Reflection Essay

When I first got accepted into Stuyvesant High School, I heard countless of rumors stating: “Oh the workload is terrible”, “The competition is so fierce” or “Out of schoolwork, extracurriculars, or sleep: you can only pick two.” I found it hard to let it faze me, since I graduated from one of the most prestigious middle schools. However, the rumors transformed into reality when I stepped into Mr. Nieves’ Freshman Composition Class. The workload at the beginning of the year was brutal, coupled with assignments from other core classes that seem unaware of the workload of other teachers. Reading assignments were a regular, and there were journal entries and occasional quizzes to keep us in line. What made it bearable was the friends I made in that class; everyone had their own opinion about the topic we were talking about, and listening to other perspectives really broadened my horizon and enriched my learning experience in Stuy. Another thing that this class has taught me is the importance of time management, a skill that I will carry on for the rest of my high school career and life. When I choose to sign up for Mr. Nieves’ AP American Literature class in my Junior Year, I was hoping to relive the discussion-based lesson plans and meet more outstanding peers. I was not disappointed, to say the least, reflecting through all the experiences at the end of the course. The lesson plans he laid out for us were an interesting mix between small lectures and class output, and what I

It is still so surreal to reflect back on my first semester as an incoming college student in the ENC1101 course, analyzing at my progression as a reader and writer in literacy. Since the first day of class I set in stone my goals for this class: receive a 4.0 GPA, develop my connecting theories skills in writing, and become more aware of objectives for each Unit throughout the course. All of these goals became achievements that not only make others proud but most importantly give me self pride. In order to earn the grades and achieve these goals, I went after every opportunity that I was given as an incoming college student, such as office hours and extra credit. By taking this course I have gained confidence with the utilization of literacy, and made an addition to my group of impactful literacy sponsors. Once students are finished with high school they assume that there is nothing else to learn beyond the stereotypical five paragraph essay, but they are so wrong. I was able to obtain so much knowledge about numerous course concepts from Writing about Writing, articles, and my professor. These concepts will carry on with me throughout a bright future of writing courses, job interviews, and any other skills that require literacy. The four outcomes listed below will help illuminate how I improved as a writer, by being a driven college student and going out of the way to earn my achievements in this course. In the first outcome I improved comprehending scholar texts,

Over the course of time, I have learned that learning is essential if you want to be successful. Whether it is about life skills or school, learning is a habit that everyone uses in a way to become successful. One of my main goals is to obtain the most out of college so that I can input what I learn in school in the outside world. Meaning that I want to learn as much as I possibly can in any course, especially in this course. I expected this course to be a review of my English class during my senior year of high school, but I extended on what I had previously learned about English. As this semester of ENG 111 ends, I can say that I have improved skills that involve grammar, structuring a paragraph with supporting details, and opening my

Coming into this class, I wasn't sure what to expect. Of course,I expected to be writing a lot but was unsure of the type of writing and the style. I was looking forward to writing challenging pieces that stretching me creatively as a writer. I wanted to explore how to express myself in my writing because it had been a long time since I'd written a creative essay. One of my main hopes for this class was challenging myself to become a better editor of my own papers. I often find it a tedious and laborious process to find and edit the grammatical errors in my papers. However, this is an important skill that I need to develop for my future as a successful writer.

Over the course of this semester, my confidence in writing has improved greatly. In high school, I didn’t really know how to write effectively. I wasn’t really sure what was considered to be “good writing” until I took AP* English. However, even while I was taking this “Advanced Placement” class, I was still trying to figure out how to really create “good writing”. I feel as if this had something to do with the fact that I never really had to work with the rules of grammar intensively. After taking this course, however, I now have a much better understanding of how to correctly use proper grammar. I also improved on using transitional phrases in my writing. I have implemented my understanding of proper grammar and transitional phrases in both my writing inside and outside of this class as a result.

In this class, I have learned many new skills to improve my writing, and I have also learned new grammar rules. In regards to my writing, I have learned the importance of freewriting when beginning to write a paper. Additionally, I now know to allow ample time for revising and editing because I can look at my work critically for mistakes and make necessary changes. Furthermore, I have learned about grammar rules such as pronoun-antecedent agreement. This rule is something that I know subconsciously, but being made aware of it has allowed me to find mistakes I make more often.

As this course comes to and end, it was very interesting to see how my writing has changed over the course of the semester. After having taking multiple English classes and writing multiple essays throughout my academic years, I have always been trained to write a certain way. Quite the opposite of being concise, instead I was trained to over explain and analyze the points I was making in my written assignments.

