The Progression of my Writing

During my time in English 1030, I've seen my writing abilities progress to a small degree.  Primarily, I've become a more effective arguer, due to my new understanding of the key components of argumentation, logos, pathos, ethos, and kairos, or logic, emotion, ethics, and the opportune moment.  The class discussed how to build an argument for different situations based off of these four fundamental building blocks, and I've done some thought about implementing them on my own time as well.  This has helped me organize my arguments, and develop a more effective mental map of how to express my ideas.  As effective argumentation is a key component of effective writing, this has also significantly increased my writing abilities.  I've always felt that I was rather good at using logic to convey a point in a written argument, but I never really thought about how I could use emotion and my own trustworthiness or ethics to make my argument stronger.  These concepts just seemed outside of the scope of a typical, formal, academic writing.  But after a fair amount of consideration, I realized that emotion is extremely vital to connecting with the reader in any but the most formal and scientific papers, and that you must establish trustworthiness no matter what the situation of your writing is, as ethos provides a fundamental back up to any weaknesses in the rest of your argument; if a reader has some doubts of your process, but knows that you are extremely trustworthy, he or she will be more likely to believe your argument if you establish a strong ethos.

Additionally, I've become better at the mechanical side of writing: grammar, MLA formatting and particularly citations.  Grammar is a continual process that improves continually through ones writing career, this class being no exception.  Until now, I haven't really been forced to carefully use MLA formatting and citations.  My use of them now has forced me to completely learn how to implement them, and now I can write much more effectively for a formal academic situation.