My Strength and Weakness in Composition Writing Class

The first few years of college student’s lives are not necessarily the most enjoyable time, having to take the basic core classes. Unless someone is planning on getting their degree in something that involves the basic core classes like; Math, Psychology, any Humanities, or English. English has not been my strong suit and I know that I still have work that needs to be done to make me a better writer, but I believe that I was able to meet and achieve the goals and requirements of this Composition two class.

With the anxiety flowing throughout my body, I knew the time was near of facing my English 1301 class. Being told that I needed to improve my writing during my grade school days, I knew that I didn’t feel at ease going into a college level English class. But, with this in mind I had to pull myself together to encounter the challenges that I will face. However, having the privilege of having an amazing professor I believe my writing skills improved, also I was able to find my confidence.

During the first semester of English 1301, I have learned so much that before I hadn’t comprehended. This class has teached me to write what is my passion and explain my thoughts thoroughly. The classes I took before were mostly teaching the arts of writing essays in which the not much was learned. This class made an exception for me to challenge myself and try to succeed in becoming a better writer. I feel as I have learned more in these 16 weeks than have in the last two years of highschool english.

English classes are very important if you want to pursuit your academic goal, and there are a lot of things that I learned about academic writing in this semester. At first, I thought that it was going to be easy as long as I kept doing my brief assignments on time and showing up in classes. However, I was wrong, English is hard, especially if you are an international student because the methods of writing an essay are different. Though, I decided to take English 1301 because I wanted to be able to write something that would make it easier for a reader to understand, and of course to make me get good grades in other classes assignments. Also, because I didn’t know the difference between writing a rhetorical analysis essay and writing a normal

My attitude going into English 1301 was excitement at first. When I was in high school I took English and when I would turn in my essays I would get an "A" on every essay. The second week of English 1301 was when my instructor assigned me my first essay. This essay was to explain my composing process. At first I had no idea that I even had a process for composing an essay. I had never really thought about it. Then the instructor said that it had to be in APA format, 12 point font, and Times New Roman. This was all very new to me because in high school my teacher did not require me to do this. Throughout this essay you will see the changes of my composing process, the impact this class has had on me, and how I feel about my improvement. My composing process changed throughout the semester because I felt that my old process was not good enough. Therefore, I decided to walk into my house one day and sit down and begin to do homework. In doing this I paid close attention to every step I took from beginning to the end of my essay. A few things that I have added into my composing process was an outline and going to a public area where no one knows me or wants to talk to me. Throughout this course, I have realized that if I am around other students that are working on homework, I am able to buckle down and get my work done too. However, if I am in a public area such as the Student Center at TSTC, I am unable to focus because people come up to me and start talking to me which takes

As a student of the English class 1301, I feel like I’ve made improvements on my writing skills. In my opinion, English 1301 is a tough class. Because I thought some of the topic was difficult to write. However, practice makes perfect is the case here. Writing as much as you can is the only way to make an improvement.

As I look back, College Composition has improved my writing techniques and skills by directing me through tons of practice with writing, readings, and examples from the textbook, in-class discussions and helped me notice my strengths and weaknesses as an English student. Some of my strengths that can be shown in my previous essays are: my ability to free-write with lots of detail, structuring an essay correctly, constructing a very well organized and detailed essay, and manage time and use it to construct a well- thoughtful essay, my thesis statements in all four of my essays were structured correctly, and also, it can take me less time to come up with a debatable topic for my essay than it did at the beginning of the semester; therefore, I have quite a bunch of weaknesses, it can take me a while to start an essay, still to this day, and I can’t begin to write an essay without completing the introduction paragraph first, every now and then the structure of my sentences can cause a problem and a hard time for the reader to understand what I’m really trying to say, and trying to get my point to come across clearly may be a challenge for me as well; also, I’ve noticed that in my previous essays I had put a few commas in the wrong places or missed some commas in a sentence, I have also misused semi-colons, sometimes I have used the wrong word or phrase in a sentence which has made my sentences really unclear and ending an essay with a conclusion paragraph can take me some time

Firstly, when it comes to my strengths in writing, I do not believe I carry many. Of the few I possess, my word selection is a constant advantage for me. I try not to settle for undereducated vocabulary. I see this as taking the easy way out and I do not believe I learn from this. Another one of my strengths when it comes to writing is my adequate spelling. Accurate spelling is strongly in my nature. When I am reading I can sense when a word is spelled incorrectly. My final strength in writing is organization. I believe my work is clear to follow. This is important so I can get my message across to my reader. Although I am solid in these aspects of my writing, they

This course offers numerous opportunities to improve our writing. In this class, I not only enhanced the skills I already had, but also learned new writing concepts. Before I took this class, I knew that my writing is poor, and I have always wanted to improve it; however, I did not know how and what aspects of writing to improve. So, I came into this class with the ambition to improve my writing, and I have accomplished my goal although there is still room for improvement. At this point of this course, I have learned the elements that successful writing is composed of, and I am now able to categorize the various techniques that can work together to define strong

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.

Entering the class, english comp. one, I had many fears as to what the class would be like. I had no idea what to expect as a senior in highschool. During the past english classes I had, we wrote papers, just not a different one every day. Going into english comp. one, I figured it would be the same method in english just like the past classes I had. On the very first day in the class, I quickly found out that I would have to buckle down a little more than I have been in the past. I knew then, from what Mrs. Garth had told us, that I was going to have many weaknesses while writing my papers, but I would also have many strengths from what I had learned in the past about writing.

As a high school student taking on a college course, I acknowledged and accepted the challenge that lay ahead of me. The main reason I selected Composition I and II was that it allowed me to vastly improve my overall writing skills. Developing my techniques will benefit me when I am required to compose any writing assignments for my future college classes. Therefore, with that goal in mind, I chose to take this class while still attending high school. I began this class as an average writer; additionally, I did not know the majority of the writing rules or how to make an essay meet its potential. Over the course of these two classes, I believe that I have proven my writing to be more seamless and interesting to read.

My strengths as a reader are the ways how I read the book. As I read through a book, I try to understand the meaning of each line, and search for the words that I do not know; additionally, I try to read and get information about the book from multiple different sources, so I could have a better understanding of the theme of the book.

As a writer, I feel that my weakness is struggling with time management and trying to get my best draft as my first draft. I have always struggled with trying to put forth the best draft on the first one and just making little adjustments and then turning the paper in. Another weakness I have is to over complicate my writing and over think submitting the final draft. Every single essay that I have had to write throughout this semester I have struggled with these problems. Particularly the research paper, since the paper was worth such a big percentage of the grade in the class. I was extremely self-conscious about submitting and writing the paper. I took a long time just to finish a rough draft. I reviewed the final draft for hours before submitting the paper. I also experienced the problem of being extremely self-conscious after I submitted the paper and question everything I choose to write on.

Writing is not just as simple as putting words down on a document or a piece of paper, it is a process. Within this intricate process are steps that involve more than just writing, such as critical thinking, planning, and editing. Using these steps has not only helped me when planning an essay but also when composing one. Throughout this course, I have managed to improve many skills and gain a lot of strengths, but I still possess some weaknesses. Overall, I believe my strengths have definitely outgrown these weaknesses and have led to a better, more high-quality writing process which leads to improved essays.