Gerald Courtney
Overview
For the past eight weeks, my intention has been to progressively
improve my writing in English 102. At the beginning of the semester, I was horrible
at everything, including applying my literary theory to the writings that I had
written about in the earliest part of the eight week class. My papers were
badly punctuated and written in the early weeks of my English class. After writing
and rewriting various papers and getting feedback from other people in the
class I improved on my grammar and application of my literary theory. I have learned
a lot over the past eight weeks from taking this class that I hope will assist
me in future classes that I take.
I have learned so much in the past eight weeks of taking
this class. I learned that there is more than just one search method to
obtaining information on a particular subject. I had no idea about a search engine
called dogpile that uses three popular search engines put together. I used and published
blog post and how to write one. I learned how to properly apply a literary
theory to certain topic when writing. I never knew really what a mashup was
until I took this class. I gained better knowledge about what kind of technologies
there are to research with.
When the semester started in May, I thought we
were going to be writing about topic that were presented to us, but instead of
doing that I was introduced to a new type of writing method that I had never
heard of before. In all honesty, I was not happy about most of the literary theory’s
that were presented on the handout that was given to me. The only two theories
that I liked were the psychoanalytical theory and the historical theory; the
others irritated me. I had trouble thinking about how to apply the other theories.
When I first started to apply the literary
theory, I thought that I was supposed to answer all of the questions about the specific
theory that we were using in our writings. In my early writing Symbolic Imagery,
I really had no idea what to do in order to implement my literary theory into a
piece of writing. My punctuation and grammar were poorly shown in my first blog
post on Blake’s poem. In Metamorphosis psycho analysis, I seldom improved on my
implication of my literary theory, but I had made better progress on my grammar
and implication of my literary theory.
As time passed by, I learned that I was using invalid
sources for my research papers like in re-post of film vs. written work. Also
in this paper, I was improving on my grammar and on applying my literary theory.
In my Kafka’s written work vs. Carlos’s film blog I started to get a little
better at my grammar and implication of my literary theory but not to the point
of mastering completely how to write a literary theory paper. In my very last blog post dance and music I improved
a little more than when I first started the class. My grammar and literary implication
topics improved slowly as the weeks passed. I believe I progressively improved my writing,
although there is still room for improvement.
In conclusion, my experience from the class has been
rewarding and full of challenges that have tested my writing skills so much
that I realized that I needed to improve my grammar and literary theory implication.
I know I don’t deserve an A in the class or even a B, but I think that I deserve
at least a C for improving somewhat in my writing and participating in all of
the activities that were presented before all of us.
