I have been writing essays since middle school, gaining experience from multiple teachers all of whom had unique ways of imparting their skills on me as well as my classmates. Barring the basic learning of Writing in middle school, most of my writing thus far has been gained in literature classes. Because they were not solely writing classes, the goal of understanding the literature that was being studied was often placed above improving my writing skills. Almost all of the writing completed in the literature classroom setting were centered on displaying an ability to grasp the concepts from the literature or to prove a concept related to the literature. I also wrote a number of descriptive essays in which I had to write fictional stories in great detail. Another source of writing experience for me would be the occasional essay in the various social studies classes that I partook in. These essays were almost always
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
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:
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.
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
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
I started writing my first real essay in the Eighth grade, and I never knew why I was given such an awful task. I am a terrible English/Writing scholar and I never could comprehend the concept of writing. I put a lot of work and heart into my first essay, but that still didn’t get me the grade that I wanted. Needless to say I got a “D” on the essay. I was extremely disappointed in the grade I made and I wanted to reject writing all together, but that is not the kind of scholar I am, so I began my journey during my Eighth grade year to become a better writer. I had many academic goals that year, but my main goal was to excel on the English state writing test at the end of the year. The test would determine if I moved on to ninth grade English or if I would get placed in a pre-high school English program. To achieve my goals I knew that I was going to have to work hard not only on developing the papers I write, but also making sure they are grammatically correct, interesting, and that each story or essay gets the main point across as well.
Starting this class, I’ll be honest, I was afraid when I heard about AP Seminar. I didn’t really know how I got into the class because I know my writing isn’t as great as most kids in my class. AP Seminar involves a lot of hard work, and I felt as if my writing wasn’t good enough. Out of my 5 essays from last year, I only got one A. That one A didn’t make me feel smart though, and I didn’t understand why. Writing this now is difficult for me because I don’t know how to explain things in my own words. I heard a lot about how hard this class is and about the speeches. I can’t stand talking about speeches because that is my greatest fear. I still haven’t figured out my main writing strength, but what I do know is I am taking small steps into
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.
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
I remember when I first came to the Wilkes University, one of my edifier (?) (Friend, teacher, mother) told me "Don’t judge your class in the beginning, judge your class at the end of course”. In the beginning of my classes I was very nervous about how to write an essay. However, I believe my writing skills has effectively improved. To be honest, English 101 wasn’t an easy class for me in the beginning. College writing is entirely different from high school writing. I always have trouble with grammar when I write English essays, and it’s harder for me to learn and improve my skills in a short amount of time.
Essay writing became difficult when I started 10th grade Honors English. My papers would never get above a C which baffled me. I had done well in previous English classes prior and received high marks on all my creative writing assignments. By the end of the year I realized it had to do with my thought process. My imagination wasn’t beneficial when it
During this past semester in senior composition, I have learned how to properly write an essay. In the first semester of my senior year, I took creative writing with Mrs. Leese; I learned how to write stories and how to find books that I would actually like to read. That class got me to enjoy writing and when I found out this class was going to be all essays, I was not very ecstatic. In reality, I loved this class and everything I was taught in it because now I am able to use it for the better. In senior composition, I believe that my writing improved greatly because of the vocabulary I learned, the topics that I picked, and the punctuation/grammar I used.
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