The Semester Review

I learned many things this semester, including how to write a thesis statement, how to construct a 1 or 2 paragraph response, how to write a letter, how to debate about a topic, such as our Rwandan Genocide Debate.

I thought a thesis statement included reasons for your point of view. Such as Jon West is smart because he gets good grades and tries hard. But I now know that it is supposed to be Jon West is smart. That really makes things a lot easier on your topic sentence. A thesis is really showing your point of view, it is the topic sentence’s job to provide reason. I found this very useful because it helped me write a better paper and get a better grade.

When I wrote my first paragraph response, I got a C. I really had to rewrite and rethink my thesis, which was written incorrectly, my topic sentence, which made no sense, and my support paragraphs. Writing these responses was very difficult and is becoming easier every time. I have learned that to have good support, you need to include analogies, comparisons, or real life experiences. You have to do this to help your reader understand what you are talking about. This also comes in handy when you yourself have no idea what you are talking about. The order of a paper goes: Thesis – Topic Sentence – Support 1 – Support 2. This pattern is a basic overview, but it helped me better understand writing.

Through many paragraph checks and criticism, I learned the ability of letter writing. Letter writing seemed like a piece of cake when I first heard about it, I was wrong. I did not know how to put ethos and pathos into a paper and what on earth a counter was. Ethos is making people want to help and pathos affects people’s emotions. These are very important in a letter especially when you are writing to government or the UN. I still have to get better at using ethos in my letters. A counter is also very important because it shuts down any opposition to your point. For example, some people may say that Jon West does not get enough done, but that is not true. Jon West is a very smart student and always tries very hard.

Margin notes are not fun, but they do provide you with more information about a topic. Margin notes are really just notes in the margin of a page. They can be questions, comments, important details, or key words. Margin notes really come in handy when you are researching a topic and have no prior knowledge of that topic. They are very messy, yes, but do a better job than normal notes because with margin notes, you can read your point and then read the phrase you made your point about. This is extremely useful, just try it out.

When we were learning about Rwanda and the Rwandan genocide, we did a lot of research and worked in a group to try to “win” the debate. It took a lot of margin notes and countless articles, but to achieve “victory” in the debate, this had to be done. The debate was really just supposed to get us ready for SIMUN. It did its trick. Now I believe that I can participate in a debate and do a good job. If not good then maybe okay. I believe that this was a great experience to prepare us for SIMUN debates and help us with the research. I learned a lot throughout the preparation of and during the Rwandan Genocide Debate.