Reflection Paper

People are always in a haste when they try to express their feelings verbally, however, in the case of writing those feelings, it becomes a challenge. It takes practice and commitment to improve ones writing; with this class I have been able to do so. Through this class, I have learned skills on how to properly express those feelings. In addition, this class was a big transition from high school, however, it has helped me to improve my writing skills. Even though I have improved, I still have weaknesses that I would hope to improve on in EN 102.

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.

With this fall semester coming to an end, I have been reflecting about my writing skills. Before I took this class, I used to believe that I know how to make a good paper but I was wrong. Writing is one of my weakest skills I have, but this class helped me on how to make a better and well-constructed essay. This letter will show how I have improved from the writing assignments that was assigned. All writing assignments are challenging for me.

My philosophy used to be that if I could write a paper beautifully the first time, edits were unnecessary. After receiving grades I did not like, however, I realized the importance of taking the time to fully revise my writing. Now, editing is the fun part of writing because the writing is, for the most part, finished. Few activities are more satisfying than finding that misplaced comma, misspelled word, or misplaced modifier. It can get complicated when I have to change, move, or delete entire sentences, but I would rather fix a few sentences than write an entire paper the night before it is due.

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.

This class gave many good examples such as writing your paper ahead of time and reading again a day or two later. I think that this is a great idea, but most of the time I don’t have time to do that. It is very difficult to balance work, family, military, and college. Most of the time it seems like college gets pushed off because it is the least important of them all. If I don’t do my homework, I get a bad grade, but if I don’t show up to work, I can get fired.

Another weakness I had was the run on and comma splice errors. I had this problem becau... ... middle of paper ... ...something I didn’t have trouble with but if I would have had trouble I would’ve learned in the lesson we had. I was never a person that liked to write essays. This semester I really enjoyed writing those essays and specially because I was learning new things while writing them. Some things I could do to improve my essay writing are not to wait till the last three or four days before I turn my essay in to start doing it.

As a writer, I think that I am not as good as I thought I was back in high school. I see myself as a student who tries their best, but makes “B” average work. I have never really taken the time to relate to my papers. I always just wrote what the teacher wanted and handed it in. In my mind, I never really liked trying to explain in full detail what something meant.

Also through practice this semester I was better able to write a concrete thesis statement, something I was puzzled with in my previous English courses. Now I am more confident in my writing, but I still believe that there are certain areas in my writing that could use some improvement. During this semester I have been able to look at my previous essay and see the progress that I have made. With my prologue essay there are countless grammar and spelling mistakes. I take this into account now because I have learned to reread my essays before deciding whether or not they are finalized.

I will like to learn how to write a good or a convincing essay yet, it is difficult for me to achieve the level as a college student. Actually, I believe that I did great jobs on my writing assignments. Nevertheless, the results I got were not what I expected. It will be much easier for me to express and explain my point of view in my native language than for me to express in my second language. Therefore, people who read my writing assignments did not understand what I try to say.