Reflective Essay Writing

This essay will be a self-evaluation of my writing style, and the improvements I have made over the past three months. Before I took this class I had not written a paper since the last time I was in college. That was around 2004, my major was computer software. For that major there isn’t a whole lot of writing involved. This was more of a refresher class than anything. To be honest I was a little intimidated, for the simple reason I had not written anything like this since high school. I will discuss how I discovered my writing process. My development as a writer throughout this semester, and finally I will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of my essays.

English Composition I has developed my style of writing and my skills analyzing and researching topics to write a piece about a topic. Throughout the course, I got better at analyzing articles and pieces to get the meaning of the topic. With that improved skill I was more able to use the information given from the text and install it into my essays, with proper citation if needed. Before taking the English Composition course, I was not one to organize my essays in an ordeal order to clearly state the point of the work. Now with taking the course, I have learned to organize my essays, examine research for a topic, and develop an essay with proper mechanics, and revising skills. In writing my personal, review, analytical, and cultural

Writing is a practice that most of us were taught when we were young. We were taught the basics of grammar, how to form a sentence, conjunction words, how to write paragraphs and more. Although we have learned this skill while growing up and have used the skill every year after entering kindergarten, this does not mean our writing process will ensure the best work. The authors that I chose each encourage their audience to excel in the art of writing in their own way to help with the writing process.

During the course of this semester; the variety of writing styles and essays assigned to me in my communication skills class encouraged the development of my writing skills, as well as provided me with more self-assurance in my abilities. My writing, research, and presentation abilities enhanced through practice, determination, and the understanding I gained during this course. With every single writing assignment, I learned new innovative approaches and skills, which enhanced my abilities to improve my thoughts logically, enabling me to write more clearly, and to organize my papers more effectively. At the beginning of this semester; despite the fact that I already knew the terminology MAP: message, audience, purpose; I never really

Over the course of this semester, I have learned many things to improve my writing. Having taken the course before, this semester has been an excellent opportunity to expand on my existing knowledge. Although I had written many essays before, there is still much to be learned and improved. Two factors of writing that I had learned or improved on this semester were transitions/topic sentences and how to properly structure a conclusion paragraph.

My journey through Writer’s Composition has been a rocky rollercoaster with ups and downs, but from these experiences I have grown as a writer overall. The essays I have written for this course demonstrate that I have developed critical thinking and have shown minor improvements in my communication skills. They also demonstrate that though I have made some progress in personal responsibility and general writing skills, I still have work to do. From Writer’s Composition Two, I have developed an understanding of persuasive writing, and I now am able to pick a topic or a claim and argue it in classic argument writing.

After reading over my summer assignment essay and analyzing the comments and feedback of my writing I feel that I have a lot of work to do to improve my writing as a whole. I feel I had the ideas down on what I wanted to say on my summer essay. It was just difficult expressing them in a way that was compelling enough to the reader. The topics for the essay were not challenging to me because I felt that I wrote a lot about the one I chose on alienation. Throughout my reflection I will discussed the weaknesses and strengths in my writing as well as talk about ways I feel I could improve my writing.

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.

In writing an essay I also struggle with incorporating clear topic sentences and connecting my paragraphs ideas back to my thesis statement. This struggle is based on last years’ experience with writing essays. This struggle can be improved upon by concentrating on what exactly my thesis is stating and building my sentences to relate and explain the thesis further. Improving on this will allow my writing ability to increase and help me become a more successful writer.

Through the use of Pro Wring Aid, Paper Rater and Writers Diet I was able to identify the problems with my writing and what elements need improving such as grammar and sentence structure. The feedback I received from pro writing aid, paper rater and writer’s diet identified that my writing was inconsistent in terms of capitalisation, spelling, misplaced or absent punctuation and a lack of adjectives and the overuse of verbs. These mistakes were mostly due to a lack of proper editing and the use of long sentences making my writing difficult to understand. I was not expecting this negative feedback I received. I thought I used academic language and formulated my ideas in a clear and concise manner.

Before I came to college, I felt my writing had to follow a certain pattern and be fixated around one way of thinking. What I was fortunate to learn was quite the opposite. Writing does not have to follow any certain pattern, but can rather be structured through many different possibilities. I was also told in high school that my papers either had to agree or disagree with the given topic, even if I believed otherwise. This formulated a very one-track way of thinking when it came to my papers. Now I know that I can let my mind explore new and exciting ideas. I can agree, disagree, compliment, criticize, and question the author however my heart desires, as long as I have the evidence to back myself up. Many authors in the book, Writing About Writing, explain their processes as well as the processes of others when it comes to writing. As a writer, I can draw on my own processes and relate them to the authors, as well as use their ideas and apply them to myself. Through reading, I have learned new methods of invention, planning and revising, and incubation when it comes to writing. All ways I can use to create more meaningful and creative work.

Going into Writing 20, I could best describe my writing as alright if you don’t look at it too closely. Grammar mechanics have always been an issue. I have a hard time transferring my ideas from my mind to the paper in a way that is easily decipherable to a reader. Writing 20 has helped develop my ability to, if not fix my editing skills, at least get them to a place where my voice can shine through.

William Wordsworth once said, “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” Writing is not just about picking out words that sound good together to form a sentence. I believe the philosophy of writing is to allow people to freely express themselves. Writing gives people a freedom within themselves and grants the room to grow and discover character. I have always loved to write. Before my high school career I would use my free time to write poems and short stories, along with school essays. I have always enjoyed the way the words seem to fall out of your brain and onto the paper. During high school, my essay writing has made a drastic improvement. This first semester in Comp 110 is where I feel my writing has been at its best. I have learned many new things about my writing and writing as a whole. I believe I had the room and time to grow as a writer during Comp 110. My main focus when trying to improve my writing are my strengths and weaknesses. My weaknesses also lead me to set new goals for Comp 210.

To be completely honest my writing is average, maybe below average. I never really took writing seriously and that could be justified by simply reading my essays. Growing up my writing was decent nothing spectacular, until I reached high school I realized my writing sucked. I’m an average writer, I have had many negative and positive experiences with my writing, more negative than positive if you’d ask me.

I can remember waving goodbye to my parents in the Abner’s parking lot after I had completed the dreadful day of moving into my dorm. Since I am in the FastTrack Program, I was able to move in two days earlier before the real madness started. I can remember complaining to my mother about having to retake Writing 101 my first semester because I had already done that in high school and I thought it was pointless, but I was extremely wrong. Throughout this year writing has taught me more about life than just throwing some words on a piece of paper and hoping for a decent grade.