Alec Mallery Essays (580 words) - Writing, Essay, Academic Writing

Alec Mallery Katie O'Neill WRTG 105 20 October 2017 Scholarly Writing Reflection Throughout college, scholarly writing is very important because most papers will have to be written in a scholarly fashion. Scholarly writing is what most of the essays that people write in college will be. Scholarly writing or academic writing can be described as writing that has been peer reviewed and a genre of writing used in all academic fields. This style of writing connects with me because since I started going to my writing class all of my essays focused on scholarly writing. Scholarly writing is a genre of writing that I am becoming more and more familiar with as I progress in this class. Since taking this course, I have learned a lot about the writing process and ways to make my writing more scholarly. The habit that I have changed in the class would be not taking too much time on a specific sentence and continuing on with my essay until I have finished the first draft then going back and editing it. This was a problem for me because I would spend an unnecessary amount on one sentence which would hold up the rest of my essay. Some of the things that I have learned so far would be how to analyze works, how to make a counterargument and how to correctly cite my sources without plagiarism. These are topics that I was not very familiar with before taking this class but now I am more familiar with these so now I can use them in my future works. These are some skills that I have learned so far that make my work more scholarly. After having this class for two months, my opinion on writing has changed. In high school, I did not have to write many essays and when I did they were not graded as tough as they are now so I thought writing essays were easy because I would always get good grades on them. After getting back my Sherman Alexie essay, I can say that is no longer the case. I realize now that I have to take my time on the essays and not type it up the night before like I used to do in high school. Now I find writing to be hard and more of a challenge but I believe this is a good thing. Through the first two months of going to the University of Scranton, I already have had to write multiple essays for different classes so going through the struggles of getting low grades will eventually help me get better for the future. My opinion on writing used to me that it was easy but I now find much more difficult. After taking this course for two months, I have learned many skills which I will be able to use in my future writing. This class also changed my opinion on writing because in high school I used to think writing was simple but now I think writing is much harder than that. Now that I have learned what scholarly writing is and the techniques to it, I will be able to use it in my future papers. Scholarly writing has affected my life because it has made me into a better writer that I can carry with me forever. I would define myself as a scholarly writer that is improving by eliminating bad habits and learning new techniques which has changed my opinion of writing.