Reflective Essay: Portfolio Competency Class

Throughout this course, I was able to assess and evaluate my weaknesses and strengths in writing. This class has truly brought out my ability to write, a skill I did not believe I had. I now know what it takes to become a college-level writer. Also, at the beginning of the course I did not particularly enjoy writing. Now, however, I have a greater respect for

I learned that you are not only writing for your own benefit, your writing for your classmates, teachers and peers as well. It helps you gain common knowledge that you may not have known otherwise, as well as teaching us research skills that we will need later in life due to the rise is technology use. I have learned that research is a part of life and you will need it throughout college. Writing has helped me understand things I was unable to comprehend before, and gives me a feeling of capability. As Frederick Douglas, an African American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman, once wrote, “Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write” (McQuade and Atwan). At the beginning of the semester, I would have never guessed that I would finish this course on a positive note; however, I finished, and it was not as difficult as I thought it would

At the start of this course, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had a goal for myself to improve and learn skills that would make writing less daunting for me. I have learned so many things about my writing that I didn’t think much about before. Another goal I had was to break the cookie-cutter mold that was set upon me throughout high school. During the process of revision, I discovered many things about myself as a writer and techniques that have been effective for me in the writing process.

I learned a lot in this class during the semester. The first project was our learning narrative, it was not what I was expecting from a writing class. I expected we would be writing a many formal essays in MLA format with lots of sources and research. The first essay being a creative writing project was unexpected. At first writing a narrative from my personal experience was difficult for me. I had not written anything besides formal essays since high school. Writing something that was creative and expressive was an adjustment. After a few days of writing I began to really enjoy my learning narrative. I liked being able to express myself and my own experiences and share them with others.

During these past three weeks I have realized that college is going to be very challenging, it is not what I expected it to be like. This class has helped with my reading and writing experience and has contributed to my understanding of expectations for college and goals for my future. It has helped me with preparing and planning my work ahead of time. Dr. Sariscany has helped me with becoming a better writer and helped me prepare for college level work. She has showed me that college is not going to be easy and we should get used to it and put in all our effort and time into everything we turn in.

I feel that by taking this class it will help to not only get ready for the college that I plan to have in my future, but also my skills, no matter what, that will stay with me for the rest of my life. The effects will be not only short-term as I go through the rest of high school and eventually college, but will also follow me out for the rest of my life. Everyday we are using writing in one way or another, and the differences between good and bad writing skills are huge! This class is to prepare us for the writing portions of college and that is exactly what I am planning to take advantage of it for.

My expectations of my talents as a writer have increased tremendously after taking this class. When I read through my paper, or someone else's paper, it's not just words on a screen for me anymore. I can actually find grammatical errors, sentence fragments, and comma errors. This is a skill that I never possessed before taking this class. Even with how much I have grown as a writer from the beginning of the year, there is still room for improvement. On all my papers I had at least five small grammatical errors that would cost me

When I first decided to take the class I didn't expect much from it, except for writing tons of essays each week. My expectations were not high because I knew it was another core class I had to get through. However, my expectations were completely overturned after taking this class for a semester. Instead of writing essays each week we had free writing, a walking journal, interesting articles to read, and most importantly lots of interaction with our peers. This class was nothing what I expected and I was really surprised how it turned out to be one of my favorite classes I have taken so far. I have learned so much about improving my writing and grammar, authors, techniques in writing, and even how to cope with stress and organize my thoughts back in order. I learned all about polemic and dialectic writing as

Wow, where do I begin? When I first came into this class I assumed it was just another boring writing class that I just needed to walk away with an A in. Boy did I walk away with more. The main things I came away with were that writing is a way to express myself when I don’t have the voice to say it. Sometimes it's much easier to write my ideas on paper and later find the proper word choice to bring it all together. I became my biggest critic, whether it was about using the correct word choice or correcting my paper and realizing that my sentences weren’t flowing smoothly. Those are pretty big components to writing. So yes, I’d say this class changed my outlook on writing.

Most importantly, I learned to courageously enter the academic conversation in an appropriate way. I gathered enough information from my research to form an opinion, or a central idea, on my writing. One of the most important things I learned from the class was that everything that can be written is persuasive. I also learned how to state my own beliefs, agree, disagree, and plant a naysayer in my text. Now, I have a fundamental idea of how to enter the academic conversation in relation to

Even though I believe this class is helpful, I believe this class might be harder for me than expected. I do not do very well when it comes to writing and reading comprehension, but I hope that through this class I will be able to excel and do much better than before. I believe that through proper time management, I will be able to do well and meet each deadline on time.

It showed me that no matter how many times I or someone else proofreads a document, some mistake will always exist or some way to make the document of writing better. This class and another one I took this semester showed me that one should provide counter arguments in my writing as well as provide explanations for and against them. With that in mind, it shows the reader that you considered all options when writing and thought through other people’s opinions. I will try to write more concisely in the future, as many people solely care about reading as few words as possible, yet still understanding the point you try to convey. I will try to participate in more peer editing opportunities in the future because it can only help to get someone else’s opinion on your paper and many people will notice things you would not. Overall, I can without a doubt say that this writing project benefited my

During this semester, I have learned a great deal about my own writing, and writing in general. One of the main takeaways from this course for me was how to break down the intricate process of writing papers. In addition, I developed viable skills regarding going into more in-depth detail during each step of the writing process. I enjoyed having the freedom to write about a topic that I was able to choose. This allowed me to research and write about something that actually interested me immensely. Having to work with one topic for the entire semester taught me how to find reliable resources and how to pick out the essential research from each article.

Lastly, I am quite excited to see what I am going to learn from this course. I have always loved to write, but not in essay form. I adore writing poetry and stories, but when it comes to essays and papers I usually tap out. Now though, I can finally sit back and enjoy learning the material, and watch as I slowly become a much better writer then I was before. That is something that I cannot wait

When I first started the class I was struggling a lot. Since English is my second language, I had many stressful moments that made me think about dropping my classes. But when I thought about my future, I just kept studying even harder, waiting for my performance to improve. As a result, I felt like every time I wrote an essay, it got easier, which tells me that I’m on the right path. In addition, this class has helped me improve my grammar, taught me an important life lesson about sticking on my goal and helped me to enhance my computer skills