Reflective Essay: Developing Me As My Writer

Writing 101 has been a tremendous learning experience for me. It is not my strongest area, so it is my primary reason for taking the class. I took this Writing 101 class to improve my writing skills. In college courses, I have to do a tremendous amount of writing. Writing is also not my favorite thing to do, because it takes time, thought and research. The first week of class, we had to write the first assignment draft. I thought this class will be hard for me and difficult to keep up with the assignments. I disagree with my initial thought. The class definitely challenged me, but I learned so much. My expectation was to improve my writing skills. I would say I met that expectation. However, I feel that I need to continue to learn and perfect my writing to become even more proficient. I learned how to develop strong thesis statements, to conduct online library searches. I started WRTG 101 with a basic knowledge of the writing skills; now I know how to accurately use punctuations, I know how to develop unified, consistent and well-supported paragraphs, and I know my weaknesses in my writing.

Attached is my final project, a cumulative portfolio documenting my growth as a student and as a writer through out English 102. My English portfolio includes revised versions of my research paper, “Global Warming: Hot Topic” and essay “Blueprint Solution for the Poor,” along with the original drafts complete with red ink corrections. In addition, I am also providing this reflection essay demonstrating what I have learned this semester and how I have enhanced my original drafts. English 102 has taught me a number of things and has improved my writing skills. There are many things I have struggled with throughout the semester, but regardless, I have overcome most of my obstacles. Most of all, I have learned how to distinguish good sources from bad sources, how to better use citations, and how to properly develop a thesis.

Most of us were in a situation when we had to say: “I am not too good at it.”, or “I can try, but it is not my field”. For example, somebody will ask me to draw a picture of a cat. I will try. I have seen cats before, know how to operate a pencil, have a flat piece of paper. I am even passing by art gallery on the regular basis, on my way to work. But I still cannot be sure you will not mistake my picture of a cat for a picture of a tractor or an intergalactic battlefield scene. That is how I feel about assignment to write about my writing process. So far, mine I can divide in three steps.

This year has been a blast! There were so many things that just cried out me, and the projects were so much fun! I know I have grown as a writer by starting to have less and less edits on my paper. Making my blog helped me grow as a writer because it made me want to work harder. I wanted to work harder because I knew people would see my work. Sacred writing time has helped me grow as a writer because the time was helpful in the sense that I got some of my best ideas in just 5 minutes. Mrs. Lockwood has been a huge influence on my writing ability. Her instruction helped me grow by fixing my errors. I made many grammatical and punctual errors, that is, before I started no red ink. No red ink helped me to eliminate those errors. I usually don't

When I communicate, I will focus on what my audience needs or wants to learn, not on what I feel like telling them. Strive to see things from their perspective. Writing is a complex mixture of skills which works best for me by breaking down the process. The writing process involves a series of steps to follow such as pre-writing, drafting, editing, and publishing. I found that by focusing on the process of writing, I learn to write successfully. Developing the act of writing down into distinct steps allows me to maintain perspective on my writing, to understand that the feedback is about a specific aspect of my writing, and to discover that I can master and yes, even enjoy writing! Plagiarism content symbolizes that you have not worked carefully

Ways that I grew as a writer is knowing information about the topic on that I am covering. Studying the information and taking key notes helped me to understand how to go along with it when writing. Formatting an outline helped me formulate the structure of my whole writing. I learned grammar practices and a paper should be formatted by going over certain mistakes I made from the past. Getting feedback from the instructor helped me see certain mistakes that I didn't see at first or didn't even know existed. Learning from past examples helped me become a better writer. Lots of practice also helped in me into become a better writer. I wasn't used to writing a lot on topics that was required to turn in; such as having homework that required a

Most of our writing process are the same since most of us are brought up with common teachings of how to write. I don’t quite consider myself using a normal process. As I switch up how I do things to keep from a sort of, monotony, of writing the same exact way over and over. Generally speaking I start off with the main topic of the essay, the intro and closing, complete rough draft, talking it over aloud throughout, then lastly revisions before turning it in.

I relate to this quote by Brandon A. Trean because to me photography and writing are sort of similar. There can be a 100,000 meanings and things going on in a photo as there can be on a page. Writing and pictures capture moments and feelings that can make the person reading or looking feel as if they were at that place and feeling those emotions, that's why I enjoy writing.

All the outcomes are clear and I like how we are expected to reach them. I am a little bit scared with the grammar part and the specific skills that I should develop for this course. My writing skills are not the best’s, since English is not my first language. I love to read, and since I moved to US I started doing it in English. This is helping me to have a better understanding of the language, but I haven’t be paying attention to the writing. I hope to develop the good skills writing that are expected from me.

She argues in how to write clearly and she said that there is no person who writes me and most evident from the first draft sometimes must first draft of the script and the second and third draft of a draft of the order to be clear

In the past, I have always thought of style as an acquired skill. The author of this article immediately shoots this belief down by saying that style is not something you have or don't have. Rather style a way of expressing your attitude and feelings about a topic. The author then breaks down the eight guidelines of writing in "plain style". Some of these guidelines will be useful for constructing my final draft this week. For example, stating the action in the verb is something I need to review. In many of my sentences, I overuse helping verbs and keep the action verb too far from the subject. I will analyze if any of my sentences sound redundant or if they are too lengthy also. I will be keeping this chapter near me as I proceed to finish

America is a place full of immigrants with no single ethnicity or race. America can also be referred to as the ?Melting Pot? because it consists ingredients of multicultural backgrounds. There are cultures such as French American, Asian American, Italian American and African American. I am Mexican American. My culture has helped me to become the writer I am today. My bicultural background and constant moving back and forth from Mexico to America has both influenced and weakened my writing. Although I was born in America, my Mexican culture has always been a part of my life. I have spent the majority of my life in Mexico, and Spanish is my first

Now I understand that the content and the reason I am writing have a great impact on what I write. There were times where I would write for a grade and then there were the times I was writing because I was interested and engaged. This became very evident when I was taking English 908 last semester and Read 054. I did not enjoy English because a majority of the assignments felt like busywork. On the other hand I put a greater effort in Read 054 because the main assignment of the class was to evaluate a research article in an interest of yours: I skill that I find valuable. Now after all of that is when I decide that I am going to make myself enjoy writing to become a better and more efficient writer.

I hate writing mainly, because I am a horrible writer. I don’t find writing as a stress relief, because I can’t relax doing something I don’t like. I don’t like writing about personal stuff either. I like keep all my business in my head. Writing just makes me more stress, because I start thinking how I should be a better writer.

Before this semester, my essay writing would have been considered rather poor. This was because I did not understand the various components of a properly written and accompany them to effectively communicate my ideas. I lacked the most in keeping the audience involved hence, catching and maintaining their attention, to my writing from the introduction to the conclusion. To me, writing was more complicated than a speech since a speech involved direct audience who the speaker can gauge their feelings. I took writing as a difficult task since it involved indirect audience and ensuring that I meet the demands of such indirect audience, brought more confusion. Though the case, this past semester’s class has really improved my skills in writing. I have learned to to make an effective written piece. Through the various learning experiences such as individual readings, professional feedback and many others, I have been able to interact with diverse knowledge sources which have made me much better by removing the confusion and negative picture I had with regard to writing.