Personal Narrative: My Changes As A Writer

My writing experiences have been minimal. So far I have only learned the basics of writing, like forming sentences and forming sentences to put into paragraphs. I can tell that my writing has improved throughout the years. I hope to improve in writing essays, paragraphs, stories, and speeches so that I have no errors with editing and creating the final product. I predict that I will be a well rounded writer when I graduate from Newman University.

Many people enjoy and have fun writing, but then again, many people dislike having to write, including me. Writing has always been something I was never really interested on for many reasons.

In my first “Who I am as a Writer” paper I stated how one of the areas that I needed to improve was writing. I went into more depth talking about how my writing is not descriptive enough and how I cannot grab the reader's attention. Even though I still need to continue making improvements, I have gotten better in both of these aspects. Compared to my papers in high school my introduction paragraphs have improved.

My writing has changed a lot throughout the year. Some of my first pieces included lots of redundancies, “th” words, and things that could be changed. In addition, the sentences were not as long as they could have been. These things were brought to my attention by reviewing my writing and using the writing goal sheet. Over the semester, I have learned these little mistakes separate lower level writing from higher level writing. Reviewing my old writing and writing instruction has recently been on my mind while I write essays. They help me to write to the best of my ability. The first sentence of my essay at the beginning of the year is, “I am thirteen years old and I am interested in building and designing things.” This sentence has redundancy

Throughout the first semester, I already feel as though I have learned multiple skills that push my writing to a higher level. I have never worked with “They Say, I Say” before, and all of the readings that we have done so far associated with that book added new aspects to my writing than ever before. In particular, I have noticed a large change in my ability to introduce and summarize a piece of writing that I am analyzing before adding my own opinion or take on a subject. Instead of consistently summarizing points of the piece throughout my writing, I improved upon my skills and can now effectively and concisely summarize the piece before introducing any of my own opinions. Additionally, the class discussion that we had about the purpose of a concluding paragraph, in my opinion, helped improve my skills in answering the question: so what?

It was two months ago when I discussed how big of a change it was for me to enter into a college writing class. Throughout my first semester attending writing 105, I’ve learned to “rise about my limits”. Reading and writing was a tool I always tend to struggle with yet I continued to focus on exceeding pass my goal. Each essay I wrote became better allowing me to not only learn more but grow as a writer. I started off being able to just write two page essays and now I’ve adapted to being able to write 7 pages without losing track. Over the semester my writing has improved due to dedication, having a purpose and analyzing my mistakes.

I define myself as a weak writer in certain areas, but have great ideas that I can use to express in my writing. The areas that I struggle with is my grammar, spelling, lackluster work usage, and the introduction paragraph. I have great ideas that I can write it is just that I am not very lucid with grammar structure. During my school years in Nevada, I fell behind in my English skills, because they rarely taught me these skills that I have learn at Creekview. So this why I have fallen behind in English. The adjectives that I would describe my writing style is reprehensible, and lackluster. My writing is reprehensible, because of the lack of strength, and complex sentences. Also, it becomes lackluster, because of my dull choice of word usage.

Through this assignment, I have learned some new writing skills and recalled some of the writing strategies I learned from my previous writing courses at UC Davis. For instance, I learned that free-write is a good technique in writing because it allows writers to write down all their ideas without judging them. I will definitely apply this technique in my future assignments not only in this course, but also other courses that require me to write.

I improved as a writer this semester because I became better at composing sentences. I improved not only my grammar but also the content of the sentences and how I articulate my ideas. This portfolio represents an accurate picture of me as a writer, because it shows how I write in an academic setting and the subjects I love. This is apparent in the choices that I made in my selection of writings. However, it could better represent my progress if I had included my scores and comments from all of my assignments. Though, I do believe that this portfolio showcases my progress this semester.

As Vickie Karp once said, “When we read, we start at the beginning and continue until we reach the end. When we write, we start in the middle and fight our way out.” At an early age, writing gave solace. My first exposure to writing was through journaling. In my elementary years, my parents separated, leaving my brother and me in the eye of the storm. At the age of ten, I only understood so much, but I did know how much my mother and father detested each other on a regular basis. Objects and harsh words established the darkness and fear in the corner of my mind. Once father left home, before I even had a chance to say goodbye, I felt abandoned and alone. The anxiety of my mother leaving me and struck with depression of already been abandoned

I grew up in Panama City, a beautiful country located in Central America, like many other kids I learned how to read and write in home, and in the school at a very young age. However, I learned how to read and write in Spanish which is my native language. Books have been part of my life since I was a kid, I remember reading story books, comics, and classic stories with my parents almost every night after school. Both, my mother and my father would prefer reading a book than watching television, nonetheless, reading was a common thing to do in my home. Even though, I love reading, I have never been a good writer; writing have been the thing which I have struggled the most in Spanish and in English. I first started

Do you think that revision is necessary to identify problems within the paper that you have written? When I first re-read my submission from January I was disappointed with the quality that the paper held. At the beginning of the semester I felt as if my work was not perfect but slightly above average. After completing this semester and revising my paper from the beginning of the semester I have realized that above average was not a true representation of my work. It would not come close to being considered my most quality work, in fact the quality just barely passes for average. My rhetorical choices shifted but didn’t completely change while completing my revision. I expected English 101 to consist of assignments where we argued our opinion

This class has helped me to improve my writing in many ways. Though I do not manage my time as well as I would like to at the moment, I have evolved this aspect of my writing vastly. At the beginning of the semester, it took anywhere between two and four hours to complete an essay, and I would wait until the very last minute to even begin writing. I have learned how to properly manage my time in order to write my essays in a shorter amount of time. I have also increased my ability to find and present sources in an academic essay. Though I still need to polish my ability to present information without bias, I am able to find relevant information in order to further prove my point in an essay. Overall, this class has taught me many valuable things

My ability as a writer and a reader has grown stronger each moment, from the beginning of the year until now. I have always struggled to write down my thoughts on a paper, it is easier for me just to say them out loud. Making the portfolio was something I was looking forward to. Making a timeline of how much my skills as a writer and a reader has improved throughout the course it shows my progression I have made. These two essays are the ones that showed how much I have improved over the past couple of months. The first essay that you will see in my portfolio shows how much I lack on providing critical information and how unclear the essay is. The second essay demonstrates how much I have grown from the first essay, it demonstrates my ability as a writer and a reader. Even

It took me a while searching for an interesting persuasive essay that was interesting and changed my mind on an issue because a lot of the articles were unappealing to me. After searching through pages of articles I went back to do a google search and that’s how I ended up finding the article I picked. “Against Headphones” written by By Virginia Heffernan. The subject of the article was something I never really put much thought into.