Heels Of Success Analysis

In the beginning of the second semester of my senior year I created a binder called a writing portfolio. It held all the assignments and essays I had finished in class. The writing portfolio is like a sapling that would grow to become a tree with each new addition of essays added to it. Academic Writing: English 151 was a grueling class that paid off in the long run. It was a difficult class that was insightful into writing well since it taught me the basic mechanics of grammar and English at the same time. It pushed me to the limits of writing at the utmost potential I was able to write. Some people might say that this class is just another English class with an embellished name to it, but it is nowhere close to a regular English class. It is literally a class that can be frightful at first glance because of the amount of essays we write at a college level.

As I look back on my English 101 experience, I have come to the conclusion that I have learned many new things that have improved my abilities as a writer. I have learned some new techniques that have improved my ways of approaching an essay. I learned all about the rhetorical appeals and how to apply them in my writing and how to look for them in a essay written by a author. I have also learned how to argue both sides of a argument, and how to look for reliable sources and to properly quote and site the author of the essay. I feel as if I have become a better writer and my improved writing skills are shown within each essay.

Throughout the English 101 course, I believe I have thoroughly improved in my writing, peer editing, and analyzing readings, along with annotating my thoughts, misunderstandings, and difficulties. I believe I have especially improved on my thesis statements, providing the basis for my essays. My thesis statements have went from being plain and uninteresting to being more detailed, clear, and concise. This enabled me to produced better written essays that are rich in detail, rhetorical statements, evidence, and experiences. I feel as if I came into this course not exactly sure how to write a college paper. I was always more focused on the length of my essays rather than the structure, vocabulary, and ideas my papers were exhibiting. My writing now flows better and presents my ideas in a clear, organized fashion.

Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe

English 101 might seem like an easy course to take for some students. For other students such as myself, English 101 was one of the classes I feared and procrastinated on taking. Coming from an ESL background, English was the class I have always struggled with the most. I’ve always excelled in science/ mathematics courses. I prefer the correct answers to be facts and universal. Creativity is not my forte. The process of putting my thoughts down on paper in an organized manner, with correct punctuation, and citing works used, seemed like a complicated, tedious task before taking English 101 this summer.

As I entered into English 101, I had the expectation of writing many unimaginative papers, while stressing if I was going to be able to complete my college and high school tasks. On top of all that, I was afraid of having a monotonous, boring professor. I soon realized that these assumptions were all invalid. I managed my tasks by completing everything in a timely manner and needed all the advice I could get from an outstanding English professor. When I enter English 102 in the fall, I have the expectation of being in a more language based composition class. My goals for English 102 are to continue to improve my writing skills, complete my work on time, and obtain information that I can use as I proceed in college. After I accomplish English 102, I hope to be able to be an improved writer and be able to convey ideas more

During this semester, the realization of my past was that I have often skimmed through parts of the writing process to get the job done. Not being an avid reader often hindered my writing abilities. This class most definitely made me realize that the entire writing process is important and having peer reviews also helped significantly and certainly made a difference in the result of my work. Taking the time to read, brainstorm my thoughts, write an outline, rough draft after rough draft, reading constructive criticism of others helped in the revisions of my papers’ reaching the best possible outcome. When selecting English 102, I knew I would be challenged, but to what extent I was unsure. If like past English courses that were taken learning to write essays would be the goal. Once realizing that my work would be shared with others, providing informed information

In my English 111 class, we wrote four essays about various topics. In my portfolio, I will reflect on my writing in my narrative, literary analysis, compare and contrast, and cause and effect essays.

One thing that i definitely didn’t like was my imagery. I never really described the setting that I wanted to get across. Looking back on this essay, I really should have set the scene of becoming a middle schooler and being the underdog in almost every subject. I wish I would have used more sensory details. For example, when describing how troubling soccer was for me I should have captured a snapshot moment of me getting beat all the time or getting picked last for a scrimmage. Something along the lines of, “It was the fateful moment of when the two chosen 8th graders would pick their team for the 15-minute scrimmage. I waited anxiously for my name to be called, my feet were constantly moving in place in the squishy mud. “Mo, Kate, Ash”. One after another the names kept coming until there were about three girls left. The three girls no one wanted; Including me. My palms were sweaty. In my head was a constant chant of please, please, please but it was to no avail. I was still last”.

This semester, I choose to take English Composition 101 and 124. It is a combined class that include credits for both human values and English composition. This class was about the trauma underlie of books and movies. For this class, the students mostly wrote papers to prove the facts of trauma. The teacher was Dr. Danielle Glassmeyer and the class was taken at Bradley University. I believe that I have improved my essays in three places: knowledge of Constriction, self reflections and organization, unity and coherence.

English 101 has helped shape my writing in so many ways. I have grown and became more confident in the skills I portray. In-class workshops helped me to receive feedback and new ideas from my peers. My view of English has changed drastically for the best. Along with my writing skills my reading and critical thinking skills have also improved. I learned the importance of using ethos, pathos, and logos. Putting text in dialog has been a struggle for me in the past but I now have a better grasp on it after taking English 101. I’m happy I had to take English 101 because it has helped prepare for not only English 102 but my other classes as well.

English 101 changed my approach to the process of drafting and revising in many ways. To be more specific, they prompted me to include as much detail and background into the main ideas of my paragraphs as possible. Additionally, I now create outlines before composing a draft of my essay, so that I can organize my thoughts before writing the material. The course conveyed the importance of taking advantage of your rough drafts, because it allows you to fix your errors and create an exemplary

I entered this class with a general idea of what was going to be expected of me and what I was going to have to accomplish in order to be successful, and I credit the extent of my preparation for this course to the extensive instruction and critiques provided for me by my high school teachers. By them I was taught the fundamentals of composition which allowed me the time and energy to more deeply understand the intricacies of good writing which I would be taught in college. Although I learned many new concepts in English 101, I feel as though I had a stable foundation to build on and enhance with more refined skills.

My portfolio is a reflection of the two best essays that I wrote during the English 101 course during the 2016 spring semester. It contains my Media Analysis essay, “Imagine the Possibilities,” and my Research-based Academic Argument (RBAA), “Euthanasia.” These two essays are my best work, and were both improvements from the first essay that I completed for this class. With many hours being put into both of these papers, I worked hard to stay organized and have good research, both things that I previously had problems with. My writing skills have become much stronger in persuasive and logical writing, thanks to this class, along with my ability to find strong research for my essays. All of these skills are shown in my two essays that I have included in this portfolio, and they are what I really want to focus on.

This was one of the very first story I wrote in this class and I have come so far from then. The grammar was fixed from this and I had since then added more vocabulary words. I felt that when I was peer reviewing others essays, the biggest issue was grammar so hopefully I had that fixed. I also hope that I can improve from here on out; I love that the essay was something that I could write about and we had time in class to write the draft and finish the final draft. I believe that this essay describes something I wish I could kind of have--a chance to be a sports star and end with a killer game or in my case--a killer senior year. I felt that this essay was very well writen in the first place and only got better with my revisions. The point of the this assignment was to write about anything that interested us and that we could write five pages about. I felt that this exceeded even my expectations especially since this was the first essay we wrote after our summer essay. I loved how this essay flowed out from my creative juices that come from my brain because this seemed to have written itself. The words seemed to have come out of nowhere to write this beautiful piece of art. I changed the grammar and made sure that the characters in the story had more backgrounds so that it also fit the criteria of the rubric and that the overall essay could hopefully get the full points. I also hope that this essay gets the full points because this will meet the