My Weaknesses In Writing

When I was a small child, I didn't like writing unless I was writing something I wanted to. As a result, most of my school work was done half-heartedly, because they were all research projects that we had to do. I didn't have any issues with my writing, and my handwriting was pretty good at my age. My favorite books were the Harry Potter series. I thought I was pretty cool to be able to read such a long book, so I bragged some to my friends. The only topic I liked to write about was fantasy. In second grade, my mom made me start writing every day in a wide ruled journal, so I wrote a story about the Legend of Zelda, a video game I liked. I wrote about it every day for a long time, maybe a year, until I kinda gave up, and wrote the last page

As the semester comes to a close, it is always interesting to look back and reflect on the events and opportunities my English class has given me throughout my first semester as a whole. At the beginning of this semester it was evident that I was feeling uncomfortable due to the adjustment that I was going through as a student moving to college. It was very difficult expressing myself through my writing since I was nervous about good impressions and my good grade. While this class was one of the most difficult courses that I have taken this far, it has become quite evident to me that I have grown a substantial amount as a writer and as a person; Especially, when it came to explaining my ideas, writing academic essays, and making arguments.

The art of writing is a complex and difficult process. Proper writing requires careful planning, revision, and proofreading. Throughout the past semester, the quality of my writing has evolved significantly. At first, I struggled with the separation of different types of paragraphs, and I found writing them laborious. Constant practice, however, has eliminated many of my original difficulties, and helped to inspire confidence in my skills. As a collegiate writer, my strength lies in my clear understanding of the fundamentals of writing, while my primary weakness is proofreading my own work.

Writing may come naturally for some people, but for me, it does not. This class will be challenging- as it is a college course- but that does not mean that I am not going to try my best to receive an A, and meet all of the expectations this semester. Even with it not coming naturally, I do know tasks that improve my writing, like being able to analyze the purpose, audience, and rhetorical strategies used by other writers (syllabus 2). In my AP Language class I took last year the concept of being able to come up with those three things was heavily stressed; therefore, we did multiple practice worksheets and wrote essays where we would have to come up with those things. On page 3 in the guidebook, it says that we should know how to write and

When one enrolls into an honors or advanced English class, there are many worries that come to mind. These worries create thoughts such as ‘Am I a good writer?’, ‘Will I pass?’, or ‘How do I even start a paper?’. My teachers never specifically taught me to write. My teacher that I had for 9th grade English and my 10th grade honors English class always gave good grades. Once I got into my first AP English class, I felt as though my writing was inferior. In my distress, I went to the internet and I found that you do not have to be gifted in academic writing to get good grades on your essays, I found that organization is the key to writing a powerful essay.

From the time I was in about fourth or fifth grade I began to dislike certain subjects in school. I loathed everything about writing assignments. I didn’t write at home before that the thought of writing for myself never really occurred to me. I hated the deadlines the length requirements and I just tried to get them done and had no intention of writing well because I told myself I was a bad writer. I have never really known whether or not I truly am a bad writer. I continued these habits of just writing something down to get a decent grade all throughout school. I usually got an okay grade because I followed the prompt closely and did the minimum amount of work for the paper. I didn’t start the assignments until either the night before it was due. As I got older I would type the paper on my phone in school that day then print it off in the library moments before class. I continued writing in that awful ritual of complacency until the end of 11th grade. We had to write a paper on The Great Gatsby a book that I never read. I read couple of notes on the internet and then wrote the paper and never reread it or edited it all. I did my usual routine and followed the prompt and turned my paper in. When I got my paper back I was shocked to find out I didn’t get even a half decent grade I was given a zero. I went to my teacher after class to speak with him about the grade and he told me I got the grade that I deserved. He said I was lazy and never tried to truly work in

I decided to take AP Language and Composition due to the requirements of the University of Iowa. For my intended major, I need two rhetoric classes and one literature class. Last year I completed the literature class which improved my reading ability tremendously. After completing ENG 105, I have improved in multiple areas, but I am most proud of my improvement on the writing volume and stamina as I now have the ability to write college level essays. When examining all of the competencies, I have not mastered any one of them, but have improved in multiple categories throughout the semester.

When I stop to think about the memory’s that I have made during my first semester of college; there are both good and bad pieces or times that present themselves. Often with many things there are gray areas, and writing would fall in there for me. I fortunately understand now that I have times where I can over look many of my writing flaws. Such as sentence structure! This by far was my biggest problem in this class, and I fully understand why. Personally I have times that will type up a paragraph and never notice the mistake. That is until someone points it out to me. It’s almost like my brain knows that something is wrong with it, but for some unknown reason it won’t register when I’m revising my paper. So as a writer I have realized that I need to take advantage of people around me and get their feedback on my essay’s; because

Most of the time when someone is told to write a paper, they read the directions and follow the prompt. But when told to think about strengths and weaknesses of how they actually write those papers, it is a good eye opener to realize what needs to be improved and what is already superior quality. For my writing, being a perfectionist is in many ways a strength, but it can also be a weakness. My perfectionism affects all of my other strengths and weaknesses in my writing.

As I finished my first semester of college, I was super excited and thrilled when I realized not once did I have to write a paper for any of my classes. There were some paragraphs and summaries here and there but they were pretty standard. When I realized that I was going to have to take Rhetoric 105, a writing course, I freaked out not because there would be a lot of readings but because of the writing expectations. Obviously, I am a decent writer if I was able to get accepted to multiple universities and get good grades throughout my writing career. Yet there is still this nervousness whenever I realize I have to write a paper. I have multiple struggles and strengths when it comes to writing. One of the struggles I face every time it comes to writing a paper is actually getting

The college textbooks always suggest in order to write a good article there are several stages and several points that you should take and consider. For example before you start writing, first you have to brainstorm ideas, take notes, and make outlines. After getting everything in order, you have to decide what kind of article you are writing: a comparison and contrast writing, a cause and effect writing, or etc. Then you have to think of a good thesis statement, subtopic statements, introduction and conclusions, central paragraphs, and many more. Finally you have to worry about having sentence variety, not to use passive voice, not to have run on sentences, not to use too much ‘is’ and ‘and’. I do not know about

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.

My biggest weakness is my unlikeness for writing. I don’t enjoy writing because I am never satisfied with the papers I write. I read a lot of books, so when I write a paper I want it to be up to my standards. If I never had a deadline, I would continue editing my paper forever. I want my papers to have the perfect tone. I come off as robotic and boring in my papers. My papers are hardly interesting because

My greatest weakness is writing essays. Especially revising my essays I had to teach myself to think critically. My other weakness was grammar, and fragments. I have noticed the majority of my sentences were fragments. I had to teach myself to slow down. Time management was the key to slow down. It takes a little longer to write an essay with brainstorming and outline. The results were better results for each paragraph and sub lines of each paragraph would consist of such as sources. I have learned to transition sentences, and allowing all my sentences in my

My biggest struggle in writing would be starting my introduction because I never really know what information to add in my stating my thesis statement. Although, one way I’m trying to improve this struggle is by either adding small quotes or definitions to hook the reader and to add some info about my topic. Furthermore, one essay that I feel reflects my writing the best would be the midterm essay. I picked the midterm essay because even though it was timed I still took my time and carefully picked which examples I thought would best represent my opinions. In addition, I feel using the quote “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” by Nelson Mandela was a very powerful way to keep the reader interested. Ultimately, while I still haven’t overcome the obstacle of writing an introduction I know I’m slowly starting to find my way towards my goal of not struggling when it comes to starting my essays.