English 363W was very beneficial to me in improving my knowledge in current news and in critical thinking. In this course, we mainly focused on gender, race, and media. It was interesting to choose our own topic to discuss and write an essay about it. Usually in other English courses, professor gives students a topic to write and the topic is often not interesting to students. Throughout the semester, I have wrote two hyper-essays and made a movie. I have used Weebly to create a webpage, where everyone could read my posts. Thus, I learned how to articulate my ideas and topics in an interesting way, so that audiences will be interested to read my essays, not just my professor.
First, I had a weekly blogs due on Friday. Professor gave me few articles to read and I had to choose an article to reflect my ideas. It was great way to state my opinion clearly and improve my critical thinking skills. The reading was mostly related to current issues about gender, media, and race. Among all the readings I have read this semester, it was really interesting to learn how media had such power in our society. Media was not just a sort of an entertainment. It was so powerful that it had power to change the world.
In addition, it was challenging to get audience’s attention at first. Normally, I wrote an essay just for a professor and nobody else. It was solely based on professor’s 'flavor'. However, since I had created my own webpage, it was open to anyone. I had to consider every audience who might read my essays. I had inserted many graphics/images and videos rather than long paragraphs because it is more interesting to listen and watch rather than just reading. Also, I had to think hard about choosing a topic, because boring topics cannot get audience’s attention. Each project I had to do had multiple steps to be accomplished in order to be fully completed.
Lastly, throughout the course I have learned to improve my critical thinking, reading, and composing skills. I had to analyze, synthesize and interpret a topic deeply to attract audience’s attentions. I have also learned to write more softly as I was talking to my readers. If my writing style was hard and strict, it would not be enjoyable to read my essays. Also, I believe choosing own topic was crucial to all of my achievement throughout the semester. This is because I could deeply get in to a topic that I really want to explore and articulate. I have learned a lot from this course and improved my English skills.
First, I had a weekly blogs due on Friday. Professor gave me few articles to read and I had to choose an article to reflect my ideas. It was great way to state my opinion clearly and improve my critical thinking skills. The reading was mostly related to current issues about gender, media, and race. Among all the readings I have read this semester, it was really interesting to learn how media had such power in our society. Media was not just a sort of an entertainment. It was so powerful that it had power to change the world.
In addition, it was challenging to get audience’s attention at first. Normally, I wrote an essay just for a professor and nobody else. It was solely based on professor’s 'flavor'. However, since I had created my own webpage, it was open to anyone. I had to consider every audience who might read my essays. I had inserted many graphics/images and videos rather than long paragraphs because it is more interesting to listen and watch rather than just reading. Also, I had to think hard about choosing a topic, because boring topics cannot get audience’s attention. Each project I had to do had multiple steps to be accomplished in order to be fully completed.
Lastly, throughout the course I have learned to improve my critical thinking, reading, and composing skills. I had to analyze, synthesize and interpret a topic deeply to attract audience’s attentions. I have also learned to write more softly as I was talking to my readers. If my writing style was hard and strict, it would not be enjoyable to read my essays. Also, I believe choosing own topic was crucial to all of my achievement throughout the semester. This is because I could deeply get in to a topic that I really want to explore and articulate. I have learned a lot from this course and improved my English skills.