Closing on a Great Year

Our class is rowdy to say the least and it can take half the period for the "back corner(s)" to settle down, but through all the chaos that it Pugliese A Block, I've learned the most about my writing skills than in any other class. English, a period based off of writing essays, has taught me nothing in comparison to what I have accomplished or more so learned over the past nine months in Modern World History. Rereading an essay that I had written back in September made me laugh. I lacked the ability to organize, use topic sentences correctly, and form a thesis. Although I still have trouble putting together a thesis, I can see that something has drastically changed. Maybe it is not shown on paper, but I notice it when going about writing a paper. For the past couple years, I've tried to use the basic thesis structure: "although -----, (claim) because (reason)." For every paper, that has been my building block and i've learned to elaborate my reasons from there. My thesis for my final project turned out to be just a claim essentially. I've now learned how to gather information from many different sources, organize it, and interpret before starting to compose an essay. I can see the difference from when I tried to do that in my Simon Bolivar project to my final project on the Brandenburg Gate. At first glance, it's overwhelming to have to deal with all the information from different sources, but I've learned how to go about it in a more organized fashion. Another issue with my writing is my analysis of the facts. I ask questions in my papers, but tend to leave them unanswered. Although I still tend to do this even now, I can now recognize this when writing and reading through my essays. I've enjoyed the class itself, but it has greatly changed the way I write for the better and helped me feel more confident when assigned a paper.