Cover Letter

Dear Reader,

At first, I really was not looking forward to having another English class.  I was in love with music and felt like I didn’t need to study anything else since music was my major.  So, beginning my English 1 class my writing skills were probably not as high as they were back in high school as it has been years since I had attended an English class.  The only thing I truly remembered was the five paragraph form essay which was all I mainly practiced.  My grammar was a bit off as I grew accustomed to today’s technology writing quick texts with shortened words.  Also, my vocabulary was not as advanced as I would have liked it to be.  I wasn’t much of a complex writer as I would procrastinate and write my essays quickly before the deadline.  This semester I tried to regain the writing skills I once had as I had forgotten most of them.  Doing a Works Cited page was my main concern since I was never really good at it and often would misplace the location of certain authors and articles.

Reading and annotating, which deals with writing notes and highlighting the main points of the reading, was something I had never done before.  When I would read, I would just highlight key points but never reflected on the writing and wrote down my thoughts or questions.  I found this to be truly helpful as it made it easier to relate to the article and quickly go back to see the point of the highlighted areas.  Plus, when it came to going back to articles I had previously read, having these notes helped me quickly find some work to quote and plug in to my essays.  

Having a brainstorming session beforehand made my essay a lot better and easier to write.  Before, I would just go with the flow and write what came to mind.  Having a basis though, made the writing easier as I knew what topics I would keep and just elaborate on them.  I now use previous methods that I learned in high school that I found useless to me then.  My two main methods include roman numerals and using clustering.  Though, the roman numerals help organize my ideas, I have found that clustering lets me expand my ideas and see both sides of the issue at hand.

Essay’s became easier to write with the use of multiple drafts.  Normally, my first draft was my final draft.  Having peer edit sessions greatly increased the feedback I needed and helped me understand what sections I needed help in and how to word things at times.  From time to time I would procrastinate which was my main obstacle, just as many others.  Having my peers comments led me to see the mistakes I would make and how to correct them.  Most were simple mistakes that I overlooked as I would rush the paper.  Now, whenever I have a paper due I always make sure to leave time open so that I can have a friend or a professor help review my paper.  

The most important improvement I had was properly writing a works cited page.  I’m normally able to quote an author and put it in quotation marks properly, but when it came to the works cited page, I would get confused.  Having examples of film and print sources for works cited made it easy to follow.  Simple things that I would leave out such as the films year or stating what type of source it was became apparent after doing a few exercises.  

At this point I feel like I do write my essays better; the only problem I still face though is my timing issue.  Once I sit down and plan ahead I find out my papers come out much better.  Having sources will help me in the long run as I know I will forget things as I grow so going back to previous works will help me get back on the right path.

Everything I have learned thus far will definitely help me in the long run.  I have had other classes during this time and most have required me to do some sort of writing.  Using the processes I learned in this class made it much easier to write papers for other classes and get better grades.  My writing has been more effective and scholarly.  I know for a fact these skills will help me in my future classes as I continue my higher education.  I will know to set time for my writings and not just rush through it like I normally do.  Having all these processes that I have learned has made writing easier and more enjoyable.   It is simple to express myself now that I know the steps to take, what questions to answer, and how to properly argue a topic.  I truly despised English at first but now I can actually say I enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Daniel Lopez