Constructive Criticism and Writing

Everyone on the planet has a goal set in life, but only a handful attempt to improve to obtain their goal by studying the subject their goal is in. In my English class, English 101 this quarter I was astonished by how much I had progressed as a writer sharpening my writing skills and also learned a lot about writing that I hadn’t learned before. In my writing portfolio for this quarter I had to write an autobiography essay, a research essay, and this reflection essay to develop my writing skills better. The writing assignments were fun to do because it challenged me to work on essays of different styles that were new to me. The essay assignments helped me grow as a better writer that gave me the self-confidence and skills to take on the world on my own.

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

heard my parents say many times growing up that “ you are as good as your word” and the older i have gotten the more I see how true that saying is. If you are honest that shows others that you meet in your life that you can be trusted. Thomas Jefferson stated that "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” Meaning that is one of the first traits out of a personality perspective, to have.

My high school years were not spectacular, nor were they terribly productive.I left high school without learning how to proficiently write an essay. However, CUNY's Borough of Manhattan Community College afforded me a desperately needed second chance. It was at BMCC that I sharpened many of the skills I should have mastered in high school. I was able to greatly improve my writing ability. I began college as a student who found writing a 2 page paper to be a terrifyingly daunting task, but due to practice and numerous resources offered by CUNY, I soon was able to compose papers consisting of 10-14 pages with confidence and efficiency.

This year I have learned a lot from College Writing, this class has taught me a lot about my own writing and what makes a good essay. I have learned a lot about myself as a writer and as a person throughout the course. In this reflection of the past semester I will be going through my past papers and talk about what I liked and how I could’ve made them better. I will also be going through the activities that have shaped my writing the most. Hopefully, I will be representing how I have grown as a writer throughout the year because of this class. Before taking this class I was already relatively confident in my writing abilities and was excited to take the class. Now that the course is completed I am even more confident in my writing because of all the new techniques and helpful tips I learned.

As I look back, College Composition has improved my writing techniques and skills by directing me through tons of practice with writing, readings, and examples from the textbook, in-class discussions and helped me notice my strengths and weaknesses as an English student. Some of my strengths that can be shown in my previous essays are: my ability to free-write with lots of detail, structuring an essay correctly, constructing a very well organized and detailed essay, and manage time and use it to construct a well- thoughtful essay, my thesis statements in all four of my essays were structured correctly, and also, it can take me less time to come up with a debatable topic for my essay than it did at the beginning of the semester; therefore, I have quite a bunch of weaknesses, it can take me a while to start an essay, still to this day, and I can’t begin to write an essay without completing the introduction paragraph first, every now and then the structure of my sentences can cause a problem and a hard time for the reader to understand what I’m really trying to say, and trying to get my point to come across clearly may be a challenge for me as well; also, I’ve noticed that in my previous essays I had put a few commas in the wrong places or missed some commas in a sentence, I have also misused semi-colons, sometimes I have used the wrong word or phrase in a sentence which has made my sentences really unclear and ending an essay with a conclusion paragraph can take me some time

The writing of my college essay was quite a process. Normally for me writing comes rather easy, I do not struggle putting my ideas on paper. At first I thought that this essay would be simple to do and not be very stressful. It turned out to be quite the opposite in fact, just brainstorming was a struggle for me. It was difficult for me to think about my life and how it is special. To me, the events that have shaped me do not seem that relevant, at 18 I had never really payed much attention to how certain things affected me, I just lived my life. eventually , with the help of Mary, I came to the realization that having my summer taken away from me due to a broken foot had really changed my life philosophy, it truly changed who I was and my outlook on life.

“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

College writing to me is a new chapter in my life. I am only a junior in high school, which means I have quite a ways to go when it comes to learning and maturing as a person. As I take on this new chapter I expect to see my writing change along with me, for I’ll have new experiences and feelings to put forth in my writing.

It was two months ago when I discussed how big of a change it was for me to enter into a college writing class. Throughout my first semester attending writing 105, I’ve learned to “rise about my limits”. Reading and writing was a tool I always tend to struggle with yet I continued to focus on exceeding pass my goal. Each essay I wrote became better allowing me to not only learn more but grow as a writer. I started off being able to just write two page essays and now I’ve adapted to being able to write 7 pages without losing track. Over the semester my writing has improved due to dedication, having a purpose and analyzing my mistakes.

Okay, the time had come. I must sign up for a University Writing Program (UWP) class at the University of California, Davis, a requirement I greatly feared. I pushed back signing up for the class until my last a final quarter as a student because I thought to myself, “I am a horrible writer!” Being able to put my thoughts into words onto paper purposed a struggle. Therefore, I organized my classes where I would be able to dedicate a lot of time to my UWP class because I knew I would need it.

Writing the proposal paper was the longest paper that we as a class had written. Our main goal was to write a proposal argument based on the issue that was picked by the students and address the causes or the effects of in your Causal Argument. This paper was fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred words, with a little over a month to complete it. The controversial topic that came to my head that has been talked about for years now; why college athletes should be paid. With this tedious and prolonged essay, I was able to receive personal, but constructive criticism. My essay was supposed to persuade others to take action on a controversial topic. Due to the abundant amount of smaller deadlines, I was more focused on writing a well-developed paper. After each deadline I was able to get back my mistakes and correct them. Throughout the year the same mistakes held present in my essays.

When I see the word, college writing, I honestly start to feel butterfly’s in my stomach, to the point where I feel as if I want to throw up. I have always had trouble when it came to be one’s fate in writing. I hunch because I get bottled up and over think about how am I going to motivate myself to start writing, are the readers going to like my writing, does it sound acceptable enough, etc. When I see writing, I see a whole bunch of different essay prompts, like so much starts to pop up into my head. Writing is something that I like but have trouble with and now that I am a college student, I now understand the meaning of college writing and what it is that comes from it.

Now let's talk about this topic called Honesty. I would hope this word stands out to all of you, because this is not something little. This is a strong word. This word carries a lot of work. There is no other way to explain it other than be truthful, and not lying. Whether or not you are an honest person

“Welcome Class to Composition one.” Those words were voiced by my professor, Mrs. Robinson, on the first day of school. Initially, I thought to myself, do I even belong in this college course class. Before school had even begun, the stress over the summer about my English skills was eating me alive. Why? Well, in my past English classes I received A’s on all of my essays, but this college class did not seem so easy. Also, I was always fascinated by all the arts and sciences, but English never struck interest in me. I never thought that I could write any decent essays. The reason I insecure about my writing skills was because of the ACT. Since the ACT is the talk about how smart an individual is, my ACT score was not very high. As the course continued, the first essay approached quickly. I remember being stressed about this essay because of my writing insecurities. Although I managed to acquire a decent grade, I promised myself to strive to make myself a better writer. I started to read Norton Field Guide to Writing handbook also known as the yellow book, and slowly but surely started to develop knowledge of good writing skills and tips to improve my essays. This allowed me to grow as a writer and slowly my insecurities started to dwindle, and I began to gain confidence in myself. I never would've thought that the next time I took the ACT that my English score would be my highest. When getting my score back and realizing that I had improved so much, I began to wonder how I