Comparison of writing style before and after English composition

¶ … difficult to maintain the necessary focus on proving a thesis statement and I had not always had the greatest intuition where proper word choice is concerned. In large part though, the writing-intensive nature of our course and especially the attention given to the exhaustive research paper have helped to set me on my way toward competency and even perhaps some level of excellence as a writer.

Indeed, the difference between my writing samples at the start of this semester and those which I produce today is substantial. Owing significantly to the practice and honing done in our course, I find it far easier now than ever before to create enough content to fill any required length of composition. This is because, prior to this course, I had rarely been given comprehensive instruction on how to organize my work. I would generally leap into an assignment and begin writing until I hit a wall, as it were. I would generally run out of ideas.

This course helped to illuminate the important role played by planning and organization. Certainly, the use of the outline as a way of laying out the expected argument and supports that will drive an essay has helped to bring focus and direction to my writing. This strategy is endorsed by available research which indicates that "outlines help you identify which steps to take in which order, and they help you break the task up into manageable pieces of information." (Mind Tools, p. 1)

I have found this to be eminently true. Now, when I sit down to compose an essay, I begin by shaping my primary argument. Consequently, I will review my selected sources for supporting statements and will use these to formulate the sequence of supports that will be used to strengthen the primary argument. I have found that as a result, I am rarely searching for words or ideas to fill pages. Instead, I have essentially laid out the material that will fill each segment of a page as I proceed.

This type of organization is not just important for creating content however. It is also important for ensuring that this content is relevant and succeeds in strengthening the argument at hand. I tend to adhere to the advice offered at the site Essay Writing Help.com (2005), which advises to "use one paragraph to state each of your points, following your statement with the evidence that proves or supports your point." (EWH, p. 1)

Because of such strategies, as I go back now and review some of the writing that I had produced before taking this course, it seems strikingly obvious that I tend to stray from the thesis statement and the priority of proving it true. Because I lacked a general sense of the rules of compositional organization, my essay tended to drift into tangents on any given subject which, while not totally irrelevant, did little to advance the primary argument of a composition in question. Today, this is quite a different story. By bringing to the forefront to the importance of developing and stringing throughout one's essay the primary thrust of a thesis statement, this class would help me to create writing that has the capacity to be persuasive to the reader. Poorly formed, unfocused or only partially developed arguments may, by contrast, tend to lose the support of the reader. And as Weida & Stolley (2011) indicate, "including a well thought out warrant or bridge is essential to writing a good argumentative essay or paper. If you present data to your audience without explaining how it supports your thesis they may not make a connection between the two or they may draw different conclusions." (Weida & Stolley, p. 1) I do believe that today, employing such strategies, I am far more likely to carry the reader's support and attention from start to finish of an essay.