Tasks
First, reflect on your past reading and writing literacies and how they have changed throughout the course. What stands out among the things you have learned? How are you approaching writing and reading tasks differently?
Second, consider the significance of these changes. What effects have these changes had in your life (or what effects might these changes have in the future for you)? How has your thinking about reading, writing, and the world changed?
Throughout this course, I have discovered various strategies to enhance my writing as well as learned methods for planning, drafting, and combating writer's block. These methods help me to conceptualize writing assignments in an effective way, resulting in better quality work, and day-to-day communications.
One of the methods I particularly liked, for it’s unbiased approach, is the “talk-to” strategy. When you are finished with a writing task, during the editing stages of the writing process, this strategy prompts you to read over your work and pretend its the most amazing thing you've ever read and consciously react as if it is, telling yourself all the things you found to be great in your text. Then, you will perform the opposite, pretend it's horrible, and then list or think about all the reasons why it is bad. Doing this helped me take a step back and look at my writing from a a different perspective, which helped me with my perfectionism, and made me think, I might actually be pretty good at writing.
Another hefty, but helpful strategy I appreciated is the “looping” strategy. The goal of looping is to understand what the main idea or purpose is in a text, and is part of the planning stage in the writing process. You are asked to freewrite about whatever it is you have chosen as your topic, for about three minutes. A lot of ideas will come up in a freewrite, and that is okay, because you are thinking as you are writing, instead of thinking…and then writing down your best thoughts. I have found this method to be extremely effective in just getting the ideas out there—the good and the bad. Then, after the first attempt, reread what it is you have written about, find the central topic, and freewrite again, using the main idea from your first as your topic. This can go on for as many times as you like, but eventually you will end up with a solid main idea, sort of filtering out all the redundant or unnecessary ideas. This was useful for me because I have a tendency to stray from the topic of discussion. In doing this activity, I was brought to an ultimate purpose, and furthermore, a conclusive statement—something I also struggle with.
Because of these methods, and this class in general, I am much more confident as a writer, and I approach writing tasks with much less anxiety, and instead, a sense of preparedness, and ease. Using methods, such as how to identify an audience and purpose, I have been able to develop my own writing style, effectively follow the writing process—although recursively, as intended—and be proud of my work. Additionally, the obvious fact that I have to actually write in order to pass this class has forced me to do it more often, enabling me to exercise my writing skills, and improve my vocabulary, which hasn’t gone unnoticed, according the people around me. Since I started this class, I can definitely say there has been improvement in my writing and communications, proffesionally, academically, and in my personal life. Furthermore, I have developed an actual passion for writing, and I want to continue improving my literacies indefinetly, because being good at communication gets you farther in life.
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