The Next Challenge

My writing skills have improved due to this class and all Ms. Geary had taught me. She made class fun with her inflections and just the way she says everything, her personality definitely showed through. I looked forward to class but never the homework. Finally after reading over my final drafts of: My Past as a Writer, Problematic Essay and my Exploratory Research Paper I realize that I have dramatically improved my writing skills in every draft thanks to revisions and some positive criticism for Ms. Geary. I think I am now ready to take on the next step in the English world.

Writing had always been one of my weaknesses, but it was challenging to take that initial step past high school. When I am first taking English 120, I have decided to take all the help that are available to minimize grammar mistakes, better sentence structures, and better vocabularies usage. Reading an article or essay before every class improves my vocabulary usage, Doing discourse community essay shows me a way to express my feeling about being

I need to consider more about focusing on the topic and organizing for my writing, because it appeals to the audience more clear to the point. Also, I feel that I am much better to convince my audience through my writings. In general, I like this course because it taught me a lot of great things, such as how to revise the essay in order to make it better. My writing has improved a lot throughout this year, I learned how to organize my essay’s structure, using the transition sandwich to perfect my writing. In the future, I hope to continue developing all the skills that I learned in this English class, and I will continue to go to the Writing Center to ask for help to perfect my writing.

Goal# 3 is “To help students develop a metacognitive understanding of processes of reading, writing, and thinking.” The workshops I have done in English 10/11 are the biggest example of goal#3. The revision plans extremely helps examine the mistakes I have done in the paper. I always have learned something new through the revision and comments of my peers. To be aware of our own mistakes is important because it helps not repeating them again. Other example is the letter I have wrote at the end of English 10 assessing my First Year Learning Goals.

When this class first started, I had a different perspective of what a good writer should implement in their work. At first, I believed that the quantity of the words that I wrote carried more weight than the quality of my words. During my time in this class, I would focus on getting my ideas down rather than organizing my writing into to explain concrete topics and ideas. With the knowledge I have acquired in this class, I have learned to how to organize my essays, how to watch out for grammar errors, and how to improve one the shortcomings of my writing. After completing the writing assignments for this class, I have learned a great deal in organizing my essays.

I was confused while writing is a main point in my major. Before my university career, in order to adapt new language environment, my advisor recommended me to take English Second Language lesson. Indeed, I learned too much from the ESL. My vocabulary and spoken skill was promoted. However, writing was still a block for me.

With the feedback from fellow classmates and Dr. Eldred I have continued to better my writing skills. One skill I always use is that I make a box outline, I learned this in high school. It allows me to see what certain points I would like to cover in each paragraph and also lets me know how many paragraphs I need to cover all my information. My main weaknesses with all my papers were summarizing too much, citing quotes, and not having a good thesis. I’ve always struggled with coming up with a supportive, specific thesis.

I did not spend as much time proofreading as I should have. I thought through writing it on word that most of my m... ... middle of paper ... ...ad over it for me to check for grammatical errors. After finishing the essay I would rate this essay as not my best but not my worst. This essay was challenging, but also made me see things differently in the way of an advertisement. Through this class and my previous experiences I’ve learned to spend more time on each step of the writing process instead of rushing through.

I have learned here at Virginia State University how to write, how to be myself, how to ponder for myself, and how to locate the solutions to the problems I do not have the answers to. I learned how vital the English language is to everyday life. There is never a second that goes by without me contemplating about something, but being enrolled in my first English class at Virginia State University, I am very proud to announce that as a result my critical analysis skills have significantly increased. Instead of concentrating on a proposed purpose, I have figured out how to constantly ask myself "why". I now actually dare myself to investigate an author’s work as acu... ... middle of paper ... ...em up.

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.