How To Write A Reflective Essay For English Class

A reflective essay is essentially an essay designed to emulate past experiences or occurrences in writing form. Most reflective essays are to show the reader changes and evolutions of yourself or certain aspects about yourself, so there is a constant change of tenses during the essay between past and present. During this essay I will be describing the most important parts of writing a reflective essay and all the key elements that should be included.

Throughout English 1010 thus far, I can certainly say that my writing skills have been tested and tried. Writing for fun and composing rhetorical essays for a college-level English class are vastly different styles and require contrasting attitudes, voices, and points of view for each. Before writing essays of the former diction, I must admit that I did not understand the rhetorical strategies and had no idea there even was a rhetorical triangle. The assignments included in this portfolio show the advancements I have made in my writing with an academic tone.

After a grueling first quarter, I was completely miserable, with terrible grades, low self-esteem, and no end in sight. I was hanging on to the hope that there would be some epiphany moment, a moment where suddenly my writing soared, along with my grades. That change did happen, but not all at once‒ it began during the third quarter, when my teacher, Ms. Boynton, asked me to stay after class, along with five other students. She asked if we would each be interested in participating in The Atlantic and College Board Essay Contest, in which we would each submit an analysis of a famous American speech. I was truly stunned that she had chosen me over so many other students in the class, since I had felt so lost for so many weeks, but it was exactly what I needed as motivation to keep on improving my writing. As I worked closely with her on my contest submission and other class work, I came to realize how much she cared about me and wanted to help me succeed. With that being said, she never made it easy; she continually pushed me, knowing that I could always do better if I set my mind to it. Last September, I began her demanding course with the intention of purely surviving, not necessarily thriving, but that

The first day I walked into Freshman Composition I had the idea that everything assigned was going to be extremely frustrating and difficult, as this is a college class. Equally important, my expectations for the class was to earn at least a B, further my writing abilities, and learn more about college. As the semester started, I noticed that my writing was not at the college level and I needed to learn how to improve it. Along with improving my writing, I was also able to learn about college life. With this essay turned in and handed back, I began to realize my writing needed practice and critiquing. Furthermore, I gave myself goals to achieve in Freshman Composition, I have learned useful tools to improve my writing, and I have learned more

The dreaded English 102. Could this be my final English course in my career as a student? I don’t know for sure. I still need to decide what my major will be in. There is something that I know for sure, that is, needing to take this class to move on. I am not certain how my time in this class will go, but I plan to work hard to get the best grade that I can. Hence, I have decided to get this out of the way now, I look to fine-tune my writing skills, and I expect this course to help me understand my writing style.

I totally agree with what the author is saying in the text. It takes time to get a good product out even though we think some people are deep and wonderful they still have the same struggles that we have when it comes to writing. I like this text because it is realistic it is giving an account of first drafts from common day people and shows how it is even for professional writers have problems with. This point is important because as people we sometimes feel we are not as good or capable of doing something not realizing that the people we look up to have the same problems we do. Another point that I agree with the author on is that you have to start somewhere. Many times as writers we don’t know where to start when it comes to writing. That being said we will just sit and think for ten twenty minutes when we could've just been information on the paper and then editing it later. In addition I liked that the author used examples from his professional experience when it came to writing food reviews. By him using details like how he went to the restaurant and sat down with friends and took notes of what was said. This was good to me because it helps me connect with him and the things that he does to write his reviews.

Writing in college is often a huge transition for incoming freshman that do not have a very good writing background. I came from a high school where education was not taken very seriously, and the teachers did not take pride in their teaching. My grammar and punctuation skills were weak, and the whole thought of writing a four to six page essay was a very stressful thought. At the beginning of the semester I had already learned more in writing then what I had learned in my whole four years of high school. I have passed essays two and three and have started to see my writing skills progress as the semester goes on. The progress I have made throughout the semester is why I feel I should pass this course. I have learned proper grammar, developing paragraphs, and my incorporation of sources has improved to back up my writing.

If there is anything that this class has taught me, it is that writing is more complex than I ever imagined. I have concluded that writing is like a cake- the good ones are creative with many layers. Coming from a small public school, I was raised on the five paragraph essay style. If you were to get a pile of my senior classes final research papers, it would be hard to tell them apart. We all wrote the same, and our style hardly changed from second grade on. Metaphorically speaking, we all created the same plain vanilla cake.

