As I look back at the beginning of the semester in English 250, I have seen a substantial amount of growth. Before taking this classy, I was not familiar with the WOVE (written, oral, visual, and electronic) concept, but now I feel that I have broadened my knowledge in all four areas. In the areas of WOVE, I do feel that I excelled more at visual communication then I did at written. As I progress in my college career, I plan to take these skills and apply them to my other classes involving communication skills. Even beyond college I hope to use the WOVE skills I learned in English 250 in the work world.
Before I took English 250, I had never really been exposed to the different forms of communication in an English class. Most classes I took were traditional paper writing and book reading classes. One of my favorite projects–and a project I believe I did well on–was my visual analysis video. The reason I enjoyed this assignment so much was because it was unlike anything I had ever done in an English class. I have always enjoyed making videos, so it was exciting to find out I could do something I enjoyed for a class assignment.
One part of this assignment that I struggles with was recording my voice for the video. I had trouble figuring out the best way to make my voice sound clear and concise. When I normally speak in every day life, I have a problem with speaking too fast and it does not sound very articulate. When I wrote my visual analysis script, I tried to consciously avoid certain words that would make my speaking sound sloppy. When I was doing practice run throughs of my voice recording, I tried different tactics such as standing vs sitting and headphones vs no headphones in order to make the sound quality the best it could be.
Within the category of written communication, I grew in my writing process, but I still have a long way to go. I used to rarely do any planning before writing a paper; however throughout this semester, I have learned how important the planning of a paper is. For my textual rhetorical analysis, I did not do much planning. It was a paper that I should have done a lot of planning on because it was a topic I did not know much about. I analyzed an article about concussion in sports. I have never had experience with a concussion and not many people I know have either, so I should have read the article more in depth. This was also one of the first essays, so I was still somewhat stuck in old habits of writing papers with no planning.
As the semester progressed, so did my planning process. When I wrote my documented essay, I did a lot more planning. I made an outline with links to my sources and pulled quotes that I wanted to incorporate into my essay. I also tried to make bullet points about what I wanted to talk about alongside each quote in every paragraph. On this paper, I also realized that a thesis can be more than one sentence and that I can change it from my first draft. In the past, I would write my thesis as one sentence and never think to ever change it. When I wrote my documented essay, I came up with three different theses and even then changed one for my final draft.
Looking forward to the rest of my college career and beyond, I hope to use and build upon the WOVE skills. My future classes will invove a lot of writing communication and probably a lot of oral, visual, and electronic as well. The skills I have learned, especially with planning, will really help me when I write articles or press releases for classes or, potentially, a job.
As far as oral, visual, and electronic skills go, there are many ways those incorporate into a public relations or journalism jobs. Oral communication is extremely important when interviewing sources or being interviewed myself. Visual could relate to classes because many times in an article or press release include a graphic, photo, or video. By expanding my knowledge on adobe software and premier, I can refine my visual making skills. Electronic communication is inevitable with any class or job. Most communication these days happens via email, especially in college when people are busy.
Overall, I have gained ample knowledge in the WOVE communication areas. I have learned about how important planning in when writing an essay. As the course went on, I realized that I needed to improve on my writing area especially when making an outline. My favorite project to complete was the visual analysis because it was like nothing I had even done before and I enjoy making videos. With all these skills I have learned, I hope to continue to expand on them in my future classes and career.