What I Learned In Class Analysis

Throughout the course of this semester, I have continuously grown as a writer. Prior to taking this course, I had little experience or knowledge when it came to writing. I used to struggle with forming my thoughts into writing, let alone a paper. I was never confident with what I wrote. My writing had no greater purpose other than the assignment. My writing process included: writing my paper, proofreading it, and turning it in. Once the paper left my hands, it also left my mind. Throughout this course we worked with others, visited the writing lab, wrote critiques, and we were able to revise our papers. I believe that all of this is has caused me to grow greatly as a writer.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy literature, it’s just I’m not the best with it. The star reading test is what made me realize I’m not the best with literature, in middle school all my friends would always get advanced scores and I would just have basic scores. Sometimes this made me really mad, I want to be good at everything I do and whenever I’m not I get upset.

Throughout the course of this semester in AP Lang, my eyes have been opened to many of the weaknesses I never knew I had in writing. Coming into this semester, I had heard about the difficulty of this class, but was not unduly worried about not receiving an A; I have always considered myself as a competent if not strong writer. However, after failing to attain desired grades on several important essays, I was devastated, and realized that although I had mastered the basics of grammar and writing, there was still much for me to work on. Also, I did not understand that much of my grade in AP Lang would be determined by speaking in front of others, which is not my strong suit. What I have come to find is that writing essays containing all of the new information we have learned throughout the semester, such as requirements for different types of essays and good writing strategies, takes a lot of work, time, and thinking. Unfortunately, my procrastination caused me to only get done what had to be done instead of putting in the extra work and truly understanding everything.

Throughout the course English 101, I believe my writing skills have improved through understanding concepts such as rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, ethos, pathos, logos, and rhetorical analysis. Looking back at the semester, I reflect on my strengths and weaknesses. My strengths include my note taking skills and being attentive during class. Doing this, I was later able to use these notes to look back at while writing, which I found very useful. For example, for the essay Comparative Rhetorical Analysis, I took note of almost every piece of information Dr. Braun gave us, writing in the margins of the articles and highlighting important phrases. Because of this, writing came very easily to me not only for that essay but also others,

Over the course of this semester, my confidence in writing has improved greatly. In high school, I didn’t really know how to write effectively. I wasn’t really sure what was considered to be “good writing” until I took AP* English. However, even while I was taking this “Advanced Placement” class, I was still trying to figure out how to really create “good writing”. I feel as if this had something to do with the fact that I never really had to work with the rules of grammar intensively. After taking this course, however, I now have a much better understanding of how to correctly use proper grammar. I also improved on using transitional phrases in my writing. I have implemented my understanding of proper grammar and transitional phrases in both my writing inside and outside of this class as a result.

I am currently a student at the University of Texas at San Antonio for almost a whole semester now. I came to this school straight out of high school, not knowing what I was getting myself into. During my high school years, I was good at every subject except my writing class. Coming to UTSA, I knew I was going to struggle in my writing class, but that didn’t discourage me from not trying my best in the course. Going through the English program, I realized that I have some strengths and weaknesses in the class, and it encouraged me to do better. The essays I have written for this class demonstrate that I have developed a strong thesis, organization skills, and detail; however, I still need to improve on grammar, keeping the POV, and citing.

I’m a young woman who transferred from China to America and I’m not that familiar with how to utilize English compared to a young woman who’s who is from the United States of America. That has never stopped me from trying and I will never give up. I like challenges and difficult tasks, it tests my will and helps to achieve the goal I have set for myself. During this sixteenth week, my writing skill improved dramatically compared to the beginning of the semester. That may not be noticeable to others, but to me the improvement in my writing skill is very evident.

