My Writing Reflection

The final weeks of my first semester in college are coming to an end. My Columbus State english class has written a total of three projects, and a total of four papers. There are a lot of grammatical issues that, at the beginning of the year, I had issues on. However, I have improved on these errors drastically, and have become a better writer because of it. Even though I am still working on many aspects of my writing, I do believe that I have become a better writer. I believe that my biggest issues while writing are run on sentences, making a strong thesis statement, and having quotes stand alone at the beginning of a paragraph.

The past two semesters were great experiences. Within this past school year my knowledge as a reader and writer has improved. It felt like it was just yesterday, when I had a lot of difficulty writing and poor reading strategies. Now, as I said before, I am an improved writer and reader. The assignments and class activities over the two semesters were great benefits to me, and helped me make progress towards the first year learning goals.

With an improvement in writing, there also comes an improvement in reading. The first reading assigned to us, “The Banking Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire, was one of the more difficult pieces of writing I had been asked to analyze throughout my career as a student. This course has provided me with the resources and skills to break apart readings piece by piece and understand them as well as apply them to my own life. I slowly became a better reader, finally realizing the use of annotations and the importance of re-reading texts until you can understand them. A better understanding of the readings gave me the ability to produce essays that are well developed

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.

My strong points as a reader have also definitely improved after reading the poems and stories we experienced this semester. Writing has been an important form of expression for me. I find myself to be very soft spoken and speaking verbally is usually difficult for me because I can’t always seem to find the right words to say. I feel that I am more expressive and have more control over what I want to say. While this semester progressed toward its end, I have learned new writing skills and gradually learned how to engage with audiences. This skill was very useful in meeting my course goals in English 102.

“I am not by any means a competent writer.” This was the first sentence in my introduction for my first journal assignment. However, over the last eight weeks in this course, I have proven this statement false. I now realize, that I have always been a competent writer, but I was not a confident one. Therein was the problem, my confidence level. This issue caused me to struggle and question everything in the writing process, from grammar to thesis statements. The mere idea of writing an essay sent my heart racing. But it was either write the essays or fail the course and failing simply was not an option. So, how has my writing process changed over the last eight weeks? In large part it hasn’t, my writing process has remained the same, but as

This semester I was surprised by how much I actually learned and developed my writing skills. I was given the opportunity to learn the many steps that it is required to become a good writer. Writing requires a lot of work. It consists of various steps; prewriting, drafting, rewriting, proofreading and publishing. . All of these components are extremely important, and necessary, and will need to be follow to improve student’s writing.

To effectively revise and edit my research paper, I read it carefully, as I played the reader`s role instead of that of a writer. In addition, I used a number of strategies to effectively revise and edit my research paper. First, I read my paper aloud as I listened for errors. After carefully listening, I was able to identify and correct errors in my writing, including grammar, incorrect sentence structure, incomplete ideas, and incorrect punctuation. While reading, I could stop and rectify the mistake at the point where I could note it. In addition, I read each sentence at a time so that I could digest the structure and identify any error. Prior to the reading, I noted down the common errors I usually commit while writing such as the omission

Over the course of the argument unit, I believe I greatly improved in my writing. In terms of writing, the majority of my improvement was evident in my structure and organization. At the beginning of the unit, my ideas and claims made sense, but I was having trouble with organizing my thoughts into clear sentences. For example, when I was describing a key Buddhist doctrine, I said that “In the religion of Buddhism, there are no sets of beliefs that teach how the world functions.” Looking back, such language seems extremely clumsy, and I cannot imagine writing such a sentence now. As I became more confident in my writing, my thoughts began to travel smoothly to the paper, and I became a much more effective writer.

As I pulled everything together, I compared a few of my papers from the beginning of the year to the more recent ones, and I was able to see a noticeable improvement, although not a drastic one. I took a step back and realized that within the time that I was pursuing better writing skills, I never gave myself the chance to acknowledge what I achieved as a whole and appreciate it. While I had realized throughout the year that I was improving a bit, I tossed that fact aside almost immediately and continued to chase after “better”, which was a better essay with more analysis and more descriptions. Perhaps I had became distracted on my journey to improve my writing that I failed to even notice how far I had come. I believe that, with time, I can continue to improve my writing skills and anything I want, there is no rush. It is crucial to recognize that you can thrive and achieve anything as long as you permit yourself time and allow yourself to work towards your goal as diligently as you

As a recent Egyptian immigrant to the United States, writing is the most difficult subject. In 7th grade, my writing process started to develop with the help of an amazing teacher. Ever since 7th grade I have been practicing wiring to be close to the high school writing slandered. I reached my goal last year when my act writing score is 6 point which places me in English 101. I doubted myself so, I took the Accuplacer test which also, placed me in English 101. I was scared when I saw the results that I’m going to fail this course. After taking this course, it made me more confident in writing and showed me my writing level which needs more practice. This class helped me improve my writing skills, by getting great feedback from my instructor

This week I think my writing was better than the previous weeks because I had learned about many of different type of writing including cause and effect, positive and negative, persuasive writing and comparison which can help me to collaborate the style in my writing to show the variety of the structure. Also, this week I prepare an outline for the research project and I faced the problem on my idea which I’m not assured with this idea so this might be the problems when I write the paragraph. As a result, I got the advised that I should find more references to support the ideas. The another task in this week was listening. The teachers showed us about the listening exam which you have to answer in multiple choice. In my viewpoint, I think answer

Writing has to actually make sense. Would it be wise to throw words or thoughts together without direction and confidently expect your reader to understand? The most interesting things I’ve learned so far in this course was how to formulate a three paragraph essay. This method is broken down in three parts called an introductory paragraph, body paragraph, and summary paragraph. Learning this method more than simplified what direction my writing should go.

While I was starting the process of writing the connection narrative I felt that my writing was going in the right direction. When I finished my rough draft, I knew more work was required in order for me to get a high grade which I would eventually work on. Going into the peer review I felt nervous because I received low scores on my previous papers by my peers. When I got back both of my reviewed papers I was surprised, to say the least. I thought I understood the purpose of the prompt better. I lacked details on how the issue connected to me which discouraged me to keep writing. I felt embarrassed that my peers had reviewed my work. It was hard to accept that I don’t always have strong writing. I do appreciate the feedback they gave me which allowed me to rewrite everything in a way that would address the prompt and would be better understood.

As shown by my portfolio, my writing has progressed in various ways through this quarter. In some of my first writings, such as early journals and test essays, I didn’t use the compelling adjectives that are able to paint pictures in the reader’s head. As a starting point, I used bland adjectives that would not be able to grab the reader’s attention. For a simple example, I used “good” and “better” in my A Raisin in the Sun essay when I could have wrote more effective words, such as “exceptional” and “superior”. Details can build up writing in a substantial matter, and I was not able to grasp this concept at the beginning of the quarter. Further, I rarely utilized transition statements to connect differing topics and ideas. In my first identity essay draft, my paragraphs were choppy and difficult to follow. When introducing new ideas, there has to be a certain shift among them. Without these shifts, my writing went through radical differences through paragraphs. With each draft, I strengthened the flow of my paper by adding a multitude of transitions. Instead of placing transitions only at the beginning and end of paragraphs, I utilized one every few lines. The sentences meshed much smoother this way. Most