Over the course of this trimester, I have definitely seen my
writing skills improve. Whether this is solely because of language arts class
assignments or because of being “forced” to write 2 blog posts a week, I’m not
sure. It’s probably a little bit of both. In the beginning of the year, when I
learned that we would have a blog we had to add posts to every week, I was
horrified. “This is pretty much having to write an essay twice every single
week!” I thought to myself. So that was how I approached the daunting task. For
my first blog, I sat in my room, opened my laptop, and flipped through the book
for half an hour with not a letter typed on my screen. I was clueless on how to
write a blog about “Theme”. If given
questions pertaining to it, or even having to analyze it would’ve been okay
with me. But this was starting from scratch. I couldn’t fill an entire page
with information about the theme of a book... There was just too many
directions to go with it. So, if one were to read my first few posts, (s)he
would definitely feel the rigidness and stiffness of the blog. The highlighting
in my beginning blog shows the faults I had in it. In fact in the beginning
blog mentioned above, I do not use the pronoun “I” at all. It was a robotic
analysis of my reading novel. Not only that, my writing was not natural at all;
it didn’t sound like a blog. It sounded like a report for school. In my
beginning blog, the introduction was not attention grabbing at all- it was too
straightforward. I was writing a summary for the City of Glass. This
blog was so long and technical that I didn’t want to read through it myself
after I wrote it. I literally went through the book and summarized each chapter
of the book, which was tedious to write and to read. I hammered away at the
computer keys for one and a half hours to make sure I didn’t leave out any
important details in the book. My vocabulary was also very blunt and basic. The
highlights in my newer blog illustrate how I was able to make my blog more fun
to read and sound much more fluid and eloquent. I started it with a rhetorical
question to reel in the reader and I just blogged like I was talking. I started
typing and tried to make the blog more ‘realistic’ and natural sounding. Also,
I wasn’t just blogging about the book I was reading, but about a magazine that
a friend showed me that I found interesting. I tried connecting to the reader
more in my introduction and offered more of my personal opinion. I also
expanded my vocabulary and used more complex words, which bettered my writing.
One thing I struggled with through this experience was coming
up with interesting things to blog about. A lot of times it’d be Sunday night
and I would just start my second blog. I didn’t want the blog to be just a
boring recap of what I read in my novel. Thus, I would spend some time
exploring magazines or online articles to come up with something I could blog
about. I learned half way through the trimester that reading other media
sources could be just as beneficial as reading a book. My biggest strength in
blogging, I would say, is that I was able to blog about a numerous number of
topics. I wouldn’t just blog about a book I read for 2 weeks. I’d blog about
other things I read that I found interesting. I’d try to make my blogs more
applicable to everyday life. My biggest weakness would definitely be making
some of my blogs too long, repetitive, and boring to read. I’d throw in too
many unnecessary words and phrases. Unfortuneatly, I did not reach my reading
goal. I set up to read 30 books by the end of the year, and so far I have read
10. I just got really busy with school and extracurricular that I couldn’t find
time to read. Also, in 2 of the books I read, I lost interest in and returned to
the library. I also didn’t update GoodReads much either. I used GoodReads
mainly for book suggestions and to keep track of what books I want to read.
This way I could have a list that I could bring to the library to find books I
think are interesting. As a reader, I have definitely grown. I decided this
year to read more challenging books, specifically classics. A lot of the
sentence syntax and words in the older books are really confusing, but blogging
kind of forced me to really think about what I was reading to make sure I
understand what I read, so I can blog about it later. Overall, I feel like
blogging was a beneficial experience for my reading and writing.
