Reflection

Mistakes that I did gave me a reason to improve myself for the next level of writing. Despite all of the good progress I made by taking this class, I still have to make more improvements to make myself a better writer. One of the improvements that I have to do is my grammar skills. Improving my grammar skills a bit more would make my essay easier for the readers to understand. Constructing a better sentence is also one of the things I should work on.

Also, I have trouble with when I use a quote from a book how to introduce it and explain why I chose it. I hope to overcome these obstacles next semester. However, I feel my strengths were collecting information after I understood what I was reading and also adding evidence in my papers. Once I took notes on my reading and then read over my notes a couple times it was easier for me to lay out an outline and come up with ideas to talk about. The evidence I would always choose would be quotes from the books, which I feel I picked the right ones to use.

It has helped me make a good start and saved me time. One thing I find difficult with this essay is develop a good thesis since I kept on changing it because I kept adding more topics for my idea which means I had to revise the outline too. Although I was a bit struggling with the thesis, the in-class assignments had also helped me add some information that can be added to my main idea such as the quiz about the literary analysis in the story for “A Temporary Matter” and the group discussions about the same story. Moreover, one of my weaknesses in this piece is the sentence structure which means I need to pay attention to the language, punctuation in order to develop a strong and consistent narrative. One thing that I would like to improve on this piece is MLA citation since I tend to sometimes forget to use proper MLA in text citation.

My first essay in this class was less focused then the essays I wrote later in this class. I was overwhelmed by the length requirement of the essay, and had limited experience with different writing techniques. This semester, however, I have attempted both listing and outlining. I had never used either techniques before, nevertheless, my writing benefited did from these new techniques; however, I believe I had more success with the listing technique. I used listing while writing my classify and divide essay and I believe it helped me to stay on topic and keep my writing organized.

This essay taught me that even though I was learning a lot from this course, that there was still room to improve. Likewise, I ended up with the assumption I had done great on this essay since I wrote about a topic I enjoyed, makeup. I was proven wrong. The evaluation paper called for evaluating and expanding on the quotes you had provided in your paper, something I wasn’t as familiar with until this class. I didn 't do so well on this particular essay but I had the opportunity to learn from my mistakes.

Jared Lawrence 4/23/2014 College Writing 101-04 Critical Rationale Essay As I reflect on my experiences throughout the semester of English 101 I’ve come to figure out that I have met very important requirements that I feel were very valuable for me as a student. I have become a better writer; I have also learned valuable information on the proper rhetorical choices as well as understanding the materials we have went over throughout the semester. During this process, reading and comprehending the materials given were not only a difficult task for me but I also needed much improvement in this area. As far as my portfolio layout goes, I decided to use a layout which shows my gradual improvement as a writer throughout the entire semester. Other aspects of the writing process over the semester such as the revision stages were also something that I continued to progress in.

I have been able to this skill of reading more closely when writing my research paper for both this class and others. A comment from one of my paper from my strengths about my reading is “read texts carefully to find unused data”. This means that I could find and argue about different means being different characters, symbols, and settings. I made more interesting arguments by using pieces of text that would not be normally used. By improving my reading, it will benefit me beyond this class because when I am in graduate school, I will need to be able to read dense texts that will be difficult to comprehend.

Writing can be a challenge to foreign students, but taking the writing courses and understanding the writing process are very important and stepping stone for further education. During my EN 101A semester, I had worked particularly on the use of the writing process particularly on writing a vibrant thesis statement which offers a concise solution to the issue being addressed. I had struggled to improve my expository writing through working at the writing center. In addition, I had also worked on improving my critical thinking which helped me to develop analytical skills in an effort to add my own thoughts, contemplate a particular topic and analyze important issues. My weakest area in essay development during the semester was identifying a clear thesis statement which was crucial part of the writing process.

For example, I have improved my pre-writing skills so I can write much more easily when I really start writing. Furthermore, professor and students in this class are really nice, so I have gotten a lot of helps from them; their helps motivate me to keep enhancing and improving myself. However, this is the worst class for me because English 1A is the most challenging class for me since I still have many writing weakness.

In essence, multiple essays have been formulated during the duration of Composition 1. These essays have taught me an important lesson about my writing, failure is acceptable in order to grow. On the other hand, I made a vital discovery last year that I craved to study journalism and advance further in that field after college. From taking journalism classes, to blogging in my spare time, to always getting an A on my papers, I had the assumption there was no room to improve. Ironically, I was mistaken.