Reflective Essay About My Freshman Composition

The first few years of college student’s lives are not necessarily the most enjoyable time, having to take the basic core classes. Unless someone is planning on getting their degree in something that involves the basic core classes like; Math, Psychology, any Humanities, or English. English has not been my strong suit and I know that I still have work that needs to be done to make me a better writer, but I believe that I was able to meet and achieve the goals and requirements of this Composition two class.

This class has been a big eye opener for me and I will be taking a lot of this information with me as I continue to complete other courses. What I have learned the most would be dealing with time-management and how to improve my essays by improving my writing skills. It is important to me to continue to improve on my writing as will help me become a better writer in the future.

Completing freshman composition is one of the greatest accomplishments I have achieved throughout my high school career. I have experienced an immense amount of improvement on my writing as well as a huge deal of stress throughout the semester. In the past, writing was never one of my strong suits; however, I have learned quite a bit, for example, how to use semicolons, write with metacognition, and how to correctly do a works cited. During my time in this class, I have: reflected, set goals, learned the writing process, tracked my progress, and learned a huge deal about myself, life and college.

Going back to reading the first thought piece I wrote during this course made me realize how much I have improved as a writer. I now understand the nature of writing, and my own experiences with writing. Writing the Rhetorical Analysis helped me in improving my writing based on my previous writing experiences. I now also know what questions to ask when entering a new rhetorical situation, in order to deal with the situation in the right way. The List of 10 made this easier for me, the first thing I do now before entering a new rhetorical situation is ask myself the ten questions I wrote for The List of 10. This course also made me more of a reflective writer. I am now a more self-aware, thoughtful, and mindful

I hope to learn a lot during this course, but I mainly want to enhance my writing abilities. The ability to have a professional tone and style in all of my technical and academic writing is important. I want to be able to be correct and concise, without lacking any essential information. Furthermore, knowing when to apply different styles of writing to different audiences is important. Lastly, learning all of the grammar that I tend to forgot about such as, semicolons and colons, and when to use them. Overall, I’m excited to take this class and I’m ready to put in my full effort to receive the grade I want to

This course was comprised of many learning activities; each was designed to help me achieve the course learning outcomes. I have taken two college English classes in the past; however, it has been several years since my last college class. I have some experience in writing and this class definitely helped me get back into writing. I often have trouble brainstorming and capturing the subject I need to write about. This class definitely helped me overcome the challenges I faced in writing and being able to effectively express my ideas in a clear and concise manner. Not to mention, it definitely helped build my writing foundation through a step by step approach to each assignment. Therefore, this class bolstered my writing and communication skills.

As the Fall 2017 term comes to end, I look back on what I have accomplished in this class. English 102 – Composition II was one of the most challenging and toughest class I have taken at UW-Stout, but feel as though it has helped me to improve my writing skills. Even before the semester started the feeling of anxiety had taken over, as writing has never been my strongest skill, but stayed positive and confident I would be successful. Much to my surprise, my instructor, Michael Critchfield quickly addressed that this class would not be easy and amazingly changed my views of writing throughout the entire semester.

I began this course with goals to significantly improve my writing. I knew there were challenges for me to overcome, because I have not written much at all since high school, which has been more than twenty four years ago. Nonetheless, I was up for the challenge and each week I made sure to do exactly as instructed in the weekly syllabus, reading each every assignment very carefully. At first I felt overwhelmed, but as I completed the homework and discussion post assignments for the weeks prior to the major papers, the overwhelming feelings subsided and I concentrated on each task at hand.

The course definitely changed the way I approached writing a paper. One day in lecture you quoted Ernest Hemmingway saying, “The first draft of anything is shit.” This changed the way I approached and wrote papers. I used to start papers the night before, barely look over them and making few changes. This course encouraged me to outline, write a rough draft and constantly review then finalization the paper. Peer review before this class I though was pointless because most student hardly pay attention to the paper and usually wrote “good job.” The students in the class actually read my paper and gave honest feedback and ways to improve it. Also to have a teacher read your draft and give feedback with what is wrong and ways to help the quality of the paper helped greatly. This English class was definitely different than high school English.

I always struggle with making my paragraphs flow; I jump from idea to idea without transition. However this course was more than just writing, it was discussions, opinions, and relating to world connections. It helped me with my thinking, improving my skills and taking different approaches to making connections. As a reader, I always read text as if they were just words. The book club that we did in class made me realize that they were much more than that.

As I started doing this course , I began to enjoy little bit. I am a very practical, who likes to see things and learn by doing. By writing different topics it helped me to develop my creative abilities. In a way, the course has made me a deeper thinker than I used to be. I also look into grammar when I read.

In this course, I enhanced my reading and writing skills. Reading and analyzing stories allowed me to become a better critical thinker. Beside, Learning to review and identify errors with the help of my peers and my instructor improved the quality of my writing. Also, I gained valuable practice in evaluating the credibility of sources that I would include in my writing.Finally, I also want to thank this class since I become more confident in my writing and my reading abilities

I learned so much in this course from literary element to my personal being. In this class, it's not a boring class with long lectures and the professor gives bombards the students with homework. It's about growing and developing your writing, using skills and element to prepare for the college and real life ahead,

I simply wrote one draft without using any feedback from adults or peers. If I decided to use feedback on my piece, I know it would have been more beneficial to my development as a writer. On this piece I earned an 85%, in which I wasn’t satisfied with. From this, I was allowed to revise my piece, allowing me to go in depth into my writing to earn a better grade. Also, before submitting my revised essay, I asked my mom to read over my work to see if it would raise my grade. She gave me a few valuable pieces of advice that helped raise the grade on my essay to a 90%. From the Thematic Unit, I learned to improve my writing process to prepare myself for the future. At the end of the year, I was told to write my own essay about William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night novel, using my own writing process to be successful. My effective writing process included writing a first draft and completing self-assessment afterwards. The first step of my process helped me understand how my writing could develop into a stronger piece. After self-assessment, I wrote a second draft and had a peer review my work. Finally, I made a third and final draft in order to present the best version of my writing. As shown from the Soliloquy Essay, my writing process is

From taking this course I have been able to improve many of my weaknesses, but there are still some that I need to work on. Overall I am becoming better at not procrastinating as much as I used to. This class has helped me to learn to take the little steps along the way because then there will not be as much work to do towards the end. This has also made me realize that the final product of my writing will turn out better because it will have had more time to develop, which means that there would have been more opportunities to proofread. I think by learning many styles of writing, such as paraphrasing, summarizing, analyzing, and researching; it has enabled me to be able to write more broadly. By knowing how to correctly use all of these kinds of writing styles, it will help me in the future for other classes because I will have the knowledge that I need to write these types of papers. I still procrastinate sometimes, but not as much as I used to. I will be able to improve on this as time goes along because I will become more motivated by seeing the end result, which usually would be better grades.