By the end of term I was finishing all of my essays whilst battling the most horrible of colds! Nonetheless I trooped onwards and went to Writing Skills! However, I had completely forgotten about the test and I was so frustrated that I hadn't revised for it at all. I was in shock to begin with, but as I went through it, it all started to come back to me, luckily! The most difficult part of the test for me was the last part, correcting somebody else's work, but I think I managed to pick up on a fair few of the mistakes! I hope I did well in that test as I have thoroughly enjoyed writing skills and am very thankful, as it has helped my essay writing technique immensely! I think you'll also be glad to know that I can no longer read an article and not analyse, just so I really know what the journalist is talking about!

Class Nine

In this class we learnt how to reference. This was extremely helpful for me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I knew how the Harvard system worked but did not know about the Chicago system at all! Secondly, I had just recently acquired a new laptop and only have Microsoft word starter so I wasn't able to footnote and therefore needed another way of referencing so that I didn't plagerise! Obviously I was very happy after having learnt that, although I do think it's strange that the university can't make up its mind about which one it should use as it makes things very confusing in different modules!

Class Eight

This time in class we were not only learnt how to analyse one persons opinion but this time we learnt how to compare and contrast peoples opinions. We were given an article and this time told to compare people's opinions on a subject and group them together. I thought initially that this was a very easy task! However, this was just practise for our next essay where we would have to write an essay about comparing and contrasting ideas about the sloppy use of English. For me I felt that although I knew I had to incorporate my own opinion I believed that the given material should be the main subject of my essay! Oh how I was wrong! Luckily, once again we were given the opportunity of a re-draft and I was very thankful for this!

Class Seven

This next class moved swiftly on to a different type of text. Our different subject was 'The Microsoft Debate'. Here we saw one man giving his opinion on Microsoft and the ruling of Judge Thomas Jackson. However, you can see in the text that he gives a lot of people's opinions and arguments in order to back up his own claims. For the most part it is hard to decipher which side he is on as much of the article seems to be impartial! However, using our new found analytical skills we see that the writer says that two people "make the valid point" thus, indicating to us that he is on their side; this side is the one that believes that Microsoft is a good, noteworthy company, and for the most part i agree with him!

Class Six

This lesson was somewhat uncomfortable as we were given back our essays! As uncomfortable as getting back marked essays is, it wasn't as bad I perhaps thought it might be! This lesson was about looking at our mistakes and learning from them. I know myself that sometimes I can shy away from constructive criticism if I think the mark is acceptable, but this had made me understand how important feedback is in an essay! I found that although I had grasped what the main three scenarios in this text were, which I was very proud of. However, there were elements of this essay that I could vastly improve! Luckily there was a re-draft, which would be our second assignment, and I was glad that I might be able to redeem myself!

Class Five

Class Five was primarily about punctuation. Although I would like to think that I have quite a decent grasp on punctuation there are indeed certain things that to this day I misuse but, this will not happen any more! My biggest punctuation error is the misuse of colons and semi-colons, and i'm quite sure that many people struggle with this problem. After this lesson I however, will never fail to mix them up again as now i know that a colon : is for a list and a semi-colon ; is only used where there is a relationship to the previous text.


This lesson also reminds me of something I found whilst browsing the internet, which also illustrates how important punctuation really is! An English Professor writes on the Board the sentence 
"A woman without her man is nothing."
The students were then asked to punctuate this sentence. 
The male students of the class wrote
"A woman, without her man, is nothing." 
The female students then wrote
"A woman; without her, man is nothing."


Well, it made me chuckle and I think it illustrates how important punctuation is, a change of a comma or a semi-colon can completely alter the meaning of a sentence!

Class Four

This lesson began by first learning how to paraphrase properly. Initially I thought I knew how to do this quite well. However, I did learn to be careful as there are so many ways it can be done wrong! In order for it to be done properly the quote must be edited enough to fit the context of your writing, if need be the grammar and language must be changed and these [ ] are the most important tools! They must be used for any part of the quote that has been edited and is not the same in the original text! 


We then moved on to summarising. We were taught how to read a text, fully understand it and then summarise it in your own words! It is important that only the most relevant arguments to your chosen topic are picked out so that you don't wander off topic. This was hugely helpful for me, as in essays I often find myself doing this! I like to think it is my active imagination!


Then the class moved on to talking about language and which words are appropriate for what you may be trying to say in your essays! I wrote quite a few of these "Hedging Devices" down as sometimes I struggle with expanding my vocabulary in essays and find that I repeat myself. So all in all this was very helpful to me!

Class Three

This lesson began by looking at another writing by John Sutherland, only this time we were analysing a text that we were going to have to do our first essay on, which of course made everyone slightly nervous! As we had already previously studied one of his texts it did make analysing his writing style slightly easier. Most of the class by now recognised that he gave a lot of background information to his subject so that anyone reading it would understand his point of view, when he got to it! Although I think, especially for myself, as the thesis statement in this essay was not as obvious, many people were worried that they would not be able to find it when they came to do their essay! 


The class then moved on to an article 'The Role of English in Research and Scholarship.' by Swales and Feak. Again we were analysing the structure of the text. For me, this was slightly easier as I did recognise that there were different sections within the text that differed to each other. These sections we found out were: Background, Problem, Solution and Evaluation. In our groups we then had to summarise this text in 50 words, which was a lot harder I found than the first part. The three of us did eventually managed to summarise it! However it did show me that cutting down texts is just as hard as bulking up any text that you may have, for example an essay that needs to be handed in!

Class Two

This lesson was the beginning of our preparation for future assignments. We learnt about the writing styles of writers, how they structure their essays and most importantly I (eventually) learnt what a thesis statement was- something that I did not know about previously!We began preparation for our first assignment by trying to spot these things within an essay by John Sutherland "Why does the count come to England?". We read through the essay in groups and were given cards to put in order to show which arguments came where. Interestingly, many of the groups were not able to put his thesis statement in the right place as it came at the very end. For me his writing was so subtly persuasive I wasn't able to see where his thesis statement was, that and I had not quite understood what a thesis statement was at that point! After we went through it together and picked his writing apart I began to see how persuasive his writing skill was without it being overly direct. He writes for all levels of knowledge and begins by explaining background information to his subject before giving his own points of view.We were also told about modal verbs in class- something which I had never previously heard of! I was fascinated by how many different grammatical groups there are in the English Language that most people are oblivious to! 

Class One

In our first class we were initially given an overview of the "writing skills" course, as I don't think many people were sure what the class entailed. We were told that we would be studying texts much more closely than at A level. As many people on the course had previously taken the module "close reading skills" many people asked whether it would be like this, as it did sound quite similar but we were told that although there were some similarities we would be studying the structure of the texts and the language in a different way. We were also introduced to the "moodle" website where all the writing skills information would be available. This was incredibly helpful for all the writing skills information on essays. 


Then we were put to the test. We were given Hemingway’s six word story: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” and were told to discuss whether this was a story or not! Initially many people were not convinced that this could be a story but after further discussion people were able to make up their own story about what these words might mean. The class began to see that even though there were only six words there was indeed a beginning, middle, and an end and that these words could mean anything that they wished! In fact, I think the creative license that Hemingway gives us here as the reader is vast and that it can be argued that this story is more interesting than those that are given to us, word for word.