When I originally registered for this class, I had no idea what to expect. I merely required an English credit. After the first day of class, I knew this would not be your average class. The blogging idea was something unheard of and an interesting idea. I was eager to see how it would go.
The first assignment was to write a Wikipedia “like” entry and post it to blogger.com. The topic I chose was car audio. My reason for choosing this subject is that I’ve learned quite a bit about it in recent months and installed my own sound system for my car. So, I had a lot to say about the subject. I wrote about decks, speakers, and amplifiers. But I soon found that I had less to say about some stuff than I had about other stuff, which created a nasty imbalance of information. At first I didn’t do anything to fix it and decided to just wait for people to place comments to see what they thought. As I suspected, the general consensus was that the post needed a balance of information. I had to do a little research on decks, mid speakers, and tweeters and I omitted some excess information on subwoofers and amplifiers. The end result was much better.
A couple weeks later, We had an assignment which was to integrate voice in expository writing. This was not as easy as it seemed. Since I began writing, my teachers had hammered it in that first person was never to be used in formal writing. To add to the difficulty, it needed to be integrated into an expository style while remaining pure from bias. I’d have to say my first attempt at this was a complete failure. It was weird and made no sense and seemed unrelated to the rest of the paper. After a much needed peer revision session in class, I had a much better idea of what how to do this. When I added my next post which was a revision of the last post, it was much better.
The assignment following post 3 and 4 was the one that I had the most difficulty with throughout the entire quarter. This was the extended definition essay. I made several attempts at this that lasted for hours at a time. But no matter how hard I tried, there was no luck in getting going. I was never able to get through 150 or so words. This post unfortunately, I had to scrap. However, I did not allow that to drag me down and I continued on with the class like it never happened and went on to complete post 6 without fail.
Post 6 was a process analysis paper. This was probably one of the easiest assignments for me throughout the quarter because I had done this before. The subject I chose was on how to wire an amplifier into one’s car. Originally, I was going to include a “how to” on subwoofer installation as well but that would of ended up on being an essay in itself. When I wrote up this post, I included everything down that was required to install an amplifier down to the last screw. I also described every step in mass detail. The result was over a 1000 words and an incomplete paper. I decided to stop and see what my peers would think of it in the next peer review session. The general consensus of that session was that I needed a lot less detail and that it would help in writing out the complete process. A few days later, I revisited this post and cut out mass amounts of detail. In doing so, I was able to write about the entire process of wiring an amplifier and still had about the same length. I felt that I did much better on the second try than on the first.
This class taught me a lot that I did not know about writing. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of writing persuasively. Writing down just the facts of one side to prove your point that your side to the argument is better and leaving out any bias. This style of writing allows one to write and sound more credible and not like a biased fool. I feel that in taking this class my writing has improved exponentially and would recommend it anyone in need of an extra English credit.
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