My Reflection

I was able to develop and strengthen my writing through the writing of all six of my essays over this semester. I was able to do this by having classmates per edit my work and then go over my essay and revise it. I was able to strengthen my writing skills by being assigned six different essays over this semester.

First, to work on my paragraph organization skills, I started off using two methods, which was brainstorming and webbing. Later on, I found that free-writing along the way also helped me brainstorm ideas to put into my writing. These strategies were from Writing for Success in Chapter 1. It helped me learn to keep my paragraphs in correct sequence and not scrambled in the essays. Which before, it caused

In high school, I took both AP English Language and AP English Literature. These courses prepared me well for college composition courses, but left me in the dark regarding the personal style development in writing and writing patterns. I was trapped in the high school, five-paragraph essay form that constricted my thoughts for so long. Discourse 300 enabled me to move past the form and explore new ways to compose writing. This in turn has made my thoughts more complex and concise. I have learned to sustain a logical argument in a much more organized manner and justify it as well. My writing was finally rid of all the “fluff” and “padding” that was a necessity in high school to reach a word count. Another improvement I made

The realization growing up through school that not all of what I had been told were mandatory in writing, but in fact flexible changed my perspective in my approach on writing. While the task of writing itself was still distasteful, the approach to it was less so. My writing process has changed through the years I would typically start off with an outline on the first day and begin to write as soon as the outline was completed. While the method I had used in the past was probably the better way to do it; the current process I use has made writing a paper for school more bearable. Another major factor on the way I approach writing was my introduction into creative writing a process by which to quickly and easily form ideas and cohesion. Though the genre in which I normally write in is primarily fiction the exploration different types of fiction gives me the perspective of writing with a new approach for the new challenge. Creative writing has also changed the way I thought about my original distaste for writing, into a passion, though academic writing still is not my favorite.

My ability to write detail have been better as well because of all of the different assignments that we have to do. The student choice assignments have forced me to write descriptive work in a concise manner. That will help me in the future classes like English 103, and my business core courses, because I have been able to write

     The first step in your writing process is to just sit and think. If your essay is on an assigned topic, sit and think about what approach you will have to the subject, if it’s possible to take a position on it. If you are allowed to decide on the topic, you can take it in any direction and decide on a purpose. This purpose can be to tell someone how to do something, present information you have collected on your favorite subject, or even entertain the audience who will be reading it. Once who have brainstormed some ideas, examine each

The course definitely changed the way I approached writing a paper. One day in lecture you quoted Ernest Hemmingway saying, “The first draft of anything is shit.” This changed the way I approached and wrote papers. I used to start papers the night before, barely look over them and making few changes. This course encouraged me to outline, write a rough draft and constantly review then finalization the paper. Peer review before this class I though was pointless because most student hardly pay attention to the paper and usually wrote “good job.” The students in the class actually read my paper and gave honest feedback and ways to improve it. Also to have a teacher read your draft and give feedback with what is wrong and ways to help the quality of the paper helped greatly. This English class was definitely different than high school English.

Overall I think that my most of my writing habits have improved and for the ones that have not I know what they are and what I need to do to improve them. My strengths that I already had as

I believe that my approach to writing has changed over the course of the semester. My confidence in my writing has grown, as well as my knowledge in sentence structure, grammar, and word choice. At the beginning of the year, I doubted my writing abilities, but at this point, I feel as though I can handle large, intricate papers. I did not expect my writing to change drastically, but I did expect the small, technical details in my papers to improve, and I think they did. Overall, I have grown about as much as I expected to as a writer, and it has been very beneficial.

My experiences in writing have been minimal. I have only learned the basics of writing, like putting together sentences, forming paragraphs with sentences, and things like that. Since I have been taking college English, I can tell my writing has improved a lot. In the future, I hope to be able to improve tremendously at writing essays, paragraphs, research papers, documents, and stories so that I have very little to no errors with drafting and final products. I predict I will be a well rounded writer when I graduate from college.

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 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.

Dobson’s (2004) book relates to my own personal life episode of receiving spankings during my childhood. The personal life episode of receiving a spanking that comes to mind is when I was about six years old. It was a Saturday evening and my mom, brother, sister, and I were coming home from spending the day at my grandmother’s house. My mother stopped in Florence, SC at the Burger King to get all of us something to eat on the way home. I remember my mother asking each of us what we wanted to eat. I remember my brother and sister saying that they wanted a cheeseburger and fries, while my response was I want a hamburger with cheese. My mother went to the drive thru and placed the order of four cheeseburger and four fries. I remember yelling at the top of my lungs that I do not eat cheeseburgers; I only eat hamburger with cheese. My mother told me to stop yelling and tried to explain to me that a cheeseburger was the same thing as a hamburger with cheese. I proceeded to yell some more and telling her that I was not going to eat the cheeseburger, because that was not what I wanted and that she should of order what I wanted. When my mother gave me my food I took it and throw the burger down on the floorboard of the car and told her to order me what I wanted and that she could eat this cheeseburger because I was not eating it. My mother told me to pick up the burger and that I was going to eat it and that if I did not stop acting the way I was then I was going to get a spanking.

The main way the readings, reflections, and discussions with classmates has contributed to my understanding of how to incorporate nature is the variety of perceptions. I really enjoyed how every individual in the class had their own take on an issue and a way to connect it to nature. For example, there were at least three people who decided to focus on the issue of loss and grief for the assignment that was shared over the camping trip. Even though the topic was discussed by three people, each person used a different part of nature to depict their unique metaphor. Another way completing the classwork with peers has contributed to my understanding of how to incorporate nature is that the information from peers has displayed to me incorporating nature does not need to be difficult.

It is my belief that through this class and the tools provided, that my growth as a writer has grown through leaps and bounds I would never have assumed possible. It is not so much the skill I refer to, although I would think skill has gone up in some levels as well, but more so the appreciation for the craft of writing itself. Intially, at the start of this class my sole goal was to further my understanding and appreciation of the writer's and books that I so love to read. Through further evaluation within the first week, a few other goals came to mind, of which were, making writing a habit, finishing what I start, stop second guess my writing skills and making effective use of detail and description. Through the use of the many articles, various reading materials, whether poems or short stories, and especially through the workshop, I feel I was able to really push myself to accomplishing these goals. I have thus far learned how important it is not to be skilled at writing per say, but to have the will to write, that poetry is as much about it's sound as it is about it's subject, just how important character development is, how the narration and point of view of a story is essential to the way the story is told, and just how much of a difference peer's critiques can make to your writing.