Cassidy Bradley Larry Neuburger English 102-102 25 July 2012 This class proved to be more useful than anticipated.

As a proficient writer, I found this class helped to polish a lot of the skills that are required in writing. The most helpful tool was learning the correct way to cite sources and format a research paper, which will prove to be an invaluable skill in future courses. I felt Mr. Neuburger made it a point to give everyone an opportunity for success, helping the class as needed and welcoming all questions and comments. I found through this class I am a much better writer than I had previously thought and enjoyed the more technical aspects of the course. Writing the research paper was hard work but also reasonable as Mr. Neuburger helped each student to the best of his ability by lending his knowledge of writing and formatting. The specific requirements of the paper were interesting, such as subheadings and photos with captions. This method proved to enhance the paper and made it a little more bearable to write. We were also informed of several different websites to aid in the compilation of our assignments. Twitter was an interesting approach to class discussions. I had not been a Twitter user before this class and realistically will probably not be using it much after, but it seemed to have opened the door for a more honest and scholarly conversation amongst the students. I did notice however religion was brought into a lot of the discussions by other students and I find little place for religion in a composition class. I would have preferred it be specified that an educated response is required and not a belief based response. In this situation it seemed to deflect from the thoughts of the specific author by using God as an answer instead of an original thought.

The response essays were useful in teaching how to compose an educated essay with a strong thesis statement and the information to back it up. Integrating sources added a level of skill and showed to be useful in our research paper, as there was a lot of integrating sources. A complaint I have regarding this class would be perhaps more toward the students. It seemed as though once some of the students discovered Mr. Neubergers willingness to lend his expertise toward assignments a few students abused this by asking for a large amount of help. Meaning students would pretty much allow the teacher to rewrite their work instead of taking his pointers and using them to compile their own thoughts. I did however appreciate the detail in which Mr. Neuburger explained tasks and being able to stick with us throughout the process of writing. I learned the difference between a summary and a response and found after this class my reading comprehension has increased. This may be due to being taught how to read something and develop an educated response, thus increasing my awareness of a reading. I also enjoyed the required texts. The resource manual was very useful and I plan on using it in the future. The Power of Language book has a very nice collection of different readings and I have browsed through it outside of required assignments. Blackboard was easy enough and I was very happy to find out we would not be working with it as much as some other courses might. I think the most challenging part of the class was having to set aside all the bad writing habits I have picked up. I overuse commas and I am now conscious of this and make it a point to really look over what I have written, checking my formatting and the use of punctuation and grammar. Overall I enjoyed this class very much and have acquired skills that will help me throughout my educational career.