First College English Class

When I anticipated what college English class would be like, I imagined that we would be reading classic novels and having philosophical discussions in class…obviously I was not right and I am very glad for that.  I enjoy the freedom English class brings to relax during class and have light discussions about the subjects at matter.  This English class was somewhat like the English classes I took in high school with respect to the atmosphere.  It was a very open atmosphere where everyone could openly share ideas, which was nice.  Also, the fact that you were interactive with the class and personal made it more of an open and comfortable forum to learn in. I think that the deadlines that we were given for each paper, such as a deadline for our outline, works cited, and rough draft, were really good ideas.  I’m a huge procrastinator so the deadlines helped me to get organized and make progress on my essays. 

Rhetoric was the main thing that I learned the most about.  I learned how images are used to convey messages and portray certain things.  I also learned to actually analyze the different aspects of an image instead of just describing it.  As much as I did not like writing 8 pages of research paper, I did like organizing my information into a way in which I was constructing a convincing argument based on facts and rhetoric.  I learned to do research that was not just from Wikipedia but from actual reliable, scholarly sources.  I do think that my writing improved with this English class.  I paid more attention to my grammar and if what I was saying actually conveyed an effective argument instead of me just talking.  I did work very hard in this class and on my papers because I know that I am not the best writer.

However, I am an engineering major so English is not exactly my favorite subject.  I love reading though so if we were to have read a bunch of novels I think I would have found that more enjoyable than writing essays.  I did not like how long the essays had to be.  I struggled each time to get the required number of words because I feel like I had already conveyed the message I wanted to get across and I was unnecessarily repeating myself trying to get the required number of words.  I know that some other English classes implemented a required number of pages instead of words which I believe that I could have constructed my essays better with.  Also, I know some other English classes had optional days where they did not have a class so that they could spend that time to work on their essay or they could meet up with the professor to discuss their essay.  I believe this may have been more productive than coming to class and just being told to work on our essay because I like doing my essays at my desk in my dorm.  Also, maybe aforementioned quizzes from the book could have been given to give more grades.

Overall, my first college English class was a positive experience and you were a great teacher!  

I'll miss the baked goods

So finally, my first English class in college has come to a close. Needless to say, Ms. Britenburg has been my favorite college English teacher by far. I mean all the rest of them fail in comparison to the great Erica Britenburg. Her transition from the elementary classroom to the college classroom was flawless. She incorporated many elementary elements such as baking baked goods for the class, which I might add should definitely be incorporated in the syllabus as a weekly event. As the actual curriculum goes, Ms. Britenburg did a great job of following the syllabus and covering every part of it. I learned a lot about rheotirc and the art of arguing a point. Getting the class to do debates got the class very involved with each other and the subject. Although our class was very unsocial there were a few who would always be the ones to speak up. I felt we could’ve improved class participation. Doing more group activites and getting to know each other better could’ve made the class experience better. I also believe that it could’ve helped us learn it a different and more effective way. I liked that the last project we did was in a group. I felt splitting up the work and getting to work with others made our argument a lot more effective. It gave us a chance to hear others ideas and contribute our ideas to theirs’.  Although a majority of us in the class will not be using the elements of this English class in our everyday life, Ms. Britenburg taught it in a way that we could apply it to our everyday life. Throught the process of our papers, she had many mini-deadlines for specific things for our paper which I believed helped the quality of the paper a lot. This way, a majority of us will not procrastinate and turn in a bad quality paper that we did the night before. I also liked that she gave us feedback on our first paper. This way I knew exactly what she wanted and I could make a more effective argument. Because she did not give us feedback on the second paper, (which was partially my fault) I felt our papers were a lot weaker. Her feedback influences the content and quality of our papers a lot. Continuing to give feedback to students’ papers will help a lot and improve  their writing skills.  She also is aware and adapts to the students’ needs. For example, she decreased the word limit of our first paper from 1500 words to 1000 words due to our class being engineer dominant. She also cancelled class the day before Fall Break in order to give us more time with our family but made us earn the day off in a creative way that applied to the curriculum. By arguing a good quality argument why we should get class cancelled we would be able to get class cancelled. This applies to the curriculum since we were studying rhetoric and the art of arguing a point. Ultimately I will take many things from the class b ut most importantly I will take away the fact that participation matters. Without participation you will not learn as effective as you would if you would participate. Overall, this was a great class and I hope Ms. Britenburg continues to make new sour patch kids and bake them baked goods as well even though they don’t deserve it because they’re never going to be nearly as cool as us.

Finally...

