Reflective Essay: The Importance Of Making Arguments

Until this semester, I had not realized the importance of making arguments and supporting them properly. It honestly did not come as a shock to me, as I knew my past English teachers did not really care about teaching us proper writing skills. In high school, I was never made aware of my inability to properly organize a paper and make claims that I can fully support. The essentials of argument was something I had never heard of. Critical thinking, creating arguments and making claims were all new experiences for me, and after learning them, I believe my development as a writer, as well as a student, has grown to a more college level. For our first assignment regarding Vandana Shiva and Michael Specter’s views on the use of G.M.O.’s, we had …show more content…
Before this class, I had no idea there were steps to creating an argument, and if you did not use them properly you would lose credibility and people would not agree with you. In my first essay regarding the G.M.O.’s, I did not make an argument over who “won.” I repeatedly made claims about each of the writers and did not support them or prove my claims. Once we started to read the text, The Essentials of Argument, I learned how to create one. I learned the importance of the types of claims you can make, and how to support them to make it more effective. In my third essay regarding the minimum wage increase, I made an argument that the minimum wage rise increases youth unemployment. I backed my claim up with many statistics, facts, and quotes from highly notable people. I provided the claims with more support. Therefore, the reader will have a higher chance of agreeing with my side of the argument. Now each time I am about to make a claim about a topic or a person, I always critically think about it and the kinds of examples I can use to prove my claim. This skill improved my writing tremendously, but I still have many things to work on. I believe my writing as a college student has come a long way, but I still suffer in some categories. If I had to choose the biggest problem in my writing as of right now, it would by my grammar. I have a problem with varying tenses in the middle of my papers and putting commas in the wrong places. I also have some problems with subject-verb agreement. I tend to use the word “that” following “people” when I should use “who” instead. I do not think these are problems I cannot overcome, though. I plan to improve these skills as I move into ENC1102 next semester and develop my writing skills to higher