Reflection Essay

The year is almost over, meaning the time spent growing and learning new linguistic and writing strategies is coming to a close. Looking back on the long journey I have experienced first-hand, I have noticed growth with every piece that I wrote. At times the class was stressful, but it was always an extreme accomplishment to finish a paper and grow and develop as a writer. First semester, I set goals that I felt would be attainable, yet beneficial for the AP exam. The goals I established were to become more creative in my writing, expand my use of rhetorical strategies, and improve my vocabulary. In order to achieve these goals, I reached out of my comfort zone and attempted to try new tactics in my writings. Additionally, I studied and brushed

I have improved my usage of rhetorical strategies in order to attain my goal, as previously stated. I pushed myself as a writer in my Dear Photograph essay, and tested out some new rhetorical strategies. The ones I sampled were parallelism, enumeratio, asyndeton, telegraphic syntax, and hyperbole. Enumeratio was the most unfamiliar to me, and I attempted to choose at least one rhetorical term that would be completely new and challenge me. I wrote, “The summer months, with the grass bright green, and the sky effervescent; it’s a time of rejoice, free spirit, relaxation.” The beginning portion of the sentence with the descriptive language was the enumeratio, and the latter portion of the sentence featured asyndeton, another new strategy. Additionally, I have continued to grow in the area of developing adequate introduction techniques. It has been a goal of mine to be more creative in my introductions in order to make them more captivating, and establish a more creative voice. In my college admissions essay, I began my introduction by setting up a story, and opened with, “Halfway through my freshman year of high school, the earth-shattering, shocking news hit.” My introduction continued to proceed with the story in order to add a creative element to my essay. Also, the first sentence of my photo synthesis essay displays this improvement, as it reads, “A single photograph

It was an essay that meant a great deal to me, and revolved around a topic that I felt passionate about. When thinking of topic ideas and what to write in general, it was one of those essay that I thought of random sentences that strengthened my proposed topic. Those sentences were then transported to the essay document, and incorporated and assimilated into my actual essay. The main reason I am so immensely proud of it, is the personal nature of it. The topic of moving across states is something I pride myself in, and find it to be a large part of who I am as a person. Furthermore, the essay challenged me because I had to develop new approaches to sentences in order to avoid being repetitive and using too many “to be” verbs. For example, I had one sentence that read something similar to, “ I had an acquainted life, there was a routine established, and had friends that I had known for 4 years,” but in order to bolster the overall flow of the sentences I changed it to, “All routine that became established over time, shattered.” This change fostered a more unique voice, and made the sentence more interesting when meshed with the rest of the