Took Sophia ENG 2 after dropping out of ENG 121 Matthews - a review

[Marlin9276]

Thank you for the input.  Do you think overall, it helped you learn to write a better paper?  I have been considering an option for my HS Junior who struggles with this skill.  He hates his current English teacher, so he has a very hard time in her class.

Personally, I wouldn't say the Sophia class helped me write a better paper. I'm not saying that I write the best papers, I absolutely have much to improve, but it didn't teach me anything I didn't already know. 

Like your HS Junior, I once hated my English teachers and had a hard time with writing. Ironically, it was in AP Lang that writing and analysis became fun. It's hard to explain but what I've found the most helpful is when I discovered my writing voice and stopped trying to mimic all the high-scoring essays I read for practice. And by writing voice, I mean I wrote down what I thought and noticed and cut down on trying to write with big, fancy words. For instance, I was taught to look for the big three in rhetoric analysis: logos, pathos, and ethos. Whenever I noticed any one of these tactics within the piece of writing I am suppose to analyze, I asked myself "Why is this here? What's the purpose of using (insert tactic) with this audience or the bottom line/message? Who is the speaker trying to appeal to and what are they trying to argue? And why does this tactic work? What is the outcome the speaker hopes to achieve by using this tactic?" And so my essays were mostly my answers/thoughts to these questions.

Furthermore, I found it helpful to have a writing framework to structure my essays. Sometimes you'll be told how to structure an essay, other times it's up to you. Of course, whatever structure you use, it must meet and address all requirements and points of the assignment. I recently discovered this YouTube video explaining a writing framework called PEECEL that I've found super useful for my university assignments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHBUsdwYXTk). Especially the advice to use an academic phrase bank to help incorporate appropriate transitions into my essays which have improved the flow and coherence of my writing.

Writing for classes is two things: it's critically analyzing the piece of work and then it's transforming your critical analysis into written words. 

Some people may have trouble with the critical analysis, others may have trouble with transforming critical analysis into words. I fell into the second group. Perhaps as a start, you can help your HS Junior understand what part of writing he struggles with the most, and tackle the problem from there.

I hope this helps.