Savannah Caudillo's English 1101.06 Class Blog

     During this English semester, I've learned all about critical thinking and rhetoric, formatting, and citing my sources. I've also learned about freedom of expression in my writing, and how my college-level essays can drift away from specific rules that were established in high school, like the restriction of never being able to utilize the first person. Out of everything, I feel that the most important thing I've learned is how to use MLA formatting to properly cite my sources. MLA formatting is something that I will need to know in many of my future college courses. Many professors will likely find it integral that I am able to use it and being able to correctly will only benefit me in the future. The least important thing I learned in this class is that I can take certain liberties with my papers. This is not the least important because it's useless, but because everything else seems so important by comparison. I only single this topic out because I don't thi...

  Academic writing in high school involved the encouragement of the same five-paragraph format, over and over again. Conclusions consisted of merely summarizing the topic without any follow-up or bigger context or impact given. Even the research in high school writing continues to have little effort put into ensuring the reliability of the information. Unfortunately, these behaviors may carry over into their academic writing in college. “The students know the research-based essay is a major assignment for a college course, and they begin their searches in Googlepedia despite the sources available to them through the university library” (McClure 6). College professors, however, will typically hold student writers to a higher standard, forcing them to either change these behaviors or cope with a lesser grade. On top of having reliable evidence, in order to impress college professors, students ought to demonstrate critical thinking skills, introduce concepts relevant to the topic, a...