Reflection Paper

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

I began writing with basic vocabulary and barely any sentence variety. As the year progressed, I learned to advance my vocabulary and word choice in addition to incorporating a diversity of sentence structure. Nearing the end of the school year, I acknowledge that I have grown and learned more about writing. I anticipate that I will receive even more arduous writing assignments that require more research and time. Although it will be challenging, I feel confident that I will do well because I feel well prepared from all I’ve done this year. As I grow older, I will have to continue to write. I know I can take the knowledge I’ve learned this year and apply it to future papers for years to

Writing has always been a challenge for me. This is well evidenced by reading papers I wrote as recently as this past August. Concepts such as flow, content, vocabulary, structure, organization, grammar, and tone appear simple enough to capture on paper; I have learned over the past few months, however, that appearances can be misleading. Writing takes planning, creativity, commitment, and for me, a great deal of revising. I cannot pretend any mastery of these tasks. However, I have made progress. I spent extensive time improving my vocabulary, building better organizational skills, strengthening my use of grammar, and studying proper use of punctuation.

Learning something new is something to strive for. However, are all the lessons we learn good ones? After all, there are two sides to every coin. A lot of the times it is easy to find the bad lessons learned but what about the good? Well, that takes a lot more thought. Ironically these were the thoughts running through my head that day, that dreadful day which is permanently burned into the back of my mind.

During this semester, I have strengthened my writing by trying new writing techniques, learning about purpose, and finding new ways of combating writers block. My first essay in this class was less focused then the essays I wrote later in

Writing is a process that I have struggled with throughout my entire life. Last semester in ENGL 1101, I slowly began to understand the writing process. However, I still struggled with developing my essays. One aspect of writing effectively, that I feel I lack, is confidence. Last semester, I was slowly becoming more confident, but as the due date for this semester’s first essay approached, that little confidence seemed to disappear. The structure of the course, however, helped in gaining my confidence back. My first official writing was a biography for the portfolio. This allowed me to introduce myself for my professor. In less than a week, the major writing assignments started. As I finished one essay and began the next, I slowly gained confidence as my teacher encouraged my writing ability. One aspect of the writing process that was extremely helpful for building my confidence was the revision stage. Although personal revisions were helpful, the peer revisions were the most helpful for me. After the final essay, I felt much more confident in my ability to write. I believe I have become a much more effective writer, and through the structure of my portfolio, this will become evident.

Over the course of this past semester, my ability to write has improved tremendously. Prior to undertaking this course, my expertise in writing was not as fine-tuned as it should have been. I had never previously been enrolled in a class specifically tailored to writing-- which was quite clear. Upon reading my past works, it becomes apparent that my writing style consisted of fluff, small words, and inconsistently structured sentences. These problems have, for the most part, been remedied with the coursework I have tackled in College Writing. Rather than long, drawn out papers that take an eternity to reach the primary point, my recent work is much nicer in terms of composition and grammar. I credit these improvements to the three primary

Since beginning to write papers in English class, I have had countless successes and failures. While many of my English classes have taught me how to improve my writing, I have not learned very much in others. My most recent English class was last year, my sophomore year. My class was particularly undersized; therefore, it gave each student the opportunity to have additional individual attention. Throughout the class I experienced high points, weaknesses, and even difficulties that I never overcame. Overall, my writing skills improved, but only marginally.

“One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always be true to yourself and never let what somebody says distract you from your goals.” Stated once by former First Lady, Michelle Obama. The leading female exemplar emphasized how knowledge was essential for development along with advocating for higher institution erudition. Education prompted me to opportunities, exposure to modern situations, and encounters with people from various ethnic backgrounds and perspectives. Throughout my journey of education, I felt unfortunate to receive certain aspects of my education due to being teased by other children, nevertheless fortunate to acquire my current education due to the content received where I am able to contribute to my community where I confronted challenges that expanded my skill and knowledge for the future opportunities essential to assisting the community with materials obtained by TASS.

A challenge is an obstacle that one must defeat with validity that it has been overcome, while fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that something is harmful. No life-changing challenge worth conquering comes without a dash of fear. In my life, I’ve faced what I thought was a lot of challenges. From having a dad that left to be the first in my family to go to college directly after high school, I’ve confronted a lot of obstacles that have generated fear. However, nothing could prepare me to the fear that I faced at my first SEARCH retreat.

As a senior in high school, I took a medical chemistry class where I learned about the body systems, general chemistry, a foundation to organic chemistry, and an introduction to biochemistry from a medical point of view. Additionally, the second part of class consisted of going to the hospital and shadowing health care professionals from different areas of the hospital. During that time, I was able to see how pharmacists, nurses, technicians, and doctors all worked together to help their patients. It was an astonishing feeling to see parts of the heart, lung, and liver in the histology lab. I will forever remember this experience because taking this class helped me determine that my career was in the hospital.

In Elizabeth’s classroom there are various activities going on all about Egypt, there are students demonstrating how ancient kings were mummified for burial. The students are learning about Ancient Egypt, but they are doing it in an atypical way. The activities and lessons are not teacher driven, instead the students are working in collaborative groups except one student and they are working on student driven projects. Some students are learning about pyramids. The classroom brings on a new meaning to organized chaos. A teacher who really needs structure in the classroom may have a difficult time with a classroom that is organized like Elizabeth’s. There are a few areas of concern when approaching student driven activities like what is being done in Elizabeth’s classroom. One concern is how can she ensure that all her students are learning the required content. To me this can be done a couple of ways. She could use formative assessments throughout the learning process as a way to assess if the students are learning the content. These can be as simple as observations of the students collaborating together, or as concrete as a pen/paper quiz over the required content. Another way is to establish content specific rubrics that are differentiated to meet the needs of each group’s specific projects. Of course the rubrics need to be presented and reviewed with the students several times throughout the process. Prior to beginning their assignments and then revisited in weekly

Over the past few months, I have learned several different writing techniques. While all of the different types of papers were difficult to write, I believe that my writing skills have improved. In fact, I did not understand all of the assignments, but I did try to do my best on all of them. While I should have used more transitional words in between sentences and paragraphs, I feel that I learned a great deal. It is true that I have not had very much writing experience and the writing process is difficult for me. Sometimes, I do admit, it takes days to complete one assignment, but it will be worth it when I am a proficient writer.

At the beginning of this class I was nervous on how this semester will go and whether or not I will succeed to my fullest potential in English. With that in my mind I still was trying my best to work at getting better, despite how much it made me cringe at the thought of it. My perspective of writing began to change as time went on, the assignments were based on interesting topics which made it a bit bearable for me. I’ve learned that you have to make the steps to get to the perfect paper. A paper requires you to brainstorm, make an outline, and writing your rough draft to get that feedback you need before finishing up that final draft. During this class I have also learned where to put my thesis and that I don’t need to have that three point subtopics of what you should talk about. The writing length started getting longer and I was a bit skeptical on how I can get to the word count or what will I talk about within my papers, but I have