Well its that time of year when classes are ending and we are moving on to a new set of classes. We sometimes stop and think what we learned throughout the semester and question if they were worth the time put in or if they were just a waste of time. In English 103, we learned about rhetorical analysis. For me, it was a completely different type of style of writing than I had ever done before. I went to a relatively small high school so the teachers all made sure the styles of writing throughout the four years was similar. In the beginning of the semester, I liked the class a lot. The project where we had to pick a movie poster or album cover was by far my favorite. This project really taught me how to analyse a multimedia object. I realized how to analyze something using ethos, pathos, and logos. The rest of the semester for me was sort of pointless. I have never been a fan of research papers and when we started them, I sort of gave up in the class and got really far behind. I delayed a lot on the paper so by the time we started to have to turn things in, I was to far back to want to catch up. If I could take away one thing from the class, it would most likely be the research paper. The project at the end of the year was good. The multimedia project was a good way to sum up everything we have learned and the techniques to use. Also, the way we got to pick the topic and make it how we wanted was good because it made the project more interesting and personal. A factor that made the class really great was the kindness of the teacher. She was very nice and understanding. She was also funny and could joke around when necessary and be serious when need be. This made the class a lot more enjoyable and made the environment a more comfortable place to be. The only thing that would have been nice but not completely necessary would be more baked goods. We got brownies once or twice but it would have been awesome to make it a weekly thing. Another thing that I noticed was that a lot of the days were just work days. During the heart of the research paper, we would just walk into class and told to work on the research paper. I do not know if other students felt the same way, but this would make me not want to come to class because I felt like I could be more productive in a place like the library or my dorm room. I feel like those days we should have done an activity from the book. I feel like quizzes from what we read should have been given more frequently. It would have been a good incentive to come to more classes and keep up an easy grade. But other than that the class was good. I also noticed that each project we had to do assessments of our peer's works. This idea is good at times but I feel like too much emphasize was put on them because they were graded and done every project.

I wrote 556 words.

This class did help me become a better writer.  I worked more on these papers than any paper I ever wrote in high school and felt pretty confident about them.  I really only learned a few new tricks to make my writing style better.  For example, I think my comma usage has improved drastically.  I have also learned to get over my irrational fear of using the semi-colon.  I even learned to use a semi-colon to make my thesis incorporate a second element.

Additionally, I have learned the value of transition statements when starting new paragraphs.  I used these statements anytime I began a new argument.  My quotations now have more consistent introductions rather than just existing as a sentence floating in the middle of a paragraph.  

In addition to my introductions, I have learned to not rely so heavily on block quotes to fill up space.  In high school, every paper I wrote consisted of at least one block quote to help me fill up space.  I would also double space my header to fill up even more room.  Now I find that if I think through my thesis and come up with logical arguments I have very little trouble filling up several pages.  I no longer use these petty tricks for that reason.  The fact that all the papers you assigned had a word count requirement rather than a page requirement may have also helped kill this habit.  

Overall I think this class has helped my writing evolve into a much more organized form.  I fill my papers with well thought out logic and refrain from using informal writing.  I feel prepared to write more papers next semester and earn good grades on all of them. 

In regards to the other aspects of this course, I found some of them to be tedious and unhelpful.  These blog posts are perfect examples of this thought.  I consider myself to be a good paper writer.  I think things through and use proper grammar (for the most part).  By having these blog posts simply be a completion grade it is allowing me to goof off and avoid working hard on this assignment.  I can honestly say that if I looked back at any of my blog posts over the past semester, with the exception of the Halloween one, I would be repulsed by the awful rambling quality they all possess.  My laziness thanks you for this wonderful gift.  

In regards to the readings, I can honestly say I read most of the time.  I also have the worst luck because every time I did not read we had a quiz.  If you quizzed every time then people may start to take these assignments seriously.  I would recommend you find a new book because the one we had to read was highly redundant.  There is really only so much you can say on the topic of rhetoric and the book finishes anything original after it defines the pillars.  The visual chapter was really nothing more than common sense. 

Boom!  I have officially exceeded 500 words.

P.S. You should make the class do more activities like the vampire vs. zombie debate.  Watching power points and videos tends to put people to sleep.  Force people to participate and they tend to do it.  

P.P.S. Thanks for all the baked goods!

The end

English 103 was my second class the first day of college and we just got the syllabus and reading homework like the class before. I thought this class would be the worst class with a lot of reading and essays to do like in high school. However, while the semester went on it turned out there would just be little reading assignments in the textbook that we never really used, blog entries every week, and just three big writing assignments. I thought the class would also be really boring but our teacher was young and active in teaching the material so it was not awful to be in.

As far as things I learned in this class, rhetoric is probably the main thing that I learned about throughout the course of the class. So this class did a good job in what we are supposed to know and understand about expressing ideas in a way to sway an audience. I realized that rhetoric is everywhere and is difficult to get away from in this era of multi-media immersed surroundings. This idea of rhetoric was evident in all of our assignments throughout the semester. The first major assignment was the rhetorical analysis paper on a subject matter of our choosing which I thought was good for creating an argument that I can relate to. The second major assignment was the research paper on an argument and rhetoric analysis of visual. This paper was more like the papers I had in high school that were supposed to be really long and informative on the topic. The third project was a group project that was about convincing the audience of an idea which involved rhetoric yet again. This project was good to see how working in groups can be in college; even though there were only three of us in a group, we still got the project done with a lot of work put into it.

