Reflection On My Writing

As a writer, I have improved greatly since the first exploratory narrative essay. There have been many challenges that I have faced in my writing, but I have dealt with them in the best way possible. Over the course of the three papers I have written, I have improved in the flow of the papers, as well as the content of the papers. This semester, I have managed to overcome most of the challenges in my writing and have grown as a writer because of it.

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.

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

Throughout the timespan of a semester could you improve your writing to where there would be noticeable differences? When writing for English 1010, I noticed that there was obvious weaknesses and minimal strengths or lack thereof in my writing abilities. In many ways I do believe that I was able to improve in areas pertaining to reading, thinking, researching, and writing.

Over the course of the semester, my writing has definitely grown in confidence. Last year my writing seemed full of too many ideas. I was trying to throw in every piece of information I knew about the paper I was writing about. I struggled to get the correct voice out that fit with the information I was trying to present. I feel that the pressure from my Ways of Knowing class to get the perfect thesis, made me struggle through the entire paper to have the perfect evidence, while incorporating fluid sentences. Since then, I feel as though I can take a breath. I can let the words flow from my mind to paper without the cringing of trying to force a perfect paper.

My writing processes nowadays have changed thank you to my English 100 level class at Arizona Western College, I feel more confident with my writing style. At the beginning of the class I was very confused with the writing process and the steps to make an essay. I had a difficult time developing an outline and putting together my ideas, so I was not able to write an essay with a good structure. In addition, my grammar was not the best, and some of my sentences were incomplete. During the class period I learned about grammar, how to write complete sentences, how to brainstorm and the importance of an outline. It has become easier for me to organize my ideas in order to develop a well-structured essay. An essay should contain a topic, one thesis, body paragraphs that support the thesis, and a conclusion. The thesis will tell the reader what is the writer purpose of the essay, the body paragraphs support the thesis and the topic sentences of each one. Least but not last, I learned the importance of a peer review, this process was very helpful in the class because I was able to receive constructive feedback from my classmates, and I was able to improve my papers with the suggestions that my classmates gave me on my drafts.

Reflecting back on many things in life can help you look at things in a different perspective, as well as helping you improve. From the day I walked into my 9th grade English 1 Honors class, to the last final days I have left in my class, I have had time to look back upon the previous pieces I have written, and seen the growth in my writing as well as the things I must improve on to make my writing better.

Over the course of this year I have had the opportunity to use all of the writing techniques that we have learned in class this year during my assignments. But when going back through and reflecting on my works I have had many different chances to incorporate them in but had missed my opportunity. During the beginning of the year I worked as quickly as I could to finish assignments and was barely able to turn them in on time. This was a huge problem for me because I was not able to fully understand every writing strategy and when and where to use them. However as the year progressed I was able to budget more time for completing my homework so I could incorporate these new strategies that we learned during class into my assignments. Over the course of this reflection I will talk about certain assignments that I could have improved with different techniques and then show how I did.

I wasn 't looking forward to taking English 4U despite the fact that I am a voracious reader and enjoy engaging in discussions surrounding novels that I have read or currently am reading, but conversely, I absolutely abhorred English due to my experiences in high school.

Over the course of the past few months, I have learned that writing for college differs from writing an assignment in high school. During this semester I have had the chance to be challenged as well as grow as a writer. I have written various types of papers; These papers have ranged from memoirs to research papers. Different papers serve different purposes. For example, a research paper serves to inform, while an analysis paper serves to take a deeper look at a work or character. Nonetheless, each paper requires a different approach and has compelled me to take the different skills that I have learned in class and incorporate them into the paper. Throughout this course, I have acquired skills that improve my writing and communication skills. Through these assignments, I have learned how to properly cite sources, incorporate outside sources into my writing, as well as analyze information to strengthen my argument.

Throughout this semester I have slowly honed my writing style and skills through the creation of each piece of this portfolio. At the beginning of the semester, the starting paper was a daunting task due to the unique task of writing with another person’s writing style. I tackled the paper head-on by first choosing a topic that I had many thoughts on. The topic of how fear and curiosity drives humanity’s own personal drive to accomplish. This allowed me to see which essay style best suited the topic, thus letting me to jump start the writing of the essay. At the beginning all of my thoughts tumbled out onto the paper; however, as I revised, slowly the paper came together into a semblance of cohesive thoughts. With the second revision the essay ended up containing varying examples within the writing style to truly embody Solnit’s writing style of utilizing various examples for one general topic. Moving from the first essay to the second essay, I returned to more familiar territory of writing academic essays. Writing this essay was comparatively easier than the first essay mainly for the fact that I have written academic, analysis essays throughout my high school career. Getting all my thoughts out onto paper came easily, without much brain scraping. With the first revision I added more quotation and analysis to beef up what was already in my paper. The analysis added within my paper after the first revision provided a stronger argument on the position I took on the presence

Before I entered this class my writing abilities were average, but I knew that with further learning and practice I could develop the skills to become a better writer. During the GSW 1110 class I have learned various new skills through four essays. Some of the new skills that I gained throughout this class are: how to locate both textual and visual sources, write effectively to audiences with opposing viewpoints, write to a variety of academic audiences, practice the process for drafting texts, demonstrate the control over grammar and mechanics, and critical thinking. The skill set that I have obtained in GSW 1110 clearly represents how I have grown as a writer and am prepared me for future classes and a future career.

In my pre-course reflection, I stated that I wanted to work on strengthening my knowledge of convention, however, moving forward my mindset started to change and I quickly realized that I didn’t have as good of an understanding of the WPAs as I thought and I needed much more practice.

English 220 helped expand my ideas on what good writing is, and has helped me embrace certain stylistic choices to help add personality and intrigue to my writing. Reading and discussing Chapter 9 of They Say, I Say helped me identify and tweak my voice in later writing assignments, including MWA 2, and now I feel more comfortable deciding to use informalities and voice changes in my writing when it is necessary to better fit the prompt. In addition, our in-class discussions helped me become more comfortable with my sharing my own ideas about things and engaging in discussion about them, which allowed me to analyze the novels we read on a deeper level. Sometimes, voicing opinions in a classroom setting can be a little intimidating, but the welcoming atmosphere of the course helped take some of the pressure off and was very conducive to constructive discussion which gave me the opportunity to practice quick, critical thinking and finding document-based proof in a time-sensitive setting.

Writing this essay was one of the most challenging things I have had to do. It was so challenging because when I first received the assignment I wasn't really sure what to write about. I wasn't sure what gave me enough inspiration that I could actually argue an entire paper about. For a while, I was in between topics. I weighed the pros and cons of the topic, I even considered how much time I'd actually want to spend on the paper if I didn't actually love my topic. I started with an entirely different paper with a different topic, but after weeks of writing this long tedious paper, I got confused. I felt that my paper was very disorganized, my paper was way too broad, but I didn't realize that until I had several different