Personal Reflection In Writing

I have improved in numerous ways during this semester in Composition 1. I have enhanced my writing skills such as being able to write proficiently, and being able to form an essay in a set amount a time similar to the 50 minute essay tests in class. This course has taught me to broaden my vocabulary throughout my essays in order for them stimulating and captivating. While writing essays and creating the works cited pages, I have learned to accurately cite websites, books, and articles. I have also learned to suitably place and refer to where I found the material used for the essays within, and at the beginning of, paragraphs. When writing my essays I have learned to transition smoothly, however, I still struggle with it every once in a while, the writing I do continues to enhance. My speech has also improved from standing in front of the class and presenting a group project along with fellow classmates. I now know what it is like and what to expect the next time I do it. I have improved in many ways during this course and I feel, overall, the portfolio represents my progress greatly.

When I look back at my writing before having any college experience, I can see that I had a lot to work on. I can say that I was never really a big fan of writing anything much less essays. Even when I was younger, I just did not have a great big interest in writing. This was because I felt that I could not elaborate as well as others. I was not use to having to write anything really, but I now feel that I have a better grasp on the steps that I need to take to get my writing on the level that it needs to be.

Olympian, Kim Collins said, “Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection.” This quote can also apply to students in school in many different ways. Students always want the best project or writing grade that they can possibly get. While that is a worthy goal it is not realistic because students are not perfect and they are still learning, and developing important skills. In my personal essays throughout the year I did strive for perfection, but I learned that I could not do it. I had to make slight improvements to better my writing for the next essay.

I have trouble writing because my writing seems to be a little “tongue-in-cheek” as my AP English teacher said. (I have a couple unfinished examples that I will attach). I tend to not know exactly what I am trying to say in my essays. It is not that I am a poor writer per se; I just have an issue focusing my writing. I enjoy writing; however, I become engrossed in the way I want to present my ideas. Perhaps it is that I do not know the audience to whom I am writing. I usually use proper grammar and mechanics but that is definitely not enough to write an exceptional essay. In this course, I feel strongly that I will develop these skills. Another concern I have with writing is when it is timed. I have never performed well in a timed writing assignment;

In this class, The Writer’s Mind, I have learned alot and have struggled a lot as well. Throughout this semester I have wrote some papers that I truly liked and a few I didn’t like at all. Therefore for this portfolio I added the ones I enjoyed and were proud of and excluded the ones I didn’t like, which for me, was the memoir. I personally didn’t like my memoir piece because I thought it was unorganized and didn’t stay on topic, unlike the other pieces I have chosen to include.

To begin with, my punctuation has gotten a lot better. I made a lot of errors during the beginning of the year and I am starting to make a lot less. Also, my thesis statements have gotten tremendously better. At the beginning of the year they were really boring. As the year began to progress, the statements got more interesting and creative. My analysis throughout essays have gotten better. I am much better now at determining things like theme, tone, and finding many literary devices. I can also set up my essays

Then examining my later article of the weeks, “As Gun Debate Rolls On, TEachers in This Texas School Are Already Armed” and “No, there haven't been 18 school shootings in 2018. That number is flat wrong.” you can clearly see the evidence of change. Not only was I able to put more down on paper but also decipher the message better as seen with my more insightful comments, and questions that made me actually think and construct an answer before answering. As for my writing, I believe that I have improved greatly in terms of paying attention to detail, and sentence structure. For example just take a look at my first few writing assignments such as my research proposal, or my reflection on my annotation project. Both had the specific weakness of poor sentence structure and contained a lot of grammatical errors. Whether it was low variance in sentence length, basic spelling and phrase errors, terrible structuring and flow of sentences my older assignments

Throughout this class, I have learned many things and I have also improved. This quarter, my writing has developed a lot, on my papers I have wrote I usually can't write a paper then and there, but on the literacy walk in essay I got a good score which I was proud of since that’s the first time I had done that. Usually, I don’t get very good scores, but I have learned a lot and how to write a good paper which led to me getting a good score. Another way in which I have improved in writing is how to use less fragments and also do less run-on sentences. Before this class I would do a lot of run-on sentences and many fragments. I have learned how to use better word choice and better sentence structuring.

Throughout my first semester at the University of Portland, the quality of my writing progressively increased. My English 112 class contained many different activities that contributed to helping me become a better writer. Informal writing assignments, class discussions, peer review sessions and the writing center were just some of the resources available to me that helped progress not only my writing ability but my overall reading & writing analysis skills as well. Not only did I make new relationships with my peers, these relationships also helped me understand the content more thoroughly, work out any problems that I had with my ideas, and encourage me to be more social among my fellow classmates as well. Nearing the end of this

1. My writing has grown tremendously since my first essay of the semester. The first essay I struggled with organization and sentence structure. Considering my last essay, I have been able to organize information to make it much more pleasing to read. Likewise, in my second essay I had some trouble with the MLA format. However, in my last essay I managed to cite and source all information more favorably. Furthermore, in my third essay I had trouble with adding detail in my body paragraphs. In my last essay, I was able to demonstrate a full understanding of the assignment by providing great detail. Overall, throughout this course, I have been able to form my own unique style of writing

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

Although I have always been an amateur writer, but I have improved in a few are areas. My typical sentence structures in my papers were simple; however, in my first major paper, I had less simple sentences and more complex sentences. My complex sentences consist of many adjective clauses and subordinate clauses. Also, my transition had greatly improved. I used to have an extremely difficult time trying to transition into new ideas, but I recently had a better time transitioning into new ideas and paragraphs better.

As a writer, I would like to think that I have progressed a little bit throughout the semester. From the Doyle essay to the Food and Identity paper, there has been some improvements. I feel I have improved when it comes to writing papers that need sources like the what if essay and the food and identity essay. I feel like my creativity aspect has improved a little due to the Doyle essay. This class has also helped me gain a different perspective of other people’s ideas and opinions. I think that is the most helpful thing that I have used

In my first paper, “Depression: A Plague of the Mind,” I realized that I was struggling with grammar. Out of all of my papers, it had the most issues. I did not cite some of my statistics and my words needed to be refined. Word choice was another weakness of mine when writing. I forget to be formal with what I write, so I tried to work on the word choice as we continued with the semester. I think a big strength of mine is coming up with ideas and organizing my thoughts. My papers had good structure and ideas were in order. I also felt I was good at hooking in the reader and tying the conclusion back to the hook. I feel my grammar improved a lot as I continued to write and is not as much of a problem anymore. I also see the my word choice has improved some as well, but it could still use some work. This class helped me grow so much in my weak areas and now I have more strengths than I started with.

Now that I have completed the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth course Crafting the Essay, I feel I have tremendously grown as a writer. Even after submitting the first assignment, I looked back at a position paper I wrote for school that I received an A+ on, yet I saw several flaws I wished I had changed.