Reflection In Writing

Over the past four months, I have made great strides as a writer. The area where I have seen the most growth is in my use of the writing process. Prior to my enrollment in this course, I would sit down and write all my papers in one sitting. This class has taught me how to lay out a plan for my papers. I have learned how to effectively brainstorm/research, draft, and revise my writings before I complete them. Also I have learned to not just stop there, instead I am now going back and reflecting on my work after I complete it. This allows me to identify where I prospered and also where my downfalls may have been. With this information, I am able to apply this to future writings of mine; lessons that will stay with me forever.

I have been practicing on how to improve my writing over the past few weeks, which has taught me a great deal about writing. My teacher would like me to evaluate and explain my strengths and weaknesses in my own writing. This evaluation is in between my two essays. One on my own and another with my teacher's help. I have strengths and weakness in my introduction, body paragraphs ,and my conclusion.

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.

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.

I have many talents but I would have to say writing is not at the top of that list. I am not a terrible writer, actually I have been told I am pretty good. It is the fact that I am not confident in my writing abilities. When I am given a writing assignment it takes me awhile to fully know what I am writing about, I take forever to start a essay but once I get my ideas on paper it turns into a piece of cake. I guess it is because I have so many thoughts and opinions running rampant and I have a hard time taming them all. Because of this I can take longer on a a essay than needs be. When I took AP Literature last year I would always have trouble finishing my essays, they would start off well but towards the end, they would not make any since. Tell me to

As a student entering the 10th grade my essay writing abilities were questionable at best. However over the course of my sophomore year I acquired new skills and techniques to construct and write essays. In some cases this class broadened my abilities already in place and in others it constructed new abilities to help strengthen others. All in all I am a better writer than when I entered my sophomore year. Despite all the positive changes to my writing style that have occurred over the past year some parts of my writing style require more effort to come to par with other parts of my writing style. As a writer over the past year I have reinforced my arguments well, and learned to develop a thesis better than I had, however I require more work

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;

As a recent Egyptian immigrant to the United States, writing is the most difficult subject. In 7th grade, my writing process started to develop with the help of an amazing teacher. Ever since 7th grade I have been practicing wiring to be close to the high school writing slandered. I reached my goal last year when my act writing score is 6 point which places me in English 101. I doubted myself so, I took the Accuplacer test which also, placed me in English 101. I was scared when I saw the results that I’m going to fail this course. After taking this course, it made me more confident in writing and showed me my writing level which needs more practice. This class helped me improve my writing skills, by getting great feedback from my instructor

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.

No one said college was going to be easy. Over this past semester I have gained some support with creating better essays, but also lost some as well. Essays can be difficult if you do not know what you are doing, in some parts of this semester that’s how I felt. Being able to change from high school papers to college paper is different. Over the past semester I have learned to write about many different things that I have not done before, from different audiences to different types of essays, also learning to have to take other people’s thought and put that into my essay to help me improve. In this essay, there will be many things happening, like my effects of each different essay, reflect on the relationship between writing and critical thinking, how rough drafts help improve, and also the purpose goals of my writing.

After reading the articles written by professional writers, I found that I will have to reevaluate the way I do my writing. Before this point, I found myself in the role a normal student that believed that after the first draft was done, the writing was done. I always thought of rewriting and revising as an afterthought. Many times after I finished my first draft I would assume the work was done and I just need to correct for spelling and grammar. I believe many times I was just being too easy on myself. As Mr. Murray said, I now know that I must learn to be my own “best enemy”. Through learning the amount of work in this course, I am realizing that I must start my writing process earlier in order to give myself more to rewrite and revise.

Writing is a skill learned many times throughout a person’s life, from understanding the errors and revision of their compositions. Many basic revisions are in grammar and spelling that are easy to correct either from knowledge through books or online tools. The skills to revise writer’s own work consist of recording the metacognitive process of the revision. Metacognitive is “knowing about the knowing” which help the writer learn the checking process of the work while improving and adjusting the composition. To better understand how this process work, I have chosen these three assignments and made the correction to reflect the sentence structure, stronger thesis, and development of a better style. The notes documented in the revision is the awareness of the decision the writer has made. This will address the common attributes of the three essays and correction made.

I took the 2017 summer semester Writing 101course at UMUC. I took this class as an elective and because I enjoy writing. I am glad that I chose to take this class and could learn from it. While taking this class, I learned a lot about what I did and did not know when it comes to writing. I also learned some areas that I need to improve when writing papers.

In the first grade, I had trouble reading. Every day, I was sent to work with a reading teacher to help improve my ability to read. I remember that at the end of each session, she would give me orange tic-tac’s if I did good that day. I thought that she was doing it to be nice but now I realize that it was a way to introduce positive reinforcement. It must have worked because after the first grade, my reading level soared, and I did not have to meet with orange tic-tac lady anymore. For the remaining of my elementary school years, I would spend hours in the library reading books, especially chapter books. It was not until high school that I started having the option to write narrative papers. I realized I enjoyed writing those types of essays. After reading Stephen King’s essay about how reading and writing go hand in hand, I started thinking about how much more I should read to be a better writer.