Why I am taking this course

I decided to take this course mainly because it is required by the school. That having been said, I do hope to improve my skills as a writer so I can better communicate with other people. Ben Hale, my senior year English teacher, told me that a well written letter can have a greater impact than verbal response, such as a letter of thanks which is more powerful than just thanking someone. Also as more and more communication is done through email, the ability to write a well written email becomes an ever more valuable skill.
For the most part I have found personal narratives to be one of my preferred essay topics in high school. This is because a personal narrative is about me and so I don’t have to double check to see if what I am saying is actually true because it’s about me. Also more informal types of writing, like saying what I thought about a movie, was something I enjoyed in high school because it allowed me to be opinionated, voice my thoughts, and use whatever voice I found suitable for the subject matter. I feel less pressured to write some witty complex sentence in these types of essays as I do when I write a formal five paragraph essay, though I would like to be able to write both types of essay with equal proficiency.
This semester I would like to improve my formal writing skills. I have the problem of sometimes being too broad in my body paragraphs so I would like to be able write a well focused paragraph that has substance to it. Lacking substance is why I believe my paragraphs in a formal essay can be deemed too broad. I feel, when writing, that the more details, however loosely connected, the better since I used to get points deducted for not including enough examples. Though I am beginning to overcome these writing “habits”.
My English teachers in my junior and senior years at boarding school really helped my essay writing knowledge come together into a better, more efficient form. Instead of assigning readings on the proper use of grammar and handing out a strict set of guidelines on how a paper should be written, they would just give me a paper topic and tell me to write a formal or informal paper and in a sense turn me loose to write. The feedback they gave in comments on the paper and in writing conferences where we met one on one let me know what worked and what didn’t so hopefully the next time I could avoid some of these mistakes later on. In those two years, my writing went from decent to good, in my opinion at least. Having someone tell you that one sentence is crap while another sentence that you wrote is good is a lot better I found than just being given an example of what good and bad sentence is. Overall I find that learning from my mistakes is sometimes most helpful way to improve my writing.
I understand and agree to the terms of the syllabus.