Reflection In American Literature

At the beginning of this novel, we were introduced to Sarah Nickerson, a Harvard graduate, with a good paying job as the vice president of Human Resource at Berkeley Consulting, three kids, and a sweet husband. However, she was career-driven and dedicated to her job to afford to live in Welmont and to be able to take care of the family as her husband is trying to survive the second round of lay off at his work. However I noticed that this job put a lot of stress and strain on her and her family, as she didn’t get to spend a lot of times with her kids or husband. In the morning on Friday, she would get her kids ready for school but her and her husband would rock, paper, scissor on who would take the kid to school and when she didn’t have to, she was pretty happy. The day of the accident was when she didn’t have to take her kids. As she was trying to make a phone call, she crashed and ended up in the hospital for eight days. I like how this book go into details of her life before the accident and then illustrates her life afterward.

We were asked to write an essay that utilized literary elements to support a central idea of the text. However, while completing this assignment, I reflected on the major strides in writing I had made since the beginning of the year. In the first body paragraph of the first writing assignment of the year I use three lengthy quotes in addition to convoluted sentences such as, “Even though Jem had disobeyed Atticus, Atticus understood that what Jem did was mature and thought-out, and Atticus respected Jem’s actions.” Conversely, in the final task for The House on Mango Street, I was able to demonstrate control in my writing. I had learned to reduce the wordiness of my writing and also that complex ideas stated in simplest terms were the most enjoyable for the reader. When explaining a quote by Mamacita, I was able to be brief but poignant showing great improvement since the first essay. Within the writing assignment, I explain that Mamacita’s lack of ability to express herself is “... represented by the metaphor of the skinny thread in the form of Spanish that acts as her only road to ‘that country.’ However that thread is being torn by ‘the man’ and his belief that English is Mamacita’s present and future while Spanish is her past.” I was able to express the complex idea of the Spanish language being a part of Mamacita and not just a language, using a minimal amount of

After taking honors English for the past three school years, I now want the challenge of taking a higher level course: AP literature and composition. At this point in my high-school career, I’ve been able to take three advanced classes, and I want this class on my belt as well.

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).

During the course of this semester; the variety of writing styles and essays assigned to me in my communication skills class encouraged the development of my writing skills, as well as provided me with more self-assurance in my abilities. My writing, research, and presentation abilities enhanced through practice, determination, and the understanding I gained during this course. With every single writing assignment, I learned new innovative approaches and skills, which enhanced my abilities to improve my thoughts logically, enabling me to write more clearly, and to organize my papers more effectively. At the beginning of this semester; despite the fact that I already knew the terminology MAP: message, audience, purpose; I never really

Initially my writing lacked structure and a controlling purpose which caused my ideas to be incoherent and hard for the reader to understand. These difficulties could be attributed to the fact that I am an art student plagued with the disorganization and non-verbal method of an artist’s brain. Being this way, interpreting and conveying my thoughts accurately and eloquently into the assigned writings was fairly tough. However, during the course of English 101 I was able to identify my weaknesses through the aid of writing communities such as peer review sessions and conferences with my professor. With the help from these resources and the writing process I learned to better organize my essays and maintain a controlling purpose in order to help my audience

Learning how to effectively grab my audience’s attention is a big task for me to tackle this semester. As previously learned in week one’s archived workshop “The Hallmarks of Effective Writing,” the basic components of what effective writing strives to convey are “awareness of purpose, audience, and form” (Hood, 2012, slide 5). For example, if I am writing a paper for a topic that would be intended for children, I cannot use sophisticated vocabulary that the audience may not understand. If the audience is unable to decipher the vocabulary words in the essay, they are more likely to lose interest in reading the paper. Sentence structure, grammar, and learning how to effectively reach my audience have affected my ability to communicate effectively in the past due to the difficulty involved in maintain proper writing etiquette and keeping the reader’s

One of the most helpful sources for me while writing has been using a thesaurus to find more superior words to explain and elaborate my topic at hand. One example of me using a very low quality vocabulary is the journal entry I wrote about how to make hamburger helper. Instead of me using a more in depth vocabulary, I used words such as “that” and “thing”. I also didn't go into full detail while writing the essay. I focused on the bare minimum of explaining how to make it rather than writing it into a story, which coincides with my lack of elaborating my thoughts while writing.

Growing up, my sister and I would each write birthday cards to our mother, as our method of showing gratitude. My sister, now an author, would repeatedly bring my mother to tears after reading her birthday card, yet I would only receive a “Oh, that’s very nice Ryan.” Living in the shadow of my sister the writing behemoth being a math and science oriented person tainted my views on writing. I may not have put the necessary effort into becoming a better writer because I figured it was just an innate quality. In other words, I basically accepted that I was born left brained, and there was no realistic chance to drastically improve my writing. Consequently, I opted out of taking challenging AP English courses and instead breezed through my high

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?

I made my pieces fascinating by adding in descriptive vocabulary, startling statistics, inspiring quotes, and complex sentences. In one of the first essays I wrote, “Hurricane Preparedness,” I began the paper with a sentence that did not describe the topic in depth. To explain, “Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Texas hard this past August leaving them with a devastating amount of destruction to their city.” This sentence is awfully straightforward and does not elaborate on the topic well enough. By adding in more details, I would have prepared the audience for the essay more adequately. I should have included a more advanced explanatory word instead of “hard.” Nevertheless, throughout this class I was able to learn how to expand on what I am speaking about and find the proper words to explain the topic to its fullest potential. To demonstrate, I introduced my piece, “Coaching Rivalry,” by creating an image for the reader that set the tone for what was ahead. With this intention, I wrote, “Stepping back into the early 1960s, the facility hosting the Duke vs. North Carolina men’s basketball game is packed tight. The crowd goes ballistic after a Blue Devil, Art Heyman, and a Tar Heel, Larry Brown, are pulled apart from an outrageous brawl. This moment is where the intense rivalry between the two teams all began.” Including this short anecdote at the beginning of my paper created a clear and vivid image for the reader. Ultimately, incorporating engaging, descriptive words to make a piece more fascinating will help keep an audience

English is a hard language to learn, for there are numerous elements of effective usage and writing. Many people, including me, struggle in writing because of a lack of knowledge. Since middle school, English was not a strong suit of mine. I struggled with the simplest of tasks often taking a considerably longer time to complete a task than the other students. Unmotivated teachers and a lack of interest resulted in remedial writing skills. To put it simply, I had little confidence in my writing and I dreaded taking the class because of the writing involved. In spite of my fears, I took the course and I was able to perfect and challenge my mediocre writing skills.

We are already midway through the first quarter of my last year as a high school student. I find it hard to completely grasp how quickly this year is passing and yet I feel like we've already accomplished so much.

Through the use of draftback, I recognized that my writing can be, at times, ambiguous words I string together to seem more intellectual, but it simply confuses my audience and prevents me from presenting my argument effectively. Through multiple conversations with my professor, it constantly came down to a primary argument: Professor Hoskins would argue that I had to make my point more obvious for the reader, but I would respond that I did not want to make the idea too simplistic (e.g., “this leads to that”). Through multiple frustrating attempts to do better with this one essay, I came to an “epiphany.” I

What concepts, principles, or ideas that you have learned, do you think you will remember the most after you leave this class?