Reflective Essay: Improving My Writing Style

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 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.

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.

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

In addition to changing the steps I take in conducting literature reviews, I have sought out resources which will assist in enhancing my writing style and language. This situation has made me take a closer look at my writing, as I am always looking for ways to become a more polished writer. As researchers we tend to speak a certain language in our writing and use similar phrases or styles. It is useful at times to have these “go to” phrases but can also leave room for inadvertent mistakes to go unnoticed. As I continue to further develop my writing style, increasing my ability to express a single perspective in multiple ways will be imperative. Tools such as the free tutorials offered by APA on style, which breaks down how to write using APA style. Although some of the resources I have come across are targeting those who may not have experience with this style of writing, I have found it useful as a refresher and/or basic reference. Going back to the basics will allow for me to ensure that I am building my writing style on a strong foundation.

Reflective Essay As I began this semester, I was sure that I would absolutely despise English 112 since English has never been my strongest subject. Aside from those feelings, I still needed this class as a prerequisite for my nursing major. To my surprise, I found that this class actually became easier as it progressed. The more I had to write, the easier it became and each paper became less stressful.

The work samples display the gradual change to my writing style. In the beginning of my first year, I was not as confident in my ability to write. To this day, I may struggle with my spelling or grammar, but I have come a long ways from that first essay. From my English classes I have learn how to express my ideas through my writing. I also learned to importance of literature and have grown to appreciate reading book outside of those assigned in class. I valuable lesson I learned in my English class was how to properly write a letter and resume, and I believe that that are valuable lessons to have in the future as I become a professional.

To explain my type of writing it is defiantly free writing style, like myself spontaneous. As I start off writing and get my groove going words just creatively flow. I may have to start over a few times, or rework the beginning but then it becomes more of a natural flow. I prefer to write about things I have experienced, fun things I enjoy, and do so with a comic approach. I do not like to take life too serious and am a spontaneous, adventurous, and fun-loving person. I have a huge personality that usually does come out in my writing, as most of you that have been on this journey from day one with me know.

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

My experience throughout this class as a writer has been remotely good. I have learned many new ways about how to write an essay because one of my strengths is having a strong memory of the topic and another strength I have in writing is that I am much more experienced on how to describe a subject in great detail and because of this I know what I am capable of doing. I unfortunately still have some weaknesses in writing such as, procrastinating on starting the actual working process and because of this I start to panic on not getting done in time. Over all my writing skills throughout the class has not been what I expected but I did learn more about how to properly write an essay, which will help me out more later on in my future classes.

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.

Starting a piece of writing has always been tough for me. There are times when I have spent an hour trying to figure out how I should start my writing. Now that's partly because of procrastination but main due to the fact that the intro to any piece is writing, in my opinion, is the most important aspect of any form of writing.

When it comes to organization, I had some ability making sure that my writing flowed and seemed coherent, but I had trouble making sure that the organization was the best it could be and allowed readers to fully understand what I was writing about. Coming in to the class, I knew how to piece an essay together so that the writing seems like it makes sense and the reader can follow it without getting lost throughout.