My Improvement In My Writing

As a writer, I have always had an easy time with organizing my papers and providing good and reliable content. I love to use big words and give my readers very detailed descriptions, in hopes that they

After this semester of English 102, at Bristol Community College I feel that I have gained the skill to articulate what I want to convey to the reader in many ways. I don’t just look at grammatical error, but instead I look for ways to make my sentences more effective and concise. Nevertheless, I hope that this strategy will continue to help me improve my writing even further on in the future.

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.

Writing Is a kind of typing symbols, letters and other writing tools to help the writer communicate with the reader or connect his ideas. It is the fourth skill in language skills and the most one that needs creation and imagination. In this essay, I am going to write about the importance of developing writing.

Reflecting as a writer and thinker I have noticed tremendous improvements in my work. My whole thought process and way of viewing topics has changed, giving me a better understanding when I write. In the beginning of the term I ran into many problems in College Writing I for instance, I was not too familiar with writing in MLA format and struggled reaching the page count. I found myself to procrastinate when papers were assigned making my anxiety levels increase. Despite my struggles as a writer and thinker, I learned how to overcome these obstacles. I learned to be open minded and looking at topics from another perspective.

When I wrote my term paper my senior year I was well organized. I was required to write about an event in history. I chose India Uprising of 1877 as the topic of my paper. This topic was not interesting at all, but I chose to write about it. When I finished writing my thesis and outline, I wrote note cards about the different topics, which allowed me to gather all my information and organize it in which different events occurred. When I was finished with the paper, it sounded and read consistently and it all flowed together.

After reflecting upon my 30 minute writing submission, I do not believe I wrote a very convincing or persuasive argument. While reading through my paper, I recognized a few rhetorical appeals, however I do not believe I used them very effectively.

When you write a persuasive essay, it’s good to think about how you will construct your argument, from the way you will organize your key points to how and where you will disprove opposing views. A lot of students find it hard to identify what it is that makes a good piece of essay writing. At the core of such writing, it is the nature and structure of the intellectual argument.

When composing an essay, or journal entry, or just plain writing, I struggle as a writer with avoiding awkward or wordy phases in my written work. This struggle is yet again based on last year’s experience and feedback from my English class. Improvement with this struggle can be made by the following strategies: reading over my paper more carefully, avoiding the use of words that sound intelligent but don’t flow with the paper, and editing my paper with peers. Recognizing this struggle and following these strategies would improve my writing.

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.

I remember the first diary assignment that I had in grade three. The instructor asked me to write one hundred words to describe my day every single day. As tiring as it seemed for a third-grader, I have always appreciated my instructor since she introduced me to express myself in words. My experience in writing goes from writing stories to texting on social media and to write cards to people. I view writing as a powerful tool to introduce myself to people, to form relationships, and to communicate at an emotional level that daily conversation can’t reach. However, there is always another form of writing, that is, argumentative essays. Although being less experienced in academic writing, I realize that the tenacity in well written essays makes writing compelling in terms of creating initiatives for issues that people matter. Ultimately, regardless of writing styles, writing allows me to capture my thoughts and imaginations through story telling, gain knowledge of the society, and impact other individuals around me.

I am a good writer but I aspire to be a great writer. Words have power and communicating a clear message to my audience is probably the most important ingredient. Every writer inherently knows there is always room to improve, there’s always a more effective way to say the same thing, and always a better use of grammar. Reflecting on my English 102 midterm progress, I recognize my use of rhetorical devices needs to be better employed to project a more effective argument. I recognize my growing vocabulary still needs more growth, but I don’t think it’s critical to reach most audiences. My confidence in developing and expressing a clear message has grown exponentially since English 101. I still find it useful to develop an outline before any writing project just to keep me organized and focused. The initial Diagnostic Essay and Editorial Analysis exploratory assignments provided the opportunity to conduct editorial reviews on other journalists’ works. I am now better equipped to conduct editorial reviews and revisions of my own writing at a semi-professional level.

Looking back to the beginning of the semester, I remember how out of practice I was in writing non-technical papers. My writing style felt clunky and awkward, and writing a persuasive essay was absolutely foreign to me. However, over the past weeks I have rekindled my ability to write non-technical, persuasive papers. I also have grown writing skills by the repetition of some new techniques that have helped me become a better writer. In this self-assessment, I will discuss the skills and strategies I have grown in as well as the steps I need to take in the future to continue to develop my writing skills.

English 101 has introduced me to many different types of papers that I did not know even existed. From summary, response, critique, rhetorical analysis, and informative synthesis, I have learned how to properly and effectively write each different kind of paper, and my writing has improved in many ways. One way my writing has improved this semester is that I have learned how to accurately organize information, and decide how to clearly present the material. Looking back at the first paper, it is easy to see that I did not have a lot of experience with organization. In the first paper, I would jump from subject to subject without any awareness of organization. Since the first paper, I have took the time to write out how I am going to present the information, and how to transition effectively from one paragraph to the other. One important aspect of organization is to decide what main points I want to focus on. From there, it is important to state what author or topic I am discussing at the beginning of each paragraph. This will allow the reader to read through the paper without any question as to what I will be discussing in each paragraph.

Over the past year I have learned so much about the English language and how to write properly, that my essays that I wrote at the beginning of the year are as well done as the art that I did in fifth grade: not very pleasing. Although I have improved greatly over the past year in my English writing, there is still always room for improvement. My first essay that I wrote was for Of Mice and Men and it was, as I thought, the best essay that I had ever written. I was, unfortunately, proven wrong by that big 77% written in blue pen; I knew that it was going to be a long year. And the year has been long with English and MUN and APA and dance, but I have been getting through it all. Surprisingly, as the year went on, I felt as though my writing was not getting any better until I looked at my first essay and saw how much I have improved from, “This previous sentence shows that the reader can infer. . .” I also have advanced in my performance level with the rigorous amount of work that I have done over the past year through APA and my outside dance studio, Orange County Song and Dance (OCSD). By specifically working persistently on my sentence flow, grammar and performing level, I believe that I have greatly advanced over the past year in all areas.