Writing Self-Evaluation

I believe it is important for any student who wants to do their best in a class to take a moment to evaluate their own work to determine the rate their writing is progressing and how they can continue to advance their writing. When I looked through my own work I asked myself “what have I learned this semester?” and “what do I still need to learn in order to improve my writing?”. Answering both these questions will help me with my last step of my self-evaluation, developing a plan to learn new skills.

During this semester, I have strengthened my writing by trying new writing techniques, learning about purpose, and finding new ways of combating writers block. 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. I used an outline to help me write my compare and contrast essay, and while it did help with organization, it was more complicated than the listing technique.

Before this class, I understood purpose was important; however, during this class I have discovered that putting more focus on purpose can result in a more interesting thesis and paper. I have learned to think about purpose before writing my essay, once I have narrowed my topic I ask myself why would anyone want to read my essay. Consideri...

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...e in my daily writings such as, e-mails, letters, notes and discussion board responses to practice what I have learned.

In final analysis, my writing has greatly improved during this semester, and having looked at the area's I most need to work on has given me an awareness of what my weaknesses are. Examining what I have learned and what I need to learn allows me to generate a strategy to fortify my writing skills. Critiquing my own work has given me insight into how my writing is progressing in this class and allowed me to see short comings I had missed previously. Self-evaluation is a helpful tool for anyone who wants to continue to learn what areas they can improve upon and how much progress they are making. I believe those who appraise their own work will have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses then those who do not evaluate themselves.