Reflective Essay: Why I Am An Intermediate Writer

Writing is one of the most important skills that I have learned throughout my years in school. I have learned that no matter how much I love or hate it, writing is a necessity; I might as well try to be good at it. Writing has been in my life for many years. There are many types of writing, educational writing and personal writing are two that I will mention in this essay. I have learned how to allow writing to help me in my daily life. When I began writing I hated it, however, I have learned the many uses of it, and it has become a huge part of 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.

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

Throughout the seven weeks that I have taken this writing composition course, I have developed skills to help me improve my own writing. Using the writing process is one of the main focuses in the course. The writing process helps writers develop and revise their essay as they work their way up to creating the final draft that can be presented. Although there are many areas in my own writing where I can get better, I have found that my writing has improved in many ways while practicing using the writing process.

My writing essays represent a timeline of improvement , from my first essay to my last essay I’ve noticed my growth as a writer. It was not until later on the semester that I realized that I lacked substantial academic vocabulary and had ongoing run on sentences, grammatical errors. My word choice was really repetitive with the constant use certain words. I have progressed where I have expanded my ability to use clear description and make my technical information clear. For example when writing essay 2 and 3 having to insert figures helped me portray my argument much more clearly. When addressing the figures in my writing they had become much more clear. Considering our class revolved around technological developments of the future it was very

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.

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.

After looking back at all the writing I have accomplished in this class and experiences I have faced in other English classes, I realized how they have affected me as a writer and where I stand as one as of now. The writer I am today has been greatly benefited with years of learning English in school and other literacy sponsors. Throughout the years, I have learned a number of ways to write and I have been positively impacted by these methods. I now know the type of writer that I am and how I write best and in under which conditions. Now, I have my own writing process that most likely differs from my peers.

Throughout my entire middle school writing career, my writing techniques and skills have improved tremendously. Way back at the beginning of the sixth grade, I thought writing a simple three-paragraph research essay was a lot. However, as my writing career continued, now at the end of the eighth grade, I can easily write a three page essay, and even more. My strengths as a writer include using a variety of transition words, being able to form simple and complex sentences, and finding strong pieces of evidence.

When looking back over the previous microthemes and papers I can see how far I have come as a writer. At the beginning of the semester I was a poor writer who could not grasp the important aspects of writing. I had many grammatical errors along with many underdeveloped thoughts. Even though this class was only for a short period of time in order to learn how to write a proper academic paper, I can see how far I have come. My papers may still be sub-par but in many aspects have come a long way. I no longer have as many grammatical errors and can further express my thoughts in a paper. Also by taking this class I have further developed revision skills by learning new tricks such as reading out loud and writing thoughts out as a brainstorming

When I confidently swaggered into this room on the first day, I was certain that I couldn’t improve any more than where I was at that time. On September 3, 2015, I thought that any piece I wrote would be deserving of a four. I was clearly mistaken. Reviewing the pieces written from September to now, it is difficult for me to process the fact that I was the one who wrote these seemingly mediocre stories and essays, and yet I thought they were excellent. The growth of my writing, along with all my language arts skills, has grown exponentially from September to now. This paper should be rewarded a four because my writing style has been enhanced, along with the vast improvement of my reading, speaking, and technological abilities, from all the

My first semester as a college student has been a roller coaster. In English Composition Ⅰ, I wrote many papers; some stood out more than others. The papers I am most proud of are “One House, A Million Things”, “Not Another Family”, and “Starbucks or Starsucks?”. Throughout the course of the semester, I have learned new ways to express my thoughts on a new level. The basics of my writing process has stayed the same, but I have learned new techniques. I always have a topic in mind first, then I normally just start babbling on and on about the topic. This semester we learned to ‘rip the roo’; in other words erase the entire thing and restart. I do not have to completely rip the roo every single time, but ripping part of the roo has become a huge part of my process. I will erase a section here or there to make the flow work better. Once I have my rough draft where I want it, I go back and fine tune the paper to make sure all aspects are where they need to be.

As a youth growing up I loved to read and write essays, writing always came easily to me. It was a dream of mine to actually write a book. It was my desire to write a nonfictional book, an influential self-help book for children. As an adult after high school my love for reading continued, but I no longer was expected to write papers, so that dream faded as time and life continued. As I began the charting process for nursing, that was challenging for me. In nursing, documentation is short, simple and to the point, that was not the way we were taught to write in high school. For the last 16 years, my writing experiences have been related to nursing documentation. With my recent career change I have been writing more memos, emails, evaluations,

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