation of ideas simpler. Mostly due to the I-Search Essay, my ability to research is now a step-by-step process that is ingrained into the folds of my brain. I started the semester as a writer confident in his abilities. I ended the semester as a writer certain in his abilities.
I also feel like my ability to research has grown from the semester of WRT 102. The research process wasn’t new to me, but the ability to have these databases provided by the school helps me find so many useful sources. And I also agree that my “writer confidence” has increased too.
I also think the blog posts were really beneficial. I feel like traditional essays and research papers are so focused on in most writing courses, and we forget that as technology and communication changes we must also consider transferring our writing skills over to places like blogs and online forums to reach a broader audience. Like you mentioned, they really help with learning how to catch your readers’ interest which increases your general audience awareness, regardless if you’re writing an essay or another blog post.