English Comp 1 Reflection

English 10 has been one bizarre adventure from formal writing, to poetry, and then to creative writing. In this course, I have learned that there’s always room for improvement in everything I do. As a child, I struggled with writing, as English is my second language. This course has helped me grow in my writing skills, making it an enjoyable experience. Some of the strengths I have discovered in my writing is planning and editing. I tend to plan ahead of time before I write, so I have a clear understanding of what I am going to write. My editing skills are also extremely strong because I often edit to a greater extent than needed. I have come to improve the vocabulary in my essays because as I edit, I replace the weak words in my writing.

The most important improvement for me in this course was on my grammar. I was not aware of the comma rules before. It was shocking to see where commas are to be put and the places that I usually miss. The Hacker lessons we did in and out of class on commas have improved my grammar significantly. Looking back through all of my graded essays it is unbelievable how many commas I have actually missed. Also, writing the essays in MLA format and including work cited entries and quotations, has helped me become more comfortable with it. When I write essays now, I do not hesitate or get anxious if I have to add a work cited entry. However, even though I have know a little bit more of when to use commas and have a little bit more knowledge about grammar there is still a lot of room for improvement.

I learned a lot in this class during the semester. The first project was our learning narrative, it was not what I was expecting from a writing class. I expected we would be writing a many formal essays in MLA format with lots of sources and research. The first essay being a creative writing project was unexpected. At first writing a narrative from my personal experience was difficult for me. I had not written anything besides formal essays since high school. Writing something that was creative and expressive was an adjustment. After a few days of writing I began to really enjoy my learning narrative. I liked being able to express myself and my own experiences and share them with others.

As the Fall 2017 term comes to end, I look back on what I have accomplished in this class. English 102 – Composition II was one of the most challenging and toughest class I have taken at UW-Stout, but feel as though it has helped me to improve my writing skills. Even before the semester started the feeling of anxiety had taken over, as writing has never been my strongest skill, but stayed positive and confident I would be successful. Much to my surprise, my instructor, Michael Critchfield quickly addressed that this class would not be easy and amazingly changed my views of writing throughout the entire semester.

      Now, two months into the semester, I realize that though the work may not be challenging, this course acts as a calm refresher to the past two years of struggle that I faced in English.

Coming into this University, I knew that my writing skills were not poor, however I needed more guidance on how to be a more successful writer. My last english class in high school was advanced writing class, so I thought that my skills acquired through that class would help me a lot through this class. I will say I credit my background knowledge for some of my success on my papers, but the English 101 course itself has helped me strengthen my skills. I picked the specific papers in my portfolio because they represent my writing style. I always wrote by what the book said, like a machine. My english teacher this year told me I needed to work on being comfortable with not always following the book. After I learned to do that, I had some trouble

Throughout the course of English 16, I have improved my writing. The worksheets and notes provided helps me become a better writer than I was when I first stepped into the classroom. Revising my paper after the second draft or ‘final copy’ helped me better under the process and time that must be in to make a perfect paper. In the course, there were four assignments, a research paper, a research proposal, diagnostic essay and a essay about appearance.

English has always scared me a little because I have never been super confident in my writing abilities, however this year I am looking optimistic. By the end of this english course, my goal is to be more confident in my writing abilities. Also, I hope to not only become a better reader, but to comprehend what read. Sometimes when I read, I will not fully grasp what the author is trying to say, or I will not understand what the moral of the story is, so I would love to work on comprehension skills this year. Another area that needs improvement is knowing where to put commas. I realize that commas are placed to continue a sentence without having it turn into a run on, however I will usually place commas in the wrong spot, or I will not add them

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Not only has this course prepared me for English classes in the future, it has also directed me in becoming a more well-rounded student. One major lesson that I learned throughout the course of this class is to always be on top of my homework and finish my work on time. When the professor had explained the importance of coming to class prepared I realized the importance of starting work preemptively. By beginning work ahead of time I am able to read and annotate text far more efficiently. When I had learned how to properly annotate and decipher text, the teachings of my professor had it trickled into other classes. Being prepared for your class is something that is necessary for all college classes. On that day I learned the true importance of planning ahead for essays and prioritizing my time efficiently.

Throughout Honors English II, I not only became a more advanced reader, I also became a more experienced writer. All throughout the semester, I learned to analyze works of literature and look for themes in the novels I read, which also helped me to become a more thoughtful writer. I also greatly improved my vocabulary throughout the semester, which helped me achieve more advanced writing and reading skills. Overall, by using new writing techniques and new vocabulary, I was able to build on my previous reading and writing skills, and I hope to see a continuation of advancement in my reading and writing abilities in the years to come.

My goals this semester for the course it to work harder than I did last semester to get a better grade to pass the course. Also, I would like to improve my writing skills and become a better writer my instructor can help me achieve my goals by doing the best he can to explain the assignments and class readings to make it easier to understand.

High school was a major transition when it came to my literary skills. I took the most challenging english courses throughout each year of my high school career. During my sophomore year a new program was introduced, AP Capstone Academy. The introduction of this program allowed our high school to finally be recognized as a magnet school in our county. There were two classes that must be taken to continue enrollment in this program, they were AP Seminar and AP Research. Though I found it a drag to add on a writing class on top of my english class I was not looking forward to it my sophomore year, but little did I know how much it would help prepare me for academic writing in the future. During my junior year I took AP Seminar. This class involved a lot of reading and learning how to breakdown

In the beginning, I was anxious to begin my first assignment since I had done so well in English Comp I, I thought, “how hard would English Comp II be?” Let’s just say, Comp

The beginning of the semester my writing was weak. When I got assignments for grammar, punctuation, and sentence style I was satisfactory when I turned them in. When I write my essays and turned them in they were satisfactory. Then the second eight week started then I knew I had to advance my grammar, punctuation and sentence style. I can now reflect back to the beginning and see how much I have advance in my writing. I notice that my strengths are vocabulary and the structure of my essays, and my only weakness is my grammar that I need to work on a lot.