Monday, December 16, 2013

I believe that my writing has improved immensely over the past semester from all of the writing assignments we have had. The War essay was the first major essay that we had to write in the class. The prompt that you give us for writing essays with what order to put sentences in has really helped me to organize my writing and prove my point on topics in a much more efficient way. I also enjoyed that project because it helped me to analyze a film and really think about what the characters were saying.

The Laramie Project was the next big essay project that we were assigned. I benefited from this project because it showed me an important event in history that I did not previously know about and how we, as humans, can learn from their wrong-doings. The play showed me both sides of the story so I could learn what people are like that don't accept gays and why they may act the way they do. Although I may disagree with them, the play showed me how ignorant they are to the topic and how I shouldn't be ignorant back to them, but can respond in a better way and can try to understand why they would say something so ignorant. I like that you had us read the play and then watch the film because it helped me understand what I was reading by seeing how it may have actually looked in real life, rather than attempting to imagine it in my mind.

Finally, the pro/con debate project is what we are currently working on to end the semester. I enjoy this project because it is very open ended and allows me to research topics we are interested in. You allowed us to choose our own partners rather than forcing us to work with someone that might only argue on the topic rather than allowing us to work. You let us choose our own topic which benefits everyone because they can choose something they are truly interested in to research and learn more about, while their partner researches the opposing side and can uncover ideas that one side did not think of. It also benefits the rest of the class because we get to learn about both sides of various topics, meaning we are more educated about a number of topics and it can help us to choose a side with a more educated basis to reason with. Overall, all of these assignments benefited my ability to read and analyse texts, as well as research and write a well educated essay.