Dear Dr. Reed Reflection

Outline, planning, revising, rough and final draft, grading. This is the typical process for writing an essay, I however as a young high school student never followed this. I started with an idea in my head and go on from there. I never considered a need to plan and prepare an outline, just to write a rough draft that I would have to revise, draft, and draft again. It would just be easier to start writing the final draft first right? No. This class has taught me many strategies on how to accustom my writing to a college level. Over the semester in this class I have grown, learned how to effectively draft, and experienced argumentative writing first hand.

Throughout the course English 101, I believe my writing skills have improved through understanding concepts such as rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, ethos, pathos, logos, and rhetorical analysis. Looking back at the semester, I reflect on my strengths and weaknesses. My strengths include my note taking skills and being attentive during class. Doing this, I was later able to use these notes to look back at while writing, which I found very useful. For example, for the essay Comparative Rhetorical Analysis, I took note of almost every piece of information Dr. Braun gave us, writing in the margins of the articles and highlighting important phrases. Because of this, writing came very easily to me not only for that essay but also others,

I have never had a huge interest in reading or writing. This is mostly because I was never really good at it. Throughout my educational career, I have struggled immensely with the basic fundamentals of writing; grammar in particular. Even when I asked my teachers they refused to help me. It seemed to me that they cared more about my personality rather than my academic ability. I began to struggle so much that tutors became a part of my everyday life. My mother was forced to read to me because I could not find the motivation to read the book myself. I was very fortunate to have a good high school English teacher my senior year who motivated me and helped me get caught up. I still feel like that I am behind in terms of grammar and communicating effectively. My goal in this course is to not only improve my grammar skills but also get better at expressing my ideas more clearly. I believe that this can help me towards my goals to be a front office executive for a professional baseball team. In that position, I will have to be able to communicate my ideas as clear as possible both on and off the paper.

This course emphasizes rhetoric and composition with a focus on expository writing and understanding writing as a process. The course establishes effective college-level writing strategies through four or more writing projects comprising at least 3,000 words in total.

Throughout the first eight week’s courses, Amy demonstrated a high level of competencies in understanding and applying theory into practice. She was also able to utilize the supports provided to her through the college to vastly improve her professional writing skills, limiting her grammatical errors and increasing her well-deserved passing grades.

Throughout the seven weeks that I have taken this writing composition course, I have developed skills to help me improve my own writing. Using the writing process is one of the main focuses in the course. The writing process helps writers develop and revise their essay as they work their way up to creating the final draft that can be presented. Although there are many areas in my own writing where I can get better, I have found that my writing has improved in many ways while practicing using the writing process.

In the same article, Elizabeth St. Pierre provides what I consider to be a systematic process to writing; she posits that, “writing is thinking writing is analysis, writing is indeed a seductive and tangled method of discovery” (p. 967). So, throughout the process of writing these assignments,

The process I used when writing previously changed during the first few weeks of this class. Already I have altered the way I write my drafts, and the way I read other people’s work. Lamott’s “Shitty First Draft” made me come to the realization that one draft isn’t always the best approach. Therefore, I took multiple steps in examining my draft and critiquing it accordingly. Additionally, I started brainstorming topics, and this led me to create a roadmap for the list of destinations and topics I wanted to touch on and the message I wanted the reader to take away. This is just the beginning of the year and I already have a sense that as I progress through the semester my work will be continually get better.

Professor Michals taught the writing process to show the students how to effectively write a good essay. One of the most important steps that impact my writing style would be the pre-writing process. It’s a process in which a writer proceeds

My literacy skills have grown and progressed throughout this course in the way that there have been a lot of things that I have learned and that I have been continuing to learn. When I first started this course, I did not know how to write an essay, I learned to use the before, during, and after reading technic, and I learned what a summary paragraph was. But now with this course, I have written a couple of assignments which have helped me keep learning.

1.What prewriting assignment(s) did you choose for this? Why? How well did they work for you?

My writing skills which I have worked on over the few months I have been in English 102 have changed quite a bit in my opinion. There are many things which I have improved upon that were amongst my weaker writing skills when the year began. On the opposite side of that point, there are also many things which I still need to improve upon if I want to truly elevate my writing to a level that I will be confident in. Finally, I have gained new skills outside of writing from this class, particularly the activities which we did in class at various points throughout the year. These things all cumulate together to give me an appreciation of English courses which I did not previously have.

Before taking this course my writing styles and habits were very different. I was the typical procrastinator because I would wait until the night before a paper was due to start it. This did not allow me enough time to properly proofread everything, which resulted in getting points deducted for simple grammatical errors that could have been avoided if I would have had the time to proofread. My writing styles have many strengths and weaknesses and I have been able to improve my writing because of them. I have learned from my strengths and weaknesses how to become a better writer.

Over the course of the semester, there has been numerous amount of areas where I believe I have improved in comparison to high school. What has helped me in my writing is the writing class and the in-class writing workshop. The writing class that is located in the Kremen education building has helped me with my writing greatly because in the writing center the person in charge teach us lenses and we apply those lenses to the writing, draft, or reading that someone brings in. The in-class writing workshop has helped me because other students get to read my writing. This is helpful because I get feedback from many students and they let me know what needs to be fixed. A new tool I have been using is They Say I Say. The book is very helpful because of the information and examples it provides such as the templates. I have been applying the templates into my essays and I have seen a significant difference.

Since I have been in school, English and Writing has always been my least favorite subject. English has just never been as easy to me as it is for some other students. English is the subject that I continue to make the least grade in every year and struggle to improve in. This year, The Dual Credit course has really taught me a lot. College-level writing is very important to me because it is preparing me for the real world. Evidence from three of my EN 1113 papers this semester suggest that I've made great progress in is identifying author's purpose, organizing my paper, and gaining a better understanding of how my introductory paragraph is supposed to be. Reading through these papers, I'm stilling working on improving my knowledge of conventions.