Memoirs of a Semester in English 111

I am a first-year college student about to finish English 111, my first college-level English class. English 111, also known as College Composition, is a class in which your writing skills are perfected through multiple essays, blogs, and other short literary works of that nature. This course was a rather enjoyable learning experience. Through it, I greatly improved my writing skills, as well as my ability to think critically about the world around me. I would recommend this course to any prospective college student.
My teacher, Paul Gasparo, was an excellent teacher. He had an extremely sharp wit, was always able to get the information across, and most importantly, had a genuine desire to see his students succeed. Every assignment he gave us helped improve a different aspect of our writing skills. At the beginning of the year, he assigned us a diagnostic essay. The prompt for this essay was, “If you could have one superpower, what would it be, and why?” We also had to talk about what we would do with this power. This made us use our imaginations to think up a superpower to have, because I’m sure not everyone went with the generic super-strength or flying. We also had to think critically when it came to how we would apply our powers, how our application of these powers would affect others, and if society would accept us if they knew our true nature. The biggest part of our grade was our argument essay. This gave us an opportunity to take a stand on an issue that we felt strongly about, and not only express our emotions on the topic, but also defend our argument through logic.
We also read pieces of literature from other writers. Through their work, we got a much better idea of how our work should look. These essays and short stories were also very interesting, and in many cases, highly informative. Some of these pieces of literature were actually about how to write a good paper. We also watched videos like “Super Size Me,” a video about the connection between fast food and the fact that America is the fattest nation in the world. “Maxed Out” was also a good one, informing its viewers of the dangers of credit cards, and out hard it is to get out of debt once you’re in.
This course helped me develop not only my skills as a writer, but also my ability to think for myself. Through English 111, I was able to improve not only my technical and grammatical writing skills, but also my ability to get my views across through writing. In conclusion, English 111 is a highly useful course that I would recommend to any college student.