Things that were bad about this course were buying the textbooks because they came with an access code that we never used. I did not really use the textbooks much, but that is probably why I did not do so well on the quizzes we had on the readings. There is not anything else that was bad about this course. I thought it was good that our teacher actually graded our work and not just gave a completion grade like some of the other teachers that I have heard about. Although that made the class a little more difficult, it is still good for making sure that we know how to write and communicate effectively with an audience.

Learning about the writing center was also something that is helpful because I will not be taking many English classes or classes that require writing so when the time comes when I need to actually write a paper, I will know where to go if I need help. I think having more group assignments would be good throughout the year so we can learn how to work effectively in a group setting.

Evaluation of English 103

This English class was not what I expected my first college english class to be like. I figured we would read a lot of novels and write about them as I had in many other english classes in high school. But this class was exactly the opposite of that. It was really nice to have a younger english teacher; that doesn't happen often for me. I really liked it when we watched Youtube videos and had class discussions. I also enjoyed the multimedia project we just did because it required us to use creativity and it also gave me a chance to make a video which I haven't been able to do since high school. Overall this class was not extremely difficult, I think it introduced us to writing in a format that is expected in college. I did not get much out of the textbook we had probably because I never really read it. I'm glad we never had quizzes on the book but personally without being held accountable for my reading I hardly ever do it. The outside of class work we were assigned was good and I liked that fact that we weren't swarmed with busy work to do.

What we learned in this class coincided at times with what I learned in my other classes at times and that was kind of cool. My communications class was discussing the way that things are said and how words can be spun in our favor which I felt like was part of what we were studying. This class wasn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be. I feel like you did a good job of giving us enough time to get our work done and none of the deadlines were unreasonable. I don't think this class was that kind of class but I miss reading and I wish we would have had a few novels to read but that will probably be in another english class.

Some days when we had class I felt like we didn't really have that much that we had to do in class and it would have been better to just have time to work at home instead of coming to class. But that said you did cancel class sometimes and we did have in-class work days. For the most part this class was relatively painless and taught me a some about persuasion and how people use rhetoric in everyday life. I never really noticed how much rhetoric there was in everyday life and to be honest I wasn't even sure what the word really even meant. So yes I did learn important things from this class and luckily it wasn't too hard. For someone who doesn't even want to be a teacher your pretty good at it. I liked the idea of blog posts and the last one especially helped me with my project so that definitely was a good thing. Sometimes class was a little unorganized and I would say that was the only bad thing I can really say about the class. It was a good class though, thanks for putting up with us:)

Sweet Sorrow?

Coming to college, I was just short of terrified at the thought of beginning my first college English class. In high school, I had always been friends with older students who, for better or for worse, skewed my opinions on almost everything after recounting their experiences to me. Especially when it came to my schoolwork. For four years, I knew exactly which classes to take, which classes were easy, which classes to avoid like the plague. But after graduation, their guidance was gone and, with no preconceived notions, I naturally assumed the worst. English in college would be terrible: a new paper due every week, extensive analysis on every aspect of the literary world, and there would be hot coals and we would be forced to walk across them despite our tender freshmen feet. I was filled with pure dread.

But this first semester has been nothing like I had imagined and I find it difficult to describe the relief I feel. We had far fewer assignments than I had initially anticipated but they still managed to fill my time quite nicely. Not having to read novels and then tear them apart for symbolic content was exceedingly refreshing and a welcome change form the English classes I had taken in high school. I think that the curriculum broke up the components of these assignments in a way that made them extremely manageable and produced better papers overall. I believe that because of the class structure and feedback I received I have grown significantly as a writer. Next to the absence of hot coals, this was the most welcome surprise.

Having to turn in the outline of my paper was a blessing in disguise when it came to getting my work done on time. I remember feeling overwhelming stressed out that week and the approaching due date of the outline only added insult to injury.  But when it came to actually getting the work done, it worked wonders. There was something so helpful about putting my thoughts down on paper like that that really helped me to have a better understanding of what my paper should be about. Although I thought it was a colossal waste of my time at first, it ended up saving me so much extra time when it came to writing the actual paper because I already knew what I needed to say. Outlining is definitely going to become a regular practice when it comes to writing papers in the future.

While I really enjoyed my English class this semester, I do wish that it had incorporated more class discussion. What drew me to English in high school was the intellectual debate that accompanied our coursework.  I have always enjoyed exchanging ideas with intelligent minds to further my understanding of subject matter, and while the prospect of ‘intelligent minds’ is a bit ambitious when it comes to a freshman prerequisite course, discussion is almost always helpful on at least some level. It allows the class a whole to grow more comfortable around one another and makes it easier to evaluate the work of your peers when you feel relaxed around them. Arbitrary comments in class are hardly enough to express intelligence and personality to fellow students. I am sure that most of the people in our class concluded that I was some kind of autistic based on all of my sleep related commentary but despite popular belief, I am not. If we had been able to share our thoughts and insights in class more often, I am sure that people would have felt more comfortable with me peer editing their work or working in their group.