Ap Test Reflection

I was pushed constantly to work harder at my writing. I studied and practiced several new techniques and methods for prewriting and organizing the essays I found so hard to create. At first, I had quite a few bad days and quite a few subpar essays. My grades would vary greatly from paper to paper. This really scared me, as I hoped to keep myself from drastically dropping in my grades. Yet, I wanted to maintain my grade point average so I had no choice but to succeed and impress around every corner. I began to pour in, even more, work and apply all of the newly learned skills from that class into my mind. I hoped that soon I would be able to find a system for writing that helped me form proper

Writing may come naturally for some people, but for me, it does not. This class will be challenging- as it is a college course- but that does not mean that I am not going to try my best to receive an A, and meet all of the expectations this semester. Even with it not coming naturally, I do know tasks that improve my writing, like being able to analyze the purpose, audience, and rhetorical strategies used by other writers (syllabus 2). In my AP Language class I took last year the concept of being able to come up with those three things was heavily stressed; therefore, we did multiple practice worksheets and wrote essays where we would have to come up with those things. On page 3 in the guidebook, it says that we should know how to write and

When this class started at the beginning of this semester I was not sure I would learn a lot. The main objectives of this class were fairly simple. There were five main objectives to use and know. They are the following:

When one enrolls into an honors or advanced English class, there are many worries that come to mind. These worries create thoughts such as ‘Am I a good writer?’, ‘Will I pass?’, or ‘How do I even start a paper?’. My teachers never specifically taught me to write. My teacher that I had for 9th grade English and my 10th grade honors English class always gave good grades. Once I got into my first AP English class, I felt as though my writing was inferior. In my distress, I went to the internet and I found that you do not have to be gifted in academic writing to get good grades on your essays, I found that organization is the key to writing a powerful essay.

Throughout the course of this semester in AP Lang, my eyes have been opened to many of the weaknesses I never knew I had in writing. Coming into this semester, I had heard about the difficulty of this class, but was not unduly worried about not receiving an A; I have always considered myself as a competent if not strong writer. However, after failing to attain desired grades on several important essays, I was devastated, and realized that although I had mastered the basics of grammar and writing, there was still much for me to work on. Also, I did not understand that much of my grade in AP Lang would be determined by speaking in front of others, which is not my strong suit. What I have come to find is that writing essays containing all of the new information we have learned throughout the semester, such as requirements for different types of essays and good writing strategies, takes a lot of work, time, and thinking. Unfortunately, my procrastination caused me to only get done what had to be done instead of putting in the extra work and truly understanding everything.

Essays have always seemed like just another assignment. Rarely did I like doing them and most of the time I did not like the prompt. Essays were straight forward and very dull. You were given a question about something in class and told to write about it. So far college English has been different. The class takes an abstract point of attack. There is still a prompt but is about more complex and controversial issues. This would have to make me think critically and in an unorthodox manner. This, however, was not my main worry. At the beginning of the year I had two major concerns going into a college level English class. Grammar and mechanics, those are the two words that have always been brought up in parent-teacher conferences or written in red ink on my paper. I was not very worried about making a thesis or analyzing quotes. One thing I rarely did in high school was revision. It was either last minute or I thought the essay was already good enough. The first essay was proof of a lack of revisions. The prompt asked us to take our rough draft, revise it, than make more revisions to that paper so that it can become your final copy. I did not make an attempt to do a revised copy. I did however revise my first draft and went straight the final essay. During this process my analyzing could always be more in depth (clarity was also an issue through out primary and secondary education). Although receiving a slightly better grade on my first paper, it had more mistakes and had less

When I graduated high school, I already knew that I wanted to attend college other than going to the work force. I heard stories about college being fun and it is one of the greatest accomplishment a person can achieve. So, I began college right after high school. As I entered college, I learned that I will have to focus more on writing papers than having fun. In high school my teachers did not prepare me for college essays. I feel like I learned a lot more failing on my college writing assignment than passing on the essays in high school. Well now I have approached the end of the semester of college, and I am exhausted from the constant writing assignments. Although the assignments were difficult like I said it was also helpful. Each assignment helped me in different ways. The assignments helped me improved with my grammar, time management, and how to process before I begin writing. In English 1010 I had different types of writing assignments. I had to write a literacy narrative paper, analysis paper, research paper, and lastly an autoethnography paper which I am doing now. An autoethnography is when the author uses self reflects to write about their experiences about writing a paper. English is not the only subject that I had writing assignments in. I also had to write assignment in my business class. My English teacher had informed me that I will have to do an autoethnography. So, I used my paper in my business class to reflect on how I write by

The beginning of my junior year seems like it was such a long time ago. This may be because of how much I have grown since the start of the year. When I began AP English, my writing skills needed improvement. For instance, I often used incorrect grammar and struggled with staying on topic. In just one semester, my writing has improved immensely. The more than I write, the more I learn about how to craft a good paper. I have worked on improving my grammar, using rhetoric, addressing my subject, and many more elements of writing. In addition to improving my writing, I have gained many skills to become a better student. I have learned about effective study techniques and time-management skills that allow me to be the most successful. Since I always try my best, I know that over time I will continue to grow in my studies. This year I have gained countless skills that will help me succeed in English in the future.

