Reflective Essay: Improving My Writing Process

My writing experience about the career paper was more informative than I was expecting. By reading the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), I quickly realized that there was so much information about a career in medicine, I was not aware of especially with regards to employment and predicted employment rates. However, the most difficult part of the writing process was trying to incorporate personal information into the narrative while using statistics and descriptions from OOH to come up with a coherent essay. For example, with a plethora of personal information and details about factors that has motivated me to pursue a career in medicine, it was difficult to summarize and incorporate information from OOH into my

The writing process has always been a challenge for me. Especially if it has a due date. In the past, I have always procrastinated the process and that never ended well. I knew something had to be done and I needed to come up with ways to make writing a little easier. So, I sat down and I started to look at writing in smaller steps. I started to plan how I was going to finish a paper without getting so anxious and overwhelmed. This process has helped me a lot along the way and I am going to share my process with you.

A writing experience that was significant to me was when I was taking AP Language my junior year. We just had finished watching “To Kill A Mockingbird” and our teacher instructed us to write an essay. The topic was the importance of fatherhood and we had to use examples from the movie and real life to support our claim of how fathers are essential to a child's life. The writing experience changed me because I never had a father in my life.

I immensely struggled when writing. Taking my scrambled thoughts and uncoordinated analysis and converting it into clean and understandable words on a page was arduous. I could not express my thoughts in proper academic format. I understood the importance of writing to every subject. It was essential that I learn to condense my ideas and feeling into coherent written word. After much debate, I decided that the best way to improve my writing skills was to take an advanced English course.

Upon entering English 111, I knew I would be writing papers. However, I did not anticipate how much room I had for improvement. Throughout this term I have been enlightened with so much knowledge that I may have forgotten or have been exposed to for the first time. Certainly, my experience with essay writing has been solidified due to newfound knowledge of proper work citing, MLA standards and the steps of planning an essay. Perhaps, my time away from a learning environment slowed me down a bit, other times I feel as though I have an advantage due to life experience. An online environment has certainly been challenging but throughout the course I have provided solid work and consistent grades commendable of an A grading.

I’ve always felt that my writing could use improvement in several areas including grammar, punctuation, style, and tone. My writing included emails, memorandums, and police reports, which went against proper use of grammar. Often times the words were abbreviated and no punctuation were included when the reports were transcribed. I recently started writing college level papers again, as I have not taken any college courses since 1998. I have occasional trouble with proper usage of punctuation, and placement of commas. I think I’ve seen tremendous improvement for my first paper that I wrote this February; however I do occasionally struggle in this area. Occasionally my style of writing seems to be biased, and at times I force my point during my arguments. Lastly, the tone of my writing can often be misinterpreted as controversial, and argumentative. Most of the information about my

Essay have never been my strong suite. This semester however, my writing ability has improved. My progress is evident when I look over my assignment five essay and see the mistakes highlighted. These mistakes are what I now look for while editing my work. I am still improving with every piece of writing I create, but I revise differently by looking specifically for my weaknesses. I have been successful in my attempts because I do not make the same mistakes as I used to. I now use more resources than I previously did to embellish my writing process. The combination of these changes has greatly improved my final pieces of writing.

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

If you are not in a hurry and want to analysis your writing in detail, then you must check out Slick Write. Slick Write not only points out your errors but also gives you an analysis of your writing which lists phrases, filler words, uncommon words, adverbs, passive words, prepositions and lots more. Once in a while, I keep track how I am improving my writing with Slick Write. It’s a good way to know progress in the quality of your

Diving into this essay, I was nervous because I have not written anything in about a year! I was concerned about how I would construct my essay because I never wrote a memoir before and I was not sure what to write about. Based on the reading from chapter five of Writing Today, I constructed my memoir around an implied thesis. I think that I am still able to write decently well and that people who read my writing can still understand it. I am grateful that my writing skills have not reverted back to an elementary school level. I think it was a bit risky for me to write about a person and a series of moments in my life to describe how my writing came to be, instead of just how one person influenced me or about just one event. I am also a bit

Looking back at this year I know that developing my writing was something that was there but needed some improvement. When there were no teachers around to go over my writing I found websites that would correct my grammar and used that to my advantage. This would either make or break my writing because it could make it shorter or longer. My writing when there is a rubric to follow is great because I know what to follow but with reflections like these, it’s hard to develop good

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.

Over the course of my studies at university, I have grown and learned more about academic writing and numerous writing styles. I believe there is so much room for me to master my writing skills to succeed and complete my degree and improve my academic writing and personal skills through more practice. However, I have become concerned with my first attempt submitting my piece of paper through the online test in the Writers’ Diet diagnostic tool and was labelled ‘flabby’ in my writing. Analysing my errors and referring to the textbook ’Communication Toolkit’ by Grellier and Goerke (2014), also submitting my piece of writing to Grammarly and paper rater I was able to measure my weakness in the area of sentence structure, punctuation and grammar.

Before I start to write a research paper, I do research and collect all available information about that subject. I take notes, bring all available data together, and analyze them. Whenever I feel ready, I start writing. I can describe my framework better, and organize writing easily with this strategy. So, I feel more comfortable when I write.

     One of the techniques I am going to use through out college is talking to