Observing Problems In My Writing

“Wake up,” that’s what I heard after passing out from all the blows to the face. My vision is blurred I’m trying to stay awake but I lost consciousness; all of a sudden I felt a splash of coldness on my face, and I woke up gasping for air. The man with the deep ominous voice said, “Wakey wakey little man” I replied, “where the h*ll is Mako!” when I was fully aware of where I was, that’s when I started to panic.

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

Throughout the course of this semester in AP Lang, my eyes have been opened to many of the weaknesses I never knew I had in writing. Coming into this semester, I had heard about the difficulty of this class, but was not unduly worried about not receiving an A; I have always considered myself as a competent if not strong writer. However, after failing to attain desired grades on several important essays, I was devastated, and realized that although I had mastered the basics of grammar and writing, there was still much for me to work on. Also, I did not understand that much of my grade in AP Lang would be determined by speaking in front of others, which is not my strong suit. What I have come to find is that writing essays containing all of the new information we have learned throughout the semester, such as requirements for different types of essays and good writing strategies, takes a lot of work, time, and thinking. Unfortunately, my procrastination caused me to only get done what had to be done instead of putting in the extra work and truly understanding everything.

The writing handbook I use is The Little Seagull Handbook. The specific area I see myself making the most mistakes with punctuation is comma splices. Sometimes I place commas in sentences where I think they are supposed to be, but really they are not. I think punctuation is probably the most common mistake I make when writing a paper. I changed my second goal to providing more details and examples in my writing. I thought I expanded pretty well on important specifics in my papers, but I noticed there are still some parts where I do not provide sufficient detailed information. An example of this would be not providing enough details on my goals I make; I am striving to meet this goal by the end of the course. The way I see myself determining

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

I noticed that I have an issue with my placement of commas. I don’t know when to place them and when not. Since that is an issue I end up not placing them at all and I need them. I am learning when they are needed and when not from the feedback on my paper showing where there should be placement of them.

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

As I was reading through the feedback I received on the first major paper I have written in over four years, I happened to think of something I read on a pink notebook in Walmart last night. “Good feedback is the key to improvement.” When I saw the small errors I missed, I knew it was time to start making some healthy adjustments to my writing. Although I have a terrible habit of using contractions and comma splices, I would like to expand my vocabulary and make my writing stronger, be able to incorporate more transitional statements, and I would like to become more comfortable with comma usage.

The two errors that present the biggest challenge to me in writing are comma splice and unnecessary commas. All throughout high school and into college these two errors have been my biggest downfall. In Fall 2014 semester, I took English 111 and my teacher had written on every paper that I wrote that I have to be careful of both comma splice and unnecessary commas. I can use this class as an opportunity to correct these errors by referring back to this book. In my other class, we didn’t use a book so I never had something to help me understand what exactly I was doing wrong. I hope that with help from my classmates and my teacher I can overcome this obstacle I face in my writing. In addition, I plan to use the book to help me when I am uncertain

My love for writing isn’t as strong as my love for reading. I’ve always enjoyed the idea of expressing my thoughts in words, but I always struggle with things such as punctuation, spelling, grammar, and word choice. I think I’m better at writing personal narratives, and persuasive essays, but I‘m always unsure of where to put my commas. Writing has always given me the pleasure of challenging me, and I hope that this year I would become a better

One of the tips that has really helped me the when writing and improving my writing is, write your thoughts before organizing them. My mind flows when I am writing a paper or thinking about the topic and I sometimes forget to write everything down, so before I write a paper I sit down and really think about my topic, then I just write words and phrases that come to mind so that when I start my paper I have a general idea about what I want to write.

I was reading through the feedback I received on the first major paper I have written in over four years, I happened to think of something I read on a pink notebook in Walmart last night. “Good feedback is the key to improvement.” When I saw the errors I missed, I knew it was time to start making some healthy adjustments to my writing. Although I have a terrible habit of using contractions and comma splices, I would like to expand my vocabulary and formulate my writing to become stronger, be able to incorporate transitional statements, and I would like to become comfortable with comma usage.

Now that we are getting more involved with writing, I’m starting to get a little more stressed when writing a paper. I’m not a good writer but I know that with practice I will only get better. The tips and instructions provided in this course are definitely helping me eliminate some of my writing anxieties. The” Quick Comma Reference Sheet “is a tool I will continue to use in the future. I always seem to get nervous when writing a paper regardless of what it is. I am always worrying about the readers reading my work and finding my errors. I’m hoping that at the end of the class I will worry less and find writing enjoyable.

After during my assignment three times, I noticed I was having trouble with my writing that I did repeatedly. My patterns of error were organizing my assignment. It made my letter unclear and made it seem all over the place. It was hard to fix this after everything was done seeing that I would have to redo the whole assignment and organize it from the start. I felt that my ideas were all over the place because I had new ones as I wrote. Next time I look to write down all my ideas before tackling my work. I also found myself repeating key points throughout my letter. I failed to summarize the point and instead gave brief supporting details for the key points throughout the assignment instead in one paragraph. I think that took away from the

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.