Reflective Essay: My Views Of My Writing

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

This semester has impacted me and my writing abilities greatly. I feel I have improved in all aspects of writing. Throughout High school writing was never my preferred subject, but after taking this class I have developed an interest in writing and no longer look at it as a chore, but more as a method to express myself.

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.

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.

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.

Gaining the proper flow of words is what I have progressively worked on and improved throughout Comp One. I had to quickly adapt to the college writing process which at first seemed to be a challenging predicament. Soon, I realized how choppy and unproportional my writing was and have molded my skills to a more tolerable standpoint. I have chosen Three previously written papers with which I will reflect my ability to transition from sentence to sentence. The ability to write a completely smooth paper has unfortunately not been one of my various talents. Hopefully, after a whole semester of college english, I have improved.

Assessing my work is rather easy for me. I am extremely self-critical, to the point, it difficult to be positive. I always hoped and had been told I write well, especially on the job. In this short amount of time during class, I have learned how “low-level” my writing truly is. I write on more of an eighth-grade level instead of at the high school or college level I want to. I have probably forgotten more grammar/punctuation than most people I deal with even know. My grammar/punctuation is laughable; I only remember the easy stuff. Even though I use the thesaurus regularly to improve my vocabulary, my memory seems not to retain it.

Looking back on the feedback for my first essay, you made me realize that I had a pretty substantial problem: my argument was not really arguable, as it was already proved by the text. After reading this, reading other examples of papers you handed out in class, and participating in this class, I was able to learn a new way of writing. Never before in my essays had I ever really made an argument that was not already apparent in the minds of the readers. This class taught me how to look deeper into a text and to use the skill of close reading to discover nuances in the text that could lead to an entirely new argument. The literary topoi especially helped in this matter, as I was able to use these as tools to discover new ways with which to analyze texts. Although this is exceedingly more difficult and I have still not completely gotten the hang of it, it has definitely expanded my boundaries as a writer. Additionally, this final paper has introduced me to the world of literary criticism, something I had never delved into before. I even was able to give my best crack at it despite being way out of my league in

Writing has been one of my favorite hobbies since I was in high school, so I used to spend many hours to writing in my daily journals in Vietnamese. However, when I came to America, I felt more difficult to write and express my thoughts in English because I did not know much vocabularies and lacking grammatical knowledge. Then, I decided to go back to school to improve my writing skills because I recognize the significance of writing in my everyday lives. As a college student, most of the writing assignments are reflections, journals, essays, and research papers. Working as a teacher aide in the preschool classroom, most of my writings are reports, observation, notes, and curriculum planning. At the beginning of the Academic Writing Seminar (AWS 100) when I wrote my first essay assignment, and I found out that writing essays in English were not easy. At the end of the semester, I realize I have learned valuable lessons while working seriously to write assignments for the AWS 100, so this class will be a step with deep preparation to help me successful in writing research papers at Pacific Oaks College. In this essay, I will also introduce the “best” of my writing, and share my experiences in the process of creating this portfolio.

I tend to devote the most time to this step. Especially for grad program with extensive research, lots of research. Searching for resources and reading the references. Then, putting thoughts together and organizing them in the outline. Making introduction, stating the thesis, supporting text body and concluding the paper. Paying attention to detail and patience in this step does make it easier for me further in the process.

"Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a

Writing is something magical and a good way of expressing myself. To be honest, I never thought that writing, and English as a subject would be this enjoyable. At the beginning of the semester, I was scared and nervous because of my grammar. I actually thought that I would be one of the worst students when I was placed in the class because I had very low confidence. This was mainly because of the fact that English is my second language. To my surprise, the grade “B” that I scored on my first essay made me proud of myself, and it helped rise my confidence. The fear and worry I had at the beginning is now washed away because currently, writing has become my favorite form of art. My confidence has risen, and I owe it to my English 101 class. That aside, I am going to recognize the improvements I have made in my writing, and how far I have come as a writer during this semester.

As I continue through my development as a writer, I acquire more and more skills that can make my composition interesting, easy to follow, and strong in its presentation of an argument. In English 102 this semester, I was able to grow my skills, especially in terms of conducting and reporting research, citing that research, and having an organization that makes my writing easy to follow and presents my argument clearly and succinctly.

The progress of my writing has consisted of overcoming struggles as well as enhancing my strengths. Some in which will include style, organization, evidence, focused topic, etc. Undoubtedly, there are numerous elements of writing to establish a clear statement regarding the topic discussed. Elements that I have been focused on and implemented are the introductions that describe an overview of the topic along.

I signed up for English 111 hesitantly because English has always been, since grade school, a weakness of mine. Over the years I have become increasingly better when it comes to my writing, however, thanks to my teachers working with me in high school. I was able to go from standard classes to honors although I was still unable to feel completely comfortable writing essays. Writing always felt like a chore rather than an activity for me. Coming to college and having to take English again was something I feared and something I wanted to get over with as soon as possible. However, I now find myself enjoying writing much more than I did before. I enjoy working through the process coming up with my own ideas and attempting to convince my audience to take my side of an argument. This class has put me in a position to build up my confidence in my writing style while also focusing on my weaknesses and making me a better writer in the process.