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Reflection on critical reading and thinking skills
Struggles being college students
Struggles being college students
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Recommended: Reflection on critical reading and thinking skills
I believe that my writing has grown immensely since the beginning of this semester. Through the semester we were assigned many papers that were meant to challenge our writing abilities, and I believe they did just that. Some of the strategies I have worked on (and improved on) this semester include: reading attentively and critically, understanding the writing process, developing my thesis and supporting it, understanding the basic elements of research, and editing and revising effectively. Looking back at the very first assignment we had, which was writing a letter to our school principal, there was a lot of room for improvement to be made, and I believe I took this opportunity to better my writing skills. These skills that I have learned through this class not only helped me in my writing, but will also help my in future semesters to come. I will use these skills when writing papers and when researching for other classes as well.
In the past semester I have learned to read articles attentively and critically. When researching, it is crucial that I am paying close attention to what the author is saying. In my Barbie: a Bad role Model for Children paper, this was extremely important. I had to sort through the information and address the tone of the author in order to determine if the article was a useful source for me. The tone would determine if the author was taking the topic seriously or not.
This semester I have also gained a better understanding of the writing process. With most papers we were assigned, we were required to turn in a rough draft before the paper was actually due. This helped me see where I was at with my paper and determine what areas I needed to work on. A paper I specifically noticed this on was ...
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...ghly. Once I started taking my time when writing and setting aside a time to look over my papers and specifically check for these errors my grade improved dramatically. On my final research paper I received an “Impressive” grade in the correctness paper. This shows that I had little to no errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. I was very proud to see this improvement considering this was one of my trouble areas at the begging of the semester.
Overall, I am very proud of the work I have accomplished during this semester in this class. I believe my writing has improved dramatically. Although my writing is still not perfect, looking back at the change that has occurred over this semester, I can see that I truly have worked hard in every aspect of this class. I believe this class has challenged my writing abilities and has taught me to be a better writer.
Entering this course I was worried because I have struggled with writing in the past, and writing has never been my strongest area. I feared writing classes in middle and high school, and had the same expectations for this course. I had wondered if I was ready for college English, and was worried that my skills and abilities would not be one the level they needed to be for college courses. My attitude and understanding of my writing process have both changed since the beginning of this semester. One thing that really helped my attitude and confidence was the fact that I was able to complete the assignments and get a decent grade. I was worried that I might not be able to do college level writing, and when I started completing the assignments and learning new ways to write my confidence and attitude changed. Another thing that really helped me throughout this course was that there was plenty of reading and information available to guide me through my assignments. I realized that there was more freedom when it comes to writing than I had experienced in high school. Being able to write more freely, and the freedom to choose what subjects I would write over made the assignments more enjoyable and easier to
I came into this class under the impression that I already wrote well enough and wouldn’t need to improve. However, as I progressed through the semester I learned that there is always room to grow. The first paper I produced was not at the level I was hoping but after I actively decided to improve my writing my papers became much better. Looking back on my work in the class I wonder how much my writing has changed and where I still have room to improve. Without evaluating my work I can’t hope to become any better. Through this class I have grown much as a writer but there is still more I can learn.
Over the course of this semester, I have progressed as a writer. Picking up new skills and dropping old bad habits has transformed me into a much better writer than when I entered the English 101. Entering this class, the only English classes that I took were mandatory high school classes all four years. In these classes, however, content was focused on reading novels, poems, and literature. There was usually only one major writing assignment each year, which was a research paper on a topic that was given by our teachers. Although there was some writing involved in these classes, most of the class time was spent on improving my reading and comprehension skills. A small part of the class was given to improve my skills as a writer and even a researcher. In English 101, however, most of the class time was spent on writing and more specifically, academic writing. This includes doing proper research, picking a worthy topic to write about, correctly analyzing sources, and developing a well-rounded, complete paper. I have progressed a writer over the semester by effectively integrating and analyzing sources better, and being more specific with my words.
Regardless of all of these improvements, I know my writing is still far from perfect. My arguments still lack the emotional appeal that, if present, would make my audience consider my arguments a lot faster. My analysis still lack development because often times I just state what happens instead of explaining why. In general, I need to work on controlling my voice and tone throughout an entire essay, which can be fixed if I choose my words more carefully to make sure my diction is uniform. Despite all of this, I am satisfied with myself, I am satisfied with the ways my writing has changed, with the way my writing skills have grown. Why? Because I am learning, and I know that I will continue improving as long as I take chances.
My development as a writer has flourished throughout this semester. The first week of this fall semester started out with writing responses from our readings in the textbook. Looking back through and analyzing my reading responses at the semester to now; I noticed a substantial improvement in not only my grammar skills, but also my summarizing, and in-depth studying of writing adeptness. Another way I have progressed this semester is the vocabulary of my writing has significantly improved and become more scholarly. Another advancement I noticed was that the content of my work has matured, along with my organizational adeptness.
In the past three months I feel like I have accomplished a great deal. As the semester comes to an end I find myself reflecting not only how I have survived the first semester but also what I have learned. The most important thing I have learned so far is how to become a better writer. I did not think it could really happen to me. I did not think I could handle all the work. I did not think I could actually become a better writer. Some how after all the hours of writing, and putting effort into the papers that I wrote this semester, I became a better writer. I did this because I concentrated on two very important areas, with the attitude of, if I could just become better in those then I would become a better writer. With help from an awesome teacher and a reliable tutor I have become a better writer by improving my skills in the areas of procrastination and content.
This class has been significantly more difficult than any other English class I have taken all throughout high school. This semester, I have been introduced to different styles of writing that I have never been exposed to before. This class has been stressful, but also fun. With using all of the resources I have been given throughout the semester, I have been able to do my best to further my writing abilities and hopefully only continue to grow them as I finish my later years in college. Throughout this essay, I will discuss my failures, my successes, my overall performance in the class, and my skill development skills.
In the course of this semester of writing, I grew more than I ever had in my ability to write well. I remember on the first day of class several other students were talking about how hard this writing professor is. I was a bit worried and even thought about switching to an easy professor for a guarantee A so I can get a 4.0. Now, I am grateful that I chose to decide to work hard for a 4.0 instead. Even though I may not get it, I am still glad I stayed because for once, I learned and became a better writer. I can see that my knowledge of conventions definitely improved from last semester. I really loved the feedback for my assignments, since it allows me to realize what I need to improve on and what I should keep doing. Unlike the previous semester, the writing professor only told us our grade on the very first assignment after two months. There were no feedback on how I could improve either, so I had no idea if I was having trouble with anything. Prior to this course, I always had trouble writing sentences and organizing them in such a way that flows and delivers my idea well. I also rarely outline or plan out how I will write a paper too, and even when I did, it was very vague. Out of the five learning outcomes, I grew the most in rhetoric knowledge and writing process from the reading responses and 4 assignment.
Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe that I developed my own personal style a bit from this. At the beginning of the semester my writing was quite choppy and there was plenty of room for improvement in the overall flow of my essays. Now, I use several different tactics such as outlining to create better connections between paragraphs. I believe I was able to move beyond many of the high school ways of writing and make general improvements to my essays.
...t I have improved this area over the course of the semester. I am at the milestone in my writing, however, with hard