Reflection On Improving My Writing Composition

How can I become a better writer? Throughout my writing experiences, I have learned I have many weaknesses along with strengths. My experiences with writing has not always been the best, but over time, with lots of practice and instructions from my instructors, I can proudly say that I have gained a better understanding on the layout of essays and papers. As well as understanding how to write correctly my goal as a writer is to learn how to overcome my weaknesses and use my strengths to my highest ability. I have many strengths, weaknesses and goals that I plan to achieve and overcome in my college career.

My writing skills have fluctuated throughout the semester. I feel, although, I have mastered leads and headline writing. Leads and headlines were the first writing skills we practiced and have continued to practice throughout the entire semester. The continuous practice of leads and headline writing throughout the semester, I feel confident in my ability to write concise, eye-catching leads and headlines. For writing assignment three I needed to provide a follow-up headline and corresponding lead for a criminal case. The headline had to focus on the upcoming sentencing hearing because it was the newest information about the case. In order to do so, as I mention in my blog entry, I had to write several drafts for both my headline and lead. [INSERT BLOG PICTURE] After many drafts of the lead I settled on a summary-lead because the article was a follow-up story about an established criminal case. I wrote the headline after I wrote the lead because the headline had to be a shorter, more intriguing version of the lead. After many drafts I finally wrote a six worded, eye-catching headline that was about the sentencing hearing. [INSERT WRITING ASSIGNMENT

From the first assignment to the last, I realized that my writing process has changed a lot. I usually write my papers in my room, whether on a desk or on my bed. I did not organize my thoughts as eloquently as I should have. My ideas were more sporadic, and I did not give myself as much time to write it out. In addition, I was more worried about the page limit rather than the content of my work. Similar to the other assignments, I did not start my process with an outline. I went straight towards writing my paper without giving any structure, which did not help with the organization of my papers in this class.

This is the second writing course I’ve taken in college, and it has ultimately helped with my writing abilities. Something significant that I have learned throughout this course, which I didn’t previously know, is the complete writing process. I was unaware of the distancing period. This certainly helped give me a renewed outlook of what I was trying to accomplish in my essays. Similarly, this course has brought to my attention revising resources I was unaware of. I found the smarthinking website to be very useful in completing my essays, and I know it will be beneficial for future

I’ve always felt that my writing could use improvement in several areas including grammar, punctuation, style, and tone. My writing included emails, memorandums, and police reports, which went against proper use of grammar. Often times the words were abbreviated and no punctuation were included when the reports were transcribed. I recently started writing college level papers again, as I have not taken any college courses since 1998. I have occasional trouble with proper usage of punctuation, and placement of commas. I think I’ve seen tremendous improvement for my first paper that I wrote this February; however I do occasionally struggle in this area. Occasionally my style of writing seems to be biased, and at times I force my point during my arguments. Lastly, the tone of my writing can often be misinterpreted as controversial, and argumentative. Most of the information about my

This week’s reading focuses on one of my known weaknesses, writing. I am always trying to improve my style. I feel that two of the biggest problems I have are word use and my style and tone (Bovee & Thill, 2016). I use sites online to assist in pointing these out. I am slowly learning but I still have much more to understand.

A very popular saying, “hindsight is twenty-twenty,”. This is especially true when looking back at your old work in any class. There are many factors that can be attributed to this from stress, to short-term memory loss and actual improvement. By looking back on your work, it impossible to find many of your mistakes and improve on them, thus teaching yourself not to make them. By reviewing my composition process, composition techniques, use of rhetoric and work in other types of media I can improve my writing.

My writing experiences prior to this course have been mostly self-taught. Lacking much formal education the only writing I have been involved in over the years has been job related. I honestly cannot think of the last time I wrote any type of paper that was graded by a professional in the English field. I quit high school in 1994, obtained a GED, and finally decided to continue my education some 20 years later. I have enjoyed writing in the past but it was mostly in the form of lyrics, stories, blogs or daily journals. Writing, the way I have in the past, has been therapeutic for me. Whether or not academic writing provides me the same sense of therapy I have yet to figure out.

