I've learned how to write in a less bland, formulaic fashion and actually vary my style, even when following an academic writing format. Learning to aim my writing towards a specific type of person assisted with that. It was obvious aspect before, since you need to be writing towards someone. However, this class taught me how to do it more effectively, especially in an academic manner. There were many elements concerning an audiences that I didn't understand before that affect an entire paper when done correctly.
Thanks to this class, I learned to come up with rough drafts quicker than I used to. The beginning of the writing process was the most difficult for me, since I had a hard time thinking up ideas. I would mostly waste a lot of time brainstorming and not jotting anything down. The strategies I learned to avoid this mental block helped me get better at getting down my ideas and creating decent rough drafts. This was one of the more major problems I had with writing, but now it's become better with what I've learned.
Certain documents gave me trouble when reading them, but I learned how to approach these way more effectively. I feel like this got better due to the assigned readings from Writing Spaces. Not only did one of the essays give good advice for reading through academic documents, but the essays themselves were good practice. The strategy for "connecting" with the author makes academic documents feel more engaging, and prevent me from getting lost in the text. I was especially appreciative of this when reading through the sources for my essay assignment, since I used information from academic journals. It really came in handy and will likely continue to from this point on.
