What I have learned in English 1A

English 1A is a required class for all college students in the area and now that we are half way through the semester I can understand the reason for this. There was a lot of really valuable information that we have already learned. This course focuses on how to further us in our academic success. It emphasizes research which is what we are going to be doing throughout our college experience. I want to go to grad school which would be impossible to do without the foundation of English1A. Everything I have learned in this class so far will give me the tools I need to succeed.

                The first thing we learned that was very useful was the quote sandwich. I knew how to put a quote in a text and properly site it but I never exactly elaborated on the quote to make it fit into my topic. By putting in the 3 part structure of introduction, quote, and explanation it really helped me understand the importance of the explanation, which was something I had never done or thought about before.

 I knew from previous classes how to structure a full length paper, but I had never really narrowed my focus on each individual paragraph in detail until professor Knapp taught us the tea paragraph. This acronym stands for topic, evidence, and analysis. In most of my previous writing my paragraphs either jumped around too much or it just had topic and evidence without the analysis. I finally understand the importance of an analysis whether it is my opinion or relating it to why the reader should care about the information given. This is so important for pulling in the reader. They need to be told why they should care about a topic because it is a lot easier to not care.

I am very challenged when it comes to technology. We set up blogs on the second day of class to post our papers on. This was very different for my because I never picture myself as a blogger and I had no idea how to even set one up. I learned how to set it up, use it correctly, and even connect with other users in the class. Secondly, we had to do a power point presentation which up until this class I had avoided at all cost. In high school my teachers always gave options of what you could do for the visual part of a presentation and I always picked a poster. I knew the time would come when I had to just man up and learn how to do a power point and I’m glad I did because it’s a skill that I really should have in college.

I really do believe that all of these things will not only help me go further in school but also in the real world. In specific technology is domination the world and it would be really ignorant of me to ignore that fact just because it takes time to learn my way around it. Writing is something that I may have to do for a job later on in life so improving my skills is only going to help in the long run. Everything we have learned so far has been very helpful with my success in school.