Cover letter

Dear Reader,

English 1 is the last English class that I needed to take to transfer to Cal State University of Long Beach. I had taken this class once before, but I had to drop it because the professor that I got was horrible and he grades hard on the essays. Every time I got my essay back, I either got a “C” or “D.” But I wasn’t the only one; half of the class was getting the exact same thing. Probably one or two people got a “B.” Ever since then, I didn’t take English again because first of all I’m not a good writer. But this class just made me feel like I’m a horrible writer and I felt like I wouldn’t be able to pass English if I would ever taken it again. However, one of my friends had convinced me to take English again because she said since it’s our last class, let’s just take it and gets it over with. Honestly I was a bit hesitatant because I didn’t want to go through it again. At the beginning of the semester, I felt like my writing was going to be terrible because I had always disliked writing essays due to my horrible grammar. I tended to write how I speak. So when I was told to bring my first draft of my essay to class and there was going to be peer editing, my mouth literally dropped and the whole time I was like “oh no” because normally the only person that reads my essays are the professor, me and sometimes my friend. During that moment I was so scared and nervous because I didn’t know what the outcome would be once they read it. After I got my essay back, it turned out to be okay because I got to see what I did wrong and it helped me a lot. I felt that my weakness was my grammar and not putting enough supporting details. What I hoped to gain from the class was to improve my writing skills, write more formal, and to improve my grammar.

What I learned in this class is that everyone starts out with a “shitty drafts.” In this case there was one of the articles that I had read called, “Shitty First Draft,” by Anne Lamott say even authors starts off with shitty draft and that no one writes a perfect essay. I also learned about the three persuasive when authors sometime put them in their essay; ethos (credibility), logos (logic) and pathos (emotional). I learned that free writing is a way to just takes 10 to 15 minutes and just write nonstop about anything that comes in your head because doing this can give you a head start on what you are going to write about I learned how to write and see the different when I’m writing to an author, the president or friends.  I found that very interesting to see how differently each came out. Part of the writing that has improved in this class was that I had put more, supporting details to back up my claim and a bit lesser grammar errors. The exercises that helped me get better in this area are the peer editing and the fact that there is a first draft and final draft because it helps me to see what I need help on. By editing my classmates essays I learn how I should do mine and what I did wrong. What I had learned about the writing process is that going over your work and doing peer editing can improve your writing better. I had noticed that my process had changed over this course of semester. There were a couple obstacles that I had face, but it has improved a lot better than before. I overcome my struggles by saying don’t give up and keep trying. Between a report and an essay, I think I’ll do better with an essay because I’m not familiar with writing a report. Throughout my life, I have been writing essays since middle school until college so I have more experience. The areas I still need to work on is to stop writing like how I speaks and when giving supporting details make sure it fit and make sense. I’m going to use what I had learned in this class to help me improve in my writing skills for my other classes and for the next English course if I’m planning to take it.

Everything that I learned in this class is going to make me a better student in the future because I can use all of these techniques that I had learned and apply them to all of my classes. I will use these things I have learned for other classes. For example, outlining, it is good to use it as a study guide because I’m currently taking a few nursing classes and I think outlining is going to be very helpful to identified  the sub heading, heading, minor and major details throughout the chapters.  I think writing is important because most of the things you do are involve with writing. For example, job applications, texting, Facebook and chatting. But I think the most important thing about writing is that everyone should know the differentness between formal and informal writing. Also, you don’t have to be a perfect writer, but as long you know how to write enough to get you somewhere in life and in the future. I have to say I like to writes more now than I did in the beginning because this semester I’m always writing for all of my classes, so kind of got used to it.

Sincerely,

Vandeth Dy