The last piece of paper I will refer to was the comparison paper. In the comparison paper I felt I also learned about two influential women from two very different periods and also enjoyed connecting and comparing the two. Through these pieces of work I feel I've improved my grammar and spelling and also have learned how to write in English a paper that requires investigation and expressing thoughts, something that I've never done before. Before this semester the last time I wrote in English was 9 years ago and even then I don’t remember myself ever writing an essay, mostly un-seens and book reports. I feel that next semester in need to continue to improve my writing skills. I feel that my oral skills are relatively good, but my writing skills need to improve. I feel that I am not able to really express myself in English through writing. I feel that my vocabulary and grammar are not fluent enough. I enjoy writing about topics that have to do with current events and politics. I enjoy expressing my thoughts and comparing different situations and using creativity to connect

Throughout my writing career I never would have considered myself a solid writer as it wasn’t until this semester that I actually received my first A on a paper in my high school or college writing career. This came soon into this semester as I realized that something needed to change for me to give myself a chance at making an A in writing for this semester. These changes I knew needed to come from my writing process as I felt that my process was witholding me from achieving A’s on my writing assignments. After reflecting on my writing process, I concluded that I needed to change the processes by which I wrote and edited my papers. This semester my writing has benefitted from the changes to my writing process in the aspects of writing and editing rough drafts as the quality of my writing has improved since the implementation of breaks in my writing and multi person editing of my rough drafts in my

While writing is an essential part of a student’s success I managed to avoid papers as much as humanly possible. The reason I have avoided writing isn’t that I do not like to write but that I am not comfortable writing papers that are going to be graded because I have a hard time putting down what I am thinking so typically it is a grammatical mess. I often over use or do not use enough punctuation and have poor choice in wording. Throughout the next fifteen weeks my personal goal is to be able to write a paper with proper grammar and be able to balance my paper.

Enrolled in English 5, also known as Accelerated Academic Literacies, my professor assigned a total of three essays, four in-class writings and online grammar quizzes for students to improve with their weakness in grammar. As I reflect on myself at the end of this semester on my work in my English 5 class, I am able to see clearly how much I have improved as a writer. Throughout this semester, as a student, I have cooperated in both written and typed assignments along with peer review editing with other classmates. However, with the daily journals, homework assignments and feedback my peers have given to me for essays, they not only helped me improve so much, but also helped realize my strengths and weaknesses as well.

I have always been a very driven person, and I believe that my current career goals reflect that. I want to be a surgical missionary. I often joke with people that my goal career title is “world-changer,” but joking aside I do hope to make a difference one day. To do that, I am going to be in school for a very long time. School means that papers are going to be written, while English class might have a few more papers than other subjects, every class is going to require some type of writing at some point. Furthermore, in the fall of 2017, I plan on attending the University of Alabama and majoring in International Studies while on the pre-med track. Therefore, good college level writing is a skill that I need to develop now if I hope to reach my future career goals and be successful throughout my entire college experience. That is why throughout this semester I have been happy to see my writing improve as I have demonstrated my ability to understand and meet the requirements of multiple student learning outcomes such as applying critical thinking and reading skills to a variety of texts and employing appropriate writing strategies for each assignment’s audience and purpose. However, my writing needs to continue to improve in other areas, such as demonstrating correctness in the written conventions of University discourse.

During this semester, I have strengthened my writing by trying new writing techniques, learning about purpose, and finding new ways of combating writers block. My first essay in this class was less focused then the essays I wrote later in

Since beginning to write papers in English class, I have had countless successes and failures. While many of my English classes have taught me how to improve my writing, I have not learned very much in others. My most recent English class was last year, my sophomore year. My class was particularly undersized; therefore, it gave each student the opportunity to have additional individual attention. Throughout the class I experienced high points, weaknesses, and even difficulties that I never overcame. Overall, my writing skills improved, but only marginally.

At the beginning of this class I was nervous on how this semester will go and whether or not I will succeed to my fullest potential in English. With that in my mind I still was trying my best to work at getting better, despite how much it made me cringe at the thought of it. My perspective of writing began to change as time went on, the assignments were based on interesting topics which made it a bit bearable for me. I’ve learned that you have to make the steps to get to the perfect paper. A paper requires you to brainstorm, make an outline, and writing your rough draft to get that feedback you need before finishing up that final draft. During this class I have also learned where to put my thesis and that I don’t need to have that three point subtopics of what you should talk about. The writing length started getting longer and I was a bit skeptical on how I can get to the word count or what will I talk about within my papers, but I have