My street
West Des Moines, IA 50265-5200
21 April, 2007

English Faculty
Des Moines Area Community College
2006 S. Ankeny Blvd.
Ankeny, IA 50023

Dear Reader:

In Composition II my writing skills improved. I developed my critical reading strategies; rhetorical approaches; evaluating, planning, and revising my papers; researching strategies and proper MLA formatting.
During Composition II my critical reading strategies improved beyond that of which I had acquired from Composition I. We read sample essay out of the book for this course, _________. We would analyze the arguments from each essay, find weak points in the argument, reform the arguments so they would stand up, and try to refute it. We also critically read others papers and helped to make them better.
We also got practice with planning, evaluating, and revising papers. We read sample papers out of __________ and used those to help formulate our papers. After we wrote our papers other people in the class would read and evaluate them. I also read my paper aloud to hear when I had to many word, or when something didn’t sound right. Smarthinking.com was also useful, I submitted my paper to them so they could revue it revue it.
The last paper that I did was a research paper. I learned how to correctly search for reliable sources, mainly on EBSCOhost. Normally .com sites aren’t credible unless credible references can be found. Site that end in .gov or .edu can be trusted. Searching off Google or Yahoo will give you a lot of information that isn’t always that reliable but it is a good place to start a research paper.
My MLA formatting skills have also improved. On the last paper that I wrote, the research paper, we had to make a works cited page and in-text citations. I learned the proper formatting for each of the two MLA citations.