Reflection Paper On My Writing

I have improved very much in my writing process over this semester. I have grown as a writer in each writing process step such as prewriting, drafting, revising and editing, and overall. Outlining, writing a good thesis, getting peer reviewed, and giving myself plenty of time to finish a paper are new strengths that I have learned over the semester. I will reflect on all the topics in the writing process and my growth in argumentation essays. In fact, my previous attitude and feelings about writing was that I disliked it, and I knew that it was a weakness of mine. Now, I feel that I can write a strong argumentation essay. I have the sense that I have progressed a considerable amount from my first essay to my last.

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

Over the past semester my writing has improved in three specific areas: extending the length of my writing so that it is more than just 300 words per piece of writing. Clarifying and giving my writing more detail so that it is easier to understand and follow. And finally by improving my spelling and punctuation throughout my piece instead of just spell checking the first few paragraphs.

After reading over my summer assignment essay and analyzing the comments and feedback of my writing I feel that I have a lot of work to do to improve my writing as a whole. I feel I had the ideas down on what I wanted to say on my summer essay. It was just difficult expressing them in a way that was compelling enough to the reader. The topics for the essay were not challenging to me because I felt that I wrote a lot about the one I chose on alienation. Throughout my reflection I will discussed the weaknesses and strengths in my writing as well as talk about ways I feel I could improve my writing.

This class has helped me to improve my writing in many ways. Though I do not manage my time as well as I would like to at the moment, I have evolved this aspect of my writing vastly. At the beginning of the semester, it took anywhere between two and four hours to complete an essay, and I would wait until the very last minute to even begin writing. I have learned how to properly manage my time in order to write my essays in a shorter amount of time. I have also increased my ability to find and present sources in an academic essay. Though I still need to polish my ability to present information without bias, I am able to find relevant information in order to further prove my point in an essay. Overall, this class has taught me many valuable things

Throughout my academic career, I haven’t given writing much of a chance. Instead, I gravitated towards math and science subjects. I believed that writing wasn’t one of my strengths, which caused me to not enjoy past composition courses. This opinion changed during my writing process for “Strategic Devices,” my rhetorical analysis of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail. As I analyzed the skillfully crafted letter, I was reminded of how powerful writing can be, and, when used for good, words can transform the situation that they are spoken into. In English 121, I have learned many new aspects of writing, grown as a writer, and developed a fresh perspective towards composition. Through this progress, I hope to become a positive impact in my sphere of influence.

After the gathering of data for this paper, I initiated with my writing work for this paper. First of all, I prepared the rough draft and outline with the plan to cover every area in the paper. I get this draft and plan approved by my teacher and gained further recommendations from him. I dedicated a specific time for researching, writing, editing, and proofreading of every area before submitting to my teacher to check and highlight any error or need for improvement. This enabled me to gain more guidelines from my teacher regarding my paper to complete it with efficiency and on time. These guidelines further polished my researching, writing, editing, and proofreading skills. Furthermore, the guidelines I gained from my teacher during the completion

I think I’ve done more writing this year than I have in the last 4-5 years combined, perhaps even since high school. I don’t remember any significant writing projects I did K-12 except for a term paper on postpartum depression and some occasional poetry. At this point in my life when I really do need the writing skills, I regret not taking papers seriously or appreciating the art of good written communication. Writing objective papers has not been a problem since the layout is simply good logic and researching reliable information. There isn’t pressure to keep your audience’s attention by painting a mental image to get the reader immersed. Even with this journal entry, I’m not anxious about capturing the reader as these are simply my thoughts as they come to me while I type.

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.

Over this semester I feel that I’ve not only developed into a better writer but also have grasped a better understanding of the writing process, which is arguably most important; having a solid foundation for my writing technique is the key to writing well. Throughout middle school and high school, I have always been told to use the "five paragraph format" when writing essays, but now that I’m in college, I understand that I have been limiting my creativity and not expressing my opinions and ideas to their fullest extent. To be a good writer I must put time and effort into my topic and fully understand the main idea to write a satisfactory essay. So far, I feel as if I’m doing alright. `When I first begin the writing process I always start by typing out the full story. Personally, I can’t sit down and plan what I’m going to write about; formal drafting makes me feel as if I have writers' block. Over the years I have taken bits and pieces of advice about my writing and incorporated those snippets of guidance and suggestions into what my writing style is today. I don’t think I’m bad writer but I could work on developing more of my essays into “A cakes.”

Many students of all ages have issues with writing, the only way to get good at writing is to have experiance. I never paid much attention to my writing skills in high school, I just did not care about writing. This year as a freshman in college I have been struggling with writing this semester in GSW 1100. Even though I have not been doing well, I understand that writing in college is extremely important to learn and develop. This is important because most courses in college have writing in them. As the semester has progressed, I have slowly started to understand where I am with writing and where I need to improve. Revising my essays is a great way to learn from my mistakes. Although my writing is not great yet I am slowly getting there with this class. I believe I have improved my writing a great deal in several areas over the course of this semester and I feel that my portfolio shows this. I have learned to develop my thesis and make it clear, to recognise sentence boundaries errors, and to see and fix the many grammar errors in my writing.

As I have not paid attention to media lately, I am going to focus on my writing process.

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.

Over the course of this class I have changed as a writer. My writing has improved, yet their are some similarities between the writing. The writer I was before and after this class is different and the changes should be announced. Now when I write I know how to use transition, not just any basic transition but actually be able to flow from one point to another with quality grammar. A second thing I do as a writer now is knowing how to use MLA 8 formating. The first essay I turned in was extremely wrong on formatting and makes me cringe just looking at it. My citations were all APA formatting and in the header of the essay I put my name, date, teacher, and class. This is completely wrong and am surprised I even got a grade as high as I did. Another thing from looking at my first essay is that I could not write with the proper form. My whole last paragraph of my exemplification essay was useless because it did not have an examples. The writer I am now is more politically correct and can write when in a mode without going out of it.

I think one of the aspects in my writing that is effective is being able to interpret the meaning of something and elaborate on it through my writing. When writing the paper on a book in the Nutrition Field, I was able to take the information provided and analyze it. I was able to take the preface of what the author wrote and explain his reasoning for it through context clues and other research. For the authors dedication in my book it was only two words “To Betty”, although no one knows who Betty is I was able to determine that Betty had to be his significant other or partner after reading the acknowledgements which help me realize it was wife. I like writing about things that there is a lot more detail hidden because there is just so much to write about.