Writer Reflection

In the 2011 article “Helping Students Meet the Challenges of Academic Writing”, educators Linda Fernsten and Mary Reda offer innovative self-reflective writing exercises that post-secondary instructors can employ to help students improve writer self-image and academic writing. The authors’ rationale for reflective and practical writing strategies were developed from direct classroom experience, and are based on four (4) assumptions. Their claim that self-reflective writing can aid student writers in overcoming conflict (due to dominant culture, upbringing, former writing experiences, gender, and other marginalizing factors) to improve writer self-identity is plausible. However, their argument that cross-curriculum academic writing can be improved through self-directed, self-reflective writing requires further investigation.

People have many ways that they write. Some do a process of doing drafts so they can look through, edit and make the paper better. Others will just write a paper and turn it in. My process consist of starting with making a thesis. Then from the thesis I create the topic sentences for the topic at hand. The best way to write the essay in a good format and have good detail in the writing I would write a paragraph a day. By doing that process it allows me to get what is needed out on the paper so none of the paragraphs are mixing content and making the paragraphs less structured. This process not only makes writing essays less stressful while also getting the paper done quickly.

I have been practicing on how to improve my writing over the past few weeks, which has taught me a great deal about writing. My teacher would like me to evaluate and explain my strengths and weaknesses in my own writing. This evaluation is in between my two essays. One on my own and another with my teacher's help. I have strengths and weakness in my introduction, body paragraphs ,and my conclusion.

An aspect that I often struggle with is proper punctuation. Truthfully, I do not know how to correctly use punctuation. When writing, I place punctuation by mimicking authors’ formats or by placing them where it feels right. This is present in all of my writing, but I am attempting to improve. Punctuation also plays a part in another weakness of mine, one that is most likely present within this essay. Since middle school, it was engrained in my mind that a good essay is a long essay, so I have a tendency for wordiness. To elongate an essay, I tend to add needless words and sentences. For example, in the rough draft of the Whole Process Essay, I added several unrelated occurrences to elongate the paragraphs. Although my essays were long and wordy, the professor commented on vagueness and unclearness within the whole process and practice essay. Sometimes, I disregard the fact that the reader might not know what it is I am writing about or the sentence makes perfect sense to me. The latter is the most common, I quickly read the sentence and it appears fine to me. Within the Whole Process Essay, another weakness was brought to my attention. I lack structure, a key element in effective writing. Within the same essay and a few others, I simply added what felt right, sometimes the result would be acceptable but in other instances, it was a long, jumbled mess.

When I look back at my writing before having any college experience, I can see that I had a lot to work on. I can say that I was never really a big fan of writing anything much less essays. Even when I was younger, I just did not have a great big interest in writing. This was because I felt that I could not elaborate as well as others. I was not use to having to write anything really, but I now feel that I have a better grasp on the steps that I need to take to get my writing on the level that it needs to be.

We are already midway through the first quarter of my last year as a high school student. I find it hard to completely grasp how quickly this year is passing and yet I feel like we've already accomplished so much.

As a student entering the 10th grade my essay writing abilities were questionable at best. However over the course of my sophomore year I acquired new skills and techniques to construct and write essays. In some cases this class broadened my abilities already in place and in others it constructed new abilities to help strengthen others. All in all I am a better writer than when I entered my sophomore year. Despite all the positive changes to my writing style that have occurred over the past year some parts of my writing style require more effort to come to par with other parts of my writing style. As a writer over the past year I have reinforced my arguments well, and learned to develop a thesis better than I had, however I require more work

Writing is an important form of communication. It is a personal process that portrays your thoughts and views to someone else. It is not only an important skill to have for school work and certain professions, but daily messages such as emails, texts, and tweets as well. It can have a big impact on how you come across to certain people. Because of this, it is very important for me to practice writing. I believe that this course has improved my writing, which will help me in many ways in the future.

Throughout high school, I was regularly told that writing was not my strongest skill. My teachers would constantly “shoot down” my writing because it was never “good enough,” except I never understood what that truly meant. However, this class helped me realize that my writing has “potential for greatness,” but it just requires some more time, thought, and clarification.

To effectively revise and edit my research paper, I read it carefully, as I played the reader`s role instead of that of a writer. In addition, I used a number of strategies to effectively revise and edit my research paper. First, I read my paper aloud as I listened for errors. After carefully listening, I was able to identify and correct errors in my writing, including grammar, incorrect sentence structure, incomplete ideas, and incorrect punctuation. While reading, I could stop and rectify the mistake at the point where I could note it. In addition, I read each sentence at a time so that I could digest the structure and identify any error. Prior to the reading, I noted down the common errors I usually commit while writing such as the omission

Throughout this year you have seen me develop as both a writer and as a person. This year for LA has definitely been a challenging one for me, as I learnt how to manage my time effectively, develop my writing and properly edit my writing pieces.

In lesson five of Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 12th Edition, Joseph Williams and Joseph Bizup explains the importance of cohesion and coherence in writing prose. Williams and Bizup describes cohesion as the logical and grammatical flow of one sentence to another, which readers move through a passage in a way that communicates a complete thought. A reader should freely interpret a group of sentences without analyzing fancy words from a thesaurus to understand author’s intent. Furthermore, Williams and Bizup explains the importance to discuss familiar concepts at the beginning of a sentence, and introduce unfamiliar ideas at the end of a sentence. This approach allows readers to recognize the consistent “flow” of ideas toward the

Self-assessment writing is a great way to gain insight into how effective my writing style is and helps me to recognize improvement where they’re needed. Throughout the semester there have been three major essays written. Each one a different style giving the writer a different mindset each time, this results in the finding problems in one essay that may not have happened in another. When self-assessing there needs to be to a criteria on which one can reflect on and categorize their weakest and strongest points in writing, these criteria for example can be content, organization and coherence, style, argument and support, and mechanics. After categorizing there are questions that need to be asked such as, as a writer, what do you do well? And what aspect of your writing needs the most improvement?

Writing is way that we can express ourselves, it is a way to interface ideas and thoughts and to prove a point. Throughout my writing experience or process I have struggled with writing especially using details or really expressing myself my work. In this course Facts & Fiction: Portraits in World Art I expect to gain more knowledge on how to write a perfect essay, story, letter, and assignment. I expect to learn new genres and rhetorical situations. I also think my writing will improve academically and I will develop my skills in writing. Also taking my writing to a different point of view, level, and writing something different rather than the usual. I look forward to getting feedback from my peers and learning their thoughts on my writing and how they can help me improve.

It is my belief that through this class and the tools provided, that my growth as a writer has grown through leaps and bounds I would never have assumed possible. It is not so much the skill I refer to, although I would think skill has gone up in some levels as well, but more so the appreciation for the craft of writing itself. Intially, at the start of this class my sole goal was to further my understanding and appreciation of the writer's and books that I so love to read. Through further evaluation within the first week, a few other goals came to mind, of which were, making writing a habit, finishing what I start, stop second guess my writing skills and making effective use of detail and description. Through the use of the many articles, various reading materials, whether poems or short stories, and especially through the workshop, I feel I was able to really push myself to accomplishing these goals. I have thus far learned how important it is not to be skilled at writing per say, but to have the will to write, that poetry is as much about it's sound as it is about it's subject, just how important character development is, how the narration and point of view of a story is essential to the way the story is told, and just how much of a difference peer's critiques can make to your writing.