I hope that my brain decides to store some of this information into the long term memory bank. I know that I will use this information for future classes and assignments. As far as I know colleges tend to give us students plenty of essay assignments that usually involve two or more pages and have to follow the Gordon Rule. Thanks to this class I have learned the proper structure and format to write an essay and write it properly. It is very different from my high school format which was a lot easier, but life doesn’t get easier only harder. I didn’t entirely enjoy this class but I did enjoy reading the poetry and lyrics from the book. There were many things I already knew how to do, but this class helped me get more in depth with the detail of everything in literature such as comparing Bob Dylan’s “Green Tambourine Man” and Mos Def’s “Hip Hop”. Literature isn’t about reading a story or writing about something. Literature is an art that some people just pass on thinking of perfecting because they don’t have the patience to sit and think about emotional words that flow. Thank you Professor Love for being a nice teacher and giving me time to learn from my mistakes. You are a lovely teacher and I would recommend you to a few of my friends that have not taken English composition two. Enjoy your summer and I wish you the best of luck in your future

Before I came to college, I felt my writing had to follow a certain pattern and be fixated around one way of thinking. What I was fortunate to learn was quite the opposite. Writing does not have to follow any certain pattern, but can rather be structured through many different possibilities. I was also told in high school that my papers either had to agree or disagree with the given topic, even if I believed otherwise. This formulated a very one-track way of thinking when it came to my papers. Now I know that I can let my mind explore new and exciting ideas. I can agree, disagree, compliment, criticize, and question the author however my heart desires, as long as I have the evidence to back myself up. Many authors in the book, Writing About Writing, explain their processes as well as the processes of others when it comes to writing. As a writer, I can draw on my own processes and relate them to the authors, as well as use their ideas and apply them to myself. Through reading, I have learned new methods of invention, planning and revising, and incubation when it comes to writing. All ways I can use to create more meaningful and creative work.

Before this class, I absolutely despised writing. I hated writing about things I had no interest in. Teachers always used to tell me what to write about and I never seemed to have a choice. Coming into expository writing, I thought it was going to be strictly essay based. I didn’t even sign up for this class, so I immediately thought it would suck. It turns out, I was wrong. Essays can be fun as long as you enjoy what you are writing about. I like how we get assigned a topic, but from there you can personalize it. This class surprised me. I didn’t realize how much fun writing could be.

After reading the articles written by professional writers, I found that I will have to reevaluate the way I do my writing. Before this point, I found myself in the role a normal student that believed that after the first draft was done, the writing was done. I always thought of rewriting and revising as an afterthought. Many times after I finished my first draft I would assume the work was done and I just need to correct for spelling and grammar. I believe many times I was just being too easy on myself. As Mr. Murray said, I now know that I must learn to be my own “best enemy”. Through learning the amount of work in this course, I am realizing that I must start my writing process earlier in order to give myself more to rewrite and revise.

Since beginning to write papers in English class, I have had countless successes and failures. While many of my English classes have taught me how to improve my writing, I have not learned very much in others. My most recent English class was last year, my sophomore year. My class was particularly undersized; therefore, it gave each student the opportunity to have additional individual attention. Throughout the class I experienced high points, weaknesses, and even difficulties that I never overcame. Overall, my writing skills improved, but only marginally.

Throughout elementary, middle, and high school I have never improved and gained as much knowledge about essay writing than I have in one semester of college english. Language arts, being one of my weaker subjects, made this course quite difficult for me. I have learned about different types of essays that I had never heard of before enrolling in this course, such as the interview essay. At the beginning of this course I would have guessed that I were going to fail because of the little knowledge I had. I never imagined I would have learned as much as I have, and improved my work and processes to the extent that I have.

The language that I first learned to speak at home was English. My family, considering my father’s side of the family is Mexican, has always loved the Mexican culture. They love the food, the music, the history, and the language. When my parents learned about an elementary school that was able to teach me both English and Spanish, they jumped at the opportunity to enroll me, and later my sister, into the school. My parents made it a priority that my sister and I enroll because they were never able to learn how to speak, read, write, or understand Spanish very well, so they wanted us to have this fantastic opportunity. They also decided to enroll us so that we are able to talk with our family members who live in Mexico that speak no English at all. Although I was too young at the time to ask to be enrolled into that school, with my knowledge now I know that I definitely would have advocated for that to happen.