Simone Grant

Musselman, ENGW1111
4/21/15, WC: 1090
The Growth of the Skill of Writing in English 1111
What do I think writing is? Its complicated, thats for certain. At its most basic form, writing is a
way of communicating. What it communicates, however, can vary. You have argumentative writing,
which writes as though in a debate or a fight, with keyboards as your boxing gloves and a teacher as your
coach. But that, as Ive learned in this course, is not the only type of writing. There is writing to
understand, writing to explore, writing to convey emotion or demonstrate a feeling. Writing is
communication, nothing more and nothing less. It can succeed and fail just as any other form of
communication can, and it has its own set of rules and dialects unspoken. There are vowels in the English
language that are unwritten, the ones that make that and cat rhyme but climb and limb sound
entirely different. I didnt know that these unspoken vowels until I learned basic Danish grammar a few
months ago, and likewise I didnt know that rhetorical devices were useful in creating compelling writing
until I had done the exercise for them.
Its these unspoken rules that I had never grasped before this class. To be entirely honest, I dont
understand them now. But at least their existence has been revealed, that it is not the structure or the
grammar or even the flow of my writing that is necessarily wrong: something is just missing. This class
was an epiphany, similar to the Danish course. It was one that I certainly needed, and it was through this
realization that I began to see writing a skill.
Before now, Id always thought of writing as some kind of mythical skill that you needed to be
born with, like a strange quirk on chromosome 8 that gave way to amazing writing prowess. This, of
course, is not true, but its something that needs to be experienced in order to know. I like to think of
myself as an artist, or at the very least a hobby artist, so I really should have known better. In art, no one
is born knowing anything. Art is just the mastery of forms and composition to create a pleasing picture,
and it involves simple concepts and complex ones. For example, equal amounts of bright red and green

look terrible together: simple. But if you desaturate them, include one in smaller amounts than the other,
and place it in a nice composition, you can create a nice aesthetic. The best way to see these concepts and
relationships is to pick apart the works of those who have already succeeded and then practice it, and
thats where this class comes in.
The very first project we did, a response to Ursula le Guin on her essay on the supposed death of
reading, involved some of this picking apart. We did quite a bit with this 6-page little essay. There was
a lot of analysis: what is she arguing, what has she done, how did she communicate this, etc. We picked
the essay apart down to the very sentence choice, and I learned a great deal about flow, the use of
analogy, and metaphors.
On the contrary, the second project had no base from which to work with. The class was set free,
and although some people created amazing unessays, I do not feel like it strengthened me as a writer
overall. Going back to the art analogy from earlier, while the first project observed the brush strokes of
Michelangelo, this project was the equivalent to giving us a blank canvas and saying Create something
beautiful. Perhaps if the project had been done later in the semester, after Id been exposed to more
pieces of writing and had time to grow and expand on my skills, the unessay would have strengthened
them. As it was, it felt like more of a pressure race than a conduit to improvement.
The Writing Programs goals also do not perfectly match up with what I define writing to be, but
there is overlap in some areas. The goals basically state that students who complete the course should
show the ability to write for communication, take a stance, revise that stance based on the audience and
revision feedback, and self-assess. The goals also state that revision and citation should be understood, as
is true for most every writing class. Unfortunately, the way the writing goals are set out does not seem to
define writing as a skill but more as a set of steps necessary to reach the end goal of communication. A
student can very easily achieve the above goals, but still be a terrible writer or produce a subpar result.
Writing isnt a recipe. The goals, however, seem to imply that it is a recipe, and all students can go into

the college melting pot and be transformed into amazing writers before their sophomore year. It sounds
almost like an infomercial. Buy now and be incredible or your money back!
Have we, as a class, completed the writing goals? Below is a chart of the projects and the learning
goals we have accomplished with each one.
Writing Goals

Project 1

Project 2

Project 3

Project 4

Goals completed

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8,

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8,

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10

9, 10, 11

8, 10, 11

9, 10, 11

Personally, I think that we have completed them all across the board. But I cannot say I have grown into
the Amazing Writer that the Writing Programs goals implied I have become, and in fact the goals have
most likely been detrimental in developing my raw skill. Project 2, for example, could have been a really
amazing learning opportunity for me, but the class needed to use almost all student learning goals, and to
set a baseline for the project might compromise goals 1, 5, and 7, which would just be a tragedy.
Overall, first-year writing has helped me explore and understand the skill of writing, how it
works, and what it takes to really become a great writer. My improvement, personally, was likely
hindered by the writing program student learning goals, but I wont say Ive learned nothing. Slow
reading, rhetorical devices, and the ability peer-based reviews (included in the attached portfolio) have all
been added to my repertoire. I can say for certain that I am more acquainted with writing than I was
before this class, which is enough for this introductory class to satisfy me.

Acknowledgements
Id like to acknowledge Professor Musselman and my classmates for the class as a whole and for helping
me to improve myself.