I believe the importance of writing is to convey the writes thought and feelings. Another important aspect of writing is if the reader gained anything of value while reading the piece of literature. In order to relate to the reader, a writer must have dependable set of writing skills to engage the reader. During this course, I believe my writing skills have been improved upon. I have become more comfortable with my writing weaknesses and challenge myself more when writing.

Over the course of my studies at university, I have grown and learned more about academic writing and numerous writing styles. I believe there is so much room for me to master my writing skills to succeed and complete my degree and improve my academic writing and personal skills through more practice. However, I have become concerned with my first attempt submitting my piece of paper through the online test in the Writers’ Diet diagnostic tool and was labelled ‘flabby’ in my writing. Analysing my errors and referring to the textbook ’Communication Toolkit’ by Grellier and Goerke (2014), also submitting my piece of writing to Grammarly and paper rater I was able to measure my weakness in the area of sentence structure, punctuation and grammar.

Before I started this assignment, I knew little to nothing about the subject. I don’t recall ever having done a project quite like this one, so I’m not sure how it’ll turn out. It likely won’t be very good, but oh well. I did encounter a few problems while working, such as my inability to properly analyze his writing style (or at least not phrase it properly), or to find his challenges or triumphs, legacy/ies, et cetera… I don’t think there’s anything at this moment that I can do about it. If I’m going to be honest here, I’m not proud of it. Now that I’m about out of time, I see everything I could have done better on it. Every last detail. The only two things I’m pleased with are the second page and the questions, and I’m not certain I should even be pleased with the questions.

So far, taking this English course has impacted my writing skills in a good way. This class has helped me to acquire skills to become a better writer in college and for my future. In this class I have had the chance to make important revisions to my papers when needed. I learned how to use the writing process effectively so far by brainstorming ideas for my topic, making multiple drafts, getting in groups for peer editing, and revising my paper into a final draft. By following this writing process it makes me look deeper into my essay and explore all the ways I can make revisions until it’s perfect. By using that writing process it has changed my writing and the way I look at “writing papers” as a whole. Although, there are some challenges that I still face with my writing that I will have fixed by the end of this course.

“…As for all the seniors, I want you to challenge yourselves this year and don’t think you’re going to cruise through to graduation.”-Mrs. Smith, County High School. Although some seniors in high school refuse to take a hard schedule, I decided to take a challenging composition course my last year of high school and learned more than ever before from it. My teacher, Mr. Bacz, focused mostly on vocabulary, grammar, and how to right an essay. Each one of these subjects combined to give me a year of hard work, which eventually paid off.

I feel that the biggest change to my writing this semester is in the way I organize myself for assignments. I was homeschooled and did all my assignments online. Making the change to a classroom environment was difficult for me due to my Asperger’s and learning about how to organize all aspects of my writing has been a challenge. I feel that I have improved as the semester progressed. I would like to discuss each aspect of the writing process and how my skills have improved by taking this class. I will be able to use the organizational process in my future career as a film maker and director.

In this journal entry I will completing the assignment “Reflections on Your Writing Process” on pg. four in the textbook Writing and Community Action. The last paper I wrote was for my Criminal Justice and Criminology Capstone class the assignment was a research paper over my final project being the injustices faced by transitioning youth aging out of the foster care. I started the process of creating this paper my initially brainstorming injustices they face, researching statistics, more background information about foster children being released, legislation in place and reached out facilities within Kansas city that help out with this transition to see what services they provide. From the information found I began to develop a thesis and moved on to creating an outline deciding what should be introduced or included in the introduction, body and conclusion. I typed up the paper and when it was done I read through it and made corrections. I often ask someone to edit the paper again if no one is available I may go on a editing wed site since as Grammarly.com or Paperrater.com. I then make more corrections and continue to read it over and over again until I am okay with how sounds. Right before submitting I make sure my citations, reference page and paper are in the correct format, font and writing style and now I ‘m ready to submit my work.