Though I have spent many years learning English, it is an ongoing process that requires a lot of hard work. I was very glad to find out that the first four weeks of the course would be focused on grammatical rules and sentence patterns. Because I never focused on the structure of my sentences, I believe I wrote dull and flat texts. Moreover, my punctuation was terrible since I had no understanding of English punctuation. But the lessons on the sentence structure turned my world upside down: It was hard to believe that even simple sentences have such a great variety and can turn your paper into something very interesting in the terms of structure. Practicing skill of building effective sentences in the same essay was very helpful, for it allowed to focus purely on the sentence and structure patterns rather than on the context. My writing improved since the beginning of the semester and I became a more confident

This class has taught me things that may help my writing, and also things that I don’t find as useful. I thought practicing comma rules gave me a better understanding of punctuation, but I still don’t fully understand passive and active sentence structure. I’ve explored different ways to write a paper and realized my favorite is starting with an outline. I try to get all of my ideas organized where I want them before going in and writing pages at a time. I never found peer editing quite as useful, because a lot of times I don’t like having other students read my work. All of these examples have lead me to become the writer I am now compared to the beginning of the semester.

Since the first day of this class, every aspect of this class has been a learning experience for me. As I have said before, my Senior English class was very thorough as far as teaching the basic rhetorical tools and the skills necessary to analysis a piece of writing, but coming to college, I lacked the skills needed to actually put those skills into practice in my own writing. My knowledge of revision and drafting was limited by my habits of only editing grammar or changing a few words to sound like I was academic or qualified. Even though a great deal of this course focused on the skills necessary to be an efficient and effective writer, the last portion of the course was very useful to the development of my skills as a writer. Through revision, I learned how to take unorganized jumble of ideas and claims and arrange them into a piece that makes a useful and compelling argument with a purpose in mind. I find it hard to admit it but I actually found that I enjoyed the satisfaction of revising my work and making it better.

Throughout this semester, I have seen an improvement in my writing skills and the way I develop my essays. I have always had a passion for creative writing, but when writing academic papers, I lacked technique and correct grammar. I made exceptional grades on my writing assignments in high school, but I learned quickly that English college classes are much more challenging. Being in my first college English class helped me learn how important class attendance and participation are, along with learning the many rules and techniques used in writing. Seeing the improvement in my writing over the course of this semester has made me very optimistic of the English classes I will take in the future. This class has taught me how important grammar is and how I should always strive for improvement in my writing.

While these skills will help me in future English classes, they will also aid the making of any paper I prepare for my time at Old Dominion. Not only have you taught numerous tactics to better my writing as a whole, but you have also taught lessons I can take with me throughout life. With the help of persistent due dates, whether they are large formal papers, or just simple discussion boards, I was able to grow as a person due to the increase of responsibility this course required. Finally, the most valuable thing I will take away from this class is the inner-confidence I’ve gained from creating cohesive pieces of

Throughout the course of this semester we have learned various writing techniques that have helped me grow and improve as a writer. By acquiring the necessary skills for writing from this class and pushing myself to further improve on these skills, I can now apply my knowledge to future courses that I may take. For instance, while I may not be required to do the same project, I can use the same principles that we learned from units, such as, argument analysis or revision to complete another assignment. While I might have had some experience with the lessons from this class, I still had room to improve and the evidence for this can be seen throughout my course work. In this essay, I will present several artifacts as evidence to prove how I applied

Before taking this course my writing styles and habits were very different. I was the typical procrastinator because I would wait until the night before a paper was due to start it. This did not allow me enough time to properly proofread everything, which resulted in getting points deducted for simple grammatical errors that could have been avoided if I would have had the time to proofread. My writing styles have many strengths and weaknesses and I have been able to improve my writing because of them. I have learned from my strengths and weaknesses how to become a better writer.

Anne Tyler once said, “If I waited till I felt like writing, I’d never write at all.” If this were true I would have failed out of my academic writing class. I have pushed aside my past of procrastination and took in the new material. As a result of the class commas, run on sentences, and many other bad writing habits are now becoming a thing of the past. Mr. Roth has illustrated to me and supplied me with material to learn how to write better. The time I spend in or out of this class, I am trying to understand writing better. I have learned how to write better sentences, avoid small boring words, and correctly quote sources, but I still need work on unnecessary punctuation, better topic.