Blog 10; Reflection on Skills

1. What do you think you have learned in terms of writing skills?
2. What proves that you have learned what you say you have learned?
3. What of the material we have covered is still unclear or confuses you? 
4. Would you say that overall you feel more confident about your understanding of basic writing skills, less confident, or about the same as when we started class? What makes you feel this way? 
5. Anything else I should know about?

          From my ENG 099 class i have learned many new skills. I learned how to Annotate how to summarize, how to write a thesis statement, i learned how to organize my essay around a thesis and i also leaned how to put a coherent & how to develop a topic sentence, and finally i learned some new transition words.
          From the annotating class i learned that it is important to underline important ideas. Also it is a good idea to take notes of the words you don't understand and later you can find the meaning so the essay or story makes complete sense to you. It is also a good idea to connect with the reading by writing brief comments or questions. Dr.X also said that it would be a good idea to circle key words and underline important examples. I feel most comfortable with annotating.
          The summarizing class was much more difficult for me as i am not good with summarizing things. From class i have learned that to write a successful summery you should find the main ideas, repeat them in your own words and also mention the authors name and title of the work. I also learned how to use words in different forms.
           A thesis statement is the single claim that the rest of your essay will support or explain. In order to write a good thesis based writing it should include a specific topic, a claim and a list of reasons. I found this difficult to learn at first but i hope with the help of Dr. X i will be more comfortable with wring thesis statements. I think learning how to write a thesis statement was the most difficult thing for me to learn.
          Dr.X explained that a successful paragraph should include a topic sentence it should develop the topic sentence it should be unifies and be coherent. The entire paragraph should concern itself with proving ONE idea. And last but not least would be the transition words. Transitions are words that serve as clues or hints so the reader can follow where your going with the work.
          So far this ENG 099 has helped me understand different writing skills. But what made this difficult was the fact that we are always working in groups. I think that if the CAT was done in a group that would be a great idea but unfortunately we have to complete the CAT on our own and that's how it should be done in class.