The grade that I think that I should receive for the first semester of AP Seminar is an A. I believe that I should get an A for multiple reasons, such as I complete all my work, I have always given my full effort throughout the class, and I work well in group scenarios. Throughout the first semester, I consistently finish my assignments. While we were doing the practice PT1 I had finished the individual research report and the drafts that went along with it on time. Additionally, I found and read research to help myself prepare for the socratic seminar. During the course of the class I have constantly completed my tasks to the best of my ability. The second day of school we were to prepare a short presentation about a picture. In the beginning

“Finally!” I thought to myself as summer is slowly approaching, “I am done with this high school forever.” I honestly am so excited for summer that each day I count down the number days I have for school. Moreover, I constantly think of the activities that I will do during the summer that sound a lot better than school. Despite being overjoyed of leaving high school, I certainly would not deny that I have tremendously improved as a writer. True, as mentioned in all of my previous reflective essays, I still despise English; however, I have to grudgingly admit College Credit Plus English 1010 refined my writing skills from my junior year in AP English class. My classmates and teacher pointed out some ways that I could brush up my essays, which

I was never able to step out of my comfort zone and develop different writing skills. Wanting to challenge myself and write different types of essays, I was very excited when my professor gave us our first major writing assignment of the semester. We were instructed to describe a personal experience that you have gone through and that has made a formative effect on you as an individual. At first I was nervous because the prompt was so open ended, but after digesting the guidelines of the essay, I grew excited and ambitious about tackling the task at hand. With out much thought, I knew what I was going to write, the only issue I realized was the process I was going to go through to develop the essay. No longer instructed to write a five-paragraph essay, I knew that I would have to write more elaborately and have a higher degree of complexity. Normally I would have written a paper in one or two sittings, briefly look it over for basic grammatical errors, and then turn it in hoping that I accomplished what was asked. However, our class required students to turn in one or two drafts to peer edit before the final draft was due. This was not only essential to my development as a peer reviewer but also my development as a writer. The writing process allowed me to gain helpful insight on errors that I commonly would glance

Let's be honest, I'm not the best writer. I have had to write paper after paper for about 12 weeks. Writing isn’t my strong suit and I don't think it will ever be a strong suit of mine. During the 12 weeks of composition class, I have seen improvement in my writing. Many people don’t like writing but writing skills are needed in life. I'm a junior in high school and if I want to get scholarships for college, I'm going to need to write essays. Whether I become a plumber or a CEO I need writing skills.

Ever since I was young, English has always been one my least favorite subjects throughout school because I did not enjoying writing. Writing always frustrated me because it seemed so time consuming. But as I grew older I came to the realization that writing papers are not as hard as we set it out to be. If you formulate a method to how you will complete the paper, and follow through with it, it makes the entire process so much easier. For example, for all the students who procrastinate with their assignments until the day before it is due. Think about all the time and effort you have to put fourth to complete an entire paper in one day. Imagine how much less effort it would take to simply start working on the assignment at least four days before the required due date. You would only have to spend an hour or two a day to complete the entire essay. All you have to do is develop a plan as to what you want to accomplish each day and a writing strategy to following while writing. Throughout my English courses I have assembled my own writing strategies, and the first step to writing a good essay is pre-writing.

I decided to take Pre-AP because I like a challenge, and I like to learn. Reading and writing are not my strong suits, but they are important things to know how to do moving forward in life. I thought this class would be a great opportunity to push myself, not only in the amount of work I will be assigned, but also that I will have to learn how to manage my time wisely. I am eager to see what I can accomplish!

Throughout this semester there are many skills that I have noticed have improved through the constant writing of essays for this class. The one that I find most noticeable is a habit I had long struggled with which was essentially my tendency to be over necessarily wordy when writing my essays. I believe that I was able to somewhat fix this subconsciously, just by knowing that I was no longer in high school, and could no longer get by with just attempting to fill up my word count. I also believe I have greatly improved in my topic selection. In high school I would throw caution to the wind and just pick whatever topic came to mind just in an effort to get it done. I have been much more calculated in college, and I believe that it has helped me write better essays. While these were the