Personal Narrative: Improving My Writing Skills

During the transition from a high school writer to a collegiate writer, my strength at understanding the basic principles of

Something that I can also do to help my writing is to always read what I wrote out loud. When I say out loud, I mean out loud! This will help me catch some of the grammatical errors that anyone can easily make, and I can also make sure that what I am writing makes sense. Something else that can help me

In first grade, I had started reading, or that is what I recall as my first time. My stuttering problem was always there, but I was a “great reader” according to my teacher Ms. Brown. She was a kind elderly woman, who wanted to see everybody in her class succeed in reading a whole book. Then second grade came at the snap of a finger. There, I wrote my first paragraph full of “mumbo jumbo”. Even though I wrote my first paragraph in second grade, I did not learn about the writing process until high school. After I left high school, I learned that we had barely touched on the writing process due to a significant place in my life… College! In my first English class (Eng 180), my professor went over the ideas of rhetoric, the writing process, and discourse community. Since my old professor did not go in depth on these topics, meant that they were still fresh in my head with no place to stay. In English 280, we went into full detail on these topics and understood more about the meaning and purpose of them all. I know that the writing process includes brainstorming, researching, proofreading, revising, and etc.; however, I felt like I have been doing it all wrong for years. I have made many improvements to my writing due to English 280, but the skills that I improved in the most were researching and synthesizing.

The best way to get better at something is to practice and have peers critique your style and fundamentals. As a student, I have my professor and my fellow peers to proofread and critique my writing. With these corrections I have learned I have many new strengths and weaknesses in my writing since before I started school at COTC. I have also been given many different types of resources to help improve my writing.

They are still very much developing, and I want to continue improving them throughout my life. In this class, we only wrote one essay, so I think with more practice comes stronger writing. I heard in English 1: Novel/Short Story there's a lot of essays/writing, so I think that's one way I can refine my writing skills. Another way I can improve my writing skills is by putting in the effort to revise it a bit more than just reading through it once to check for really noticeable spelling and grammar errors. By revising my own work, I can realize what aspect of writing I'm having the most trouble with, and work from

Some steps I can take to improve my writing skills is to read more. Reading

Every writer has their own approach to the writing process. Some people may be extremely good at writing while others struggle. I know I was always one of those people who struggle with writing. In high school, I would always have to get help from a tutor or one of my teachers. It was always hard for me to stay focused enough to know what I needed to write about and what order everything needed to be in. it wasn’t until my senior year of high school when I finally had an English teacher who actually tried to help me with my writings. My teacher would work with me just a couple extra minutes before and after class making sure I knew what I would have to fix before I turn in my paper. He tried to help me with grammar and punctuation, but I

Gaining knowledge in how to properly research different sources and develop related content and organize it into a flowing document has increased my confidence in writing and will help

There are many useful tips that can help one to become a writer. The authors that have provided some useful tips are: Stephen King, Wally Lamb, Karen Thompson Walker, and J.K Rowling. The first video that I watched was called, “Creating Writing Lessons: Creating Writing Tips, More Advice and Lessons from Stephen King”. In this video, Stephen states that in order to be a writer, one must read and write a lot. He states that one can get bad feedback on good work, or good feedback on bad work. But that does not mean to simply give up. In Wally Lamb’s video, “BEA In Your Own Space: Wally Lamb Part 1”, he states that writers have taught him. He also mentioned that once a book has been read several times, the person will see the architecture and

Maybe this may help you along the way. In the beginning of the week, read and write your first draft, and then close your book and put your paper away, proceed to other responsibilities like focusing on discussions, use discussions to develop your writing skills and get into a fitness routine to keep your mind stimulated. The next day, re-read your draft and deepen your understanding and compose drafts as you go, you will notice the changes and learn how to develop skills in the process. We need to practice writing a lot more than we think, hence we should make time for the lessons.

I used some practices of good writers to improve my writing, such as revising the first draft, trying to write regularly, and break big jobs into small chunks. Moreover, I read daily, try to have a large vocabulary, choose and use several different strategies, focus on purpose, audience, use rules flexibly, and finish a draft before editing text.

The best way to become better at anything is to practice and to be patient. Writing in a daily journal may be one of the best ways to improve English and writing skills. It puts in hours of practice being that it is written in everyday and is constantly looked over all the time. Mistakes can be made and can be learnt from. It doesn’t cost anything to mess up on an own,

This past semester I’ve made many improvements in my writing skills. A few improvements I’ve made were providing more original titles in my essays, writing creative or unique introductions, and creating well-supported paragraphs. These improvements have made major impacts in my essay/writings. Due to this, my essays now tend to grab the reader's attention with also supportive paragraphs.

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.

There have been a variety of methodologies of varying effectiveness developed and used for teaching writing skills. Thomas Gorman critiques some of these methods (Celce-Murcia, M, p189-199). In my view, and the view expressed in numerous literature, none of these methods are in itself complete and sufficient for a proper mastery of the ability to write effectively in English. In addition to a solid foundation in grammar and sentence composition skills, a well-rounded approach to teaching and learning skills in written English will probably draw on aspects of all these methodologies and be flexible enough to be adapted to the requirements and aptitudes of the learner (Prabhu, N.S).