By: Shelby Scott
As I completed Dr.Lucas’s English Page & Screen course, I have learned countless new things. I have learned new writing styles, studied different types of literature, and improved my own writing techniques. I’ve improved my vocabulary and spelling through our weekly wordplay days of Scrabble. Learning how to collaborate with my peers and think methodically are life-long skills that this class has given me. These skills are beneficial inmy present college experience and will be helpful in the future. Dr. Lucas’s English 1103 section 23 class has not only taught me new writing skills but has also increased my proficiency in other areas.
Along with learning writing skills, I also discovered detective and analysis skills through our Check, Please! lessons. Via the five Check, Please! lessons we completed at the beginning of the semester, I acquired the knowledge of how to search and identify credible sources. Check, Please!, by Mike Caulfield, Director of Blended and Networking at Washington State University, introduced the S.I.F.T. acronym to help one sift out reliable sources at a basic level. Check, Please! also suggests one should find trusted coverage and multiple sources to fact-check your research. Similar to Check, Please!, Writing Analytically, by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen, provides great points about finding a reliable source. “Consistently evaluate the reliability of the source you select in order to detect its potential bias or agenda.” (Writing Analytically, 8th edition, Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 242) All of these key points are aids that will not only help me in my academic life but, also my personal and professional life. Check, Please! taught me a new approach and way of thinking. This new way of thinking and future-developed critical thinking skills were all applied during our Analysis Assignment, where I chose Tom Junod’s piece “The Falling Man”.
“The Falling Man” literacy narrative forced me to look beyond the words on the page and gain a deeper understanding of the writing and image that went along with it. The story of “The Falling Man” by Tom Junod, found in Esquire Magazine, vol 140, tells a captivating and truthful story of one man’s demise on a day that changed America’s history forever. The photographic image, “The Falling Man”, by AP photographer Richard Drew, was taken on September 11th, 2001 at 9:41 a.m. EST. When writing my analysis of this piece I was forced to critically think about the deeper message conveyed by the artist. The message conveyed in Tom Junod’s piece could have been intercepted in two different ways. Some people saw Junod’s work as an invasion of privacy and distasteful but others including myself saw his work as capturing a monumental time in history. Junod was also known for his photography of the Robert Kennedy assassination. He “shot pictures of Kennedy’s open and ebbing eyes, and then of Ethel Kennedy crouching over her husband and begging photographers… not to take pictures.” (Junod) Interpretation is a key aspect you need to take into consideration when writing. Even though I had interpreted Junod’s piece in a certain way, I wanted to challenge myself to think about it from other’s perspectives to better understand the piece as a whole and have a deeper appreciation for it. Beforehand, I didn’t realize how important good analysis skills were and how necessary it is to take interpretation into account.
Analysis skills are critical to becoming a better writer. Constantly throughout this course, I practiced my analysis skills during my research for theannotated bibliography we did during the middle of the semester. My group and I connected the class theme of paper and screen to the positives and negatives of having technology in the classroom. “Technology must be applied with careful consideration to maximize its benefits and minimize the potential for harmful distractions.” (Olsen, et al.) Just as we did in our class we had a mix of technology and no technology in the classroom. Sometimes we write long hand papers in our notebooks but we also kept online blogs throughout the semester.
Without this class, I wouldn’t have been able to depict the differences between reliable and non-reliable sources or have the ability to become a critical and cognitive thinker. The Page & Screen curriculum has shaped my classmates and I into better writers and better people. I now know how to better analyze, collaborate, and write.
Work Cited
Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol 140, no. 3 Sept 2003, pp. 176+ Gale Academic
OneFile Select,
Caulfied, Mike Check, Please! Starter Course, 2022,
https://www.notion.so/checkpleasecc/Check-Please-Starter-Course-ae34d043575e42828dc2964437ea4eed
“Three Rules of Thumb for Getting Started with Research.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition.
Wadsworth/Cengage 2019. pp. 242
Scott, Shelby “Education and Technology: Good vs. Bad?” Shelby Scott, 26 Oct. 2022,
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZQ_Io7p9nHdZmcJo5Gi7IS0ssNHyVSL3KS4JI9Wl_E8/edit
Shelby Scott's Blog 