Schilla

TO: Professor McKeever

FROM: Christopher Schilla
DATE: August 1, 2015
SUBJECT: English 1010 Reflection
A Reflection on English 1010
Over the summer semester at Tri-C, our class wrote weekly essays
using different styles, including a personal narrative, a review, a summary, an
evaluation of an argument, and argument. All of these essays were completed in
MLA format. I have chosen my own topic for most of the essays, and will reveal t
he reasons behind my choices. I will also paint a picture of my development thro
ughout the course, and how my selected subjects helped me in the process.
In our first assignment The Soundtrack to my Life, I choose three songs th
at were most meaningful to me at the time. I discovered after writing and revisi
ng that essay multiple times, that being concise is essential to effective writi
ng. While doing this essay I was allowed to express my personality while meeting
the given instructions.
For the Personal Narrative assignment I chose to write about my grandmot
hers life, and death. This was my first opportunity to express my gratitude for h
er and all she did for me in my life. I found myself constantly adding onto this
assignment because I had so many emotions on it. The main trouble I had with th
is assignment was too descriptive words. When I revised it I learned how to incl
ude analogies, and descriptive adjectives in order to convey a more colorful mes
sage to the reader.
For the Review assignment, I chose to write a rave on the movie Into the
Wild. I wrote this because of my fondness of the movie, and took my praise on it
to paper. My main trouble for this assignment was figuring out how to make the r
eview exciting, and positive without redundantly saying how good the movie was.
For the summary assignment we had to summarize How to Say Nothing in 500
Words, which was an article written by Professor Roberts on how his students writ
ing was often ineffective. While writing this summary I used examples to guide m
e in the correct direction. I found summarizing the article somewhat easy, but v
ery time consuming. I learned that summarizing may not shrink the actual article
down that much concerning word count. My main problem during this assignment wa
s having a word count that was too big. I learned that by using a more concise s
entences one can really shave off unnecessary words. This was one of Robert s m
ain points in the article.
While writing an evaluation of an argument I had to find the line betwee
n summarizing and evaluating. I think that I effectively summarized specific par
ts of the essay in order to evaluate it. From this I learned that in order to pr
operly evaluate something you must first summarize the key points.
While writing an argument I learned that in an argumentative essay you s
hould write an introductory section, a main body paragraph with a main argument,
an objection and a reply; finally a conclusion. Learning how to use logical ord
er, and avoiding logical fallacies was key in helping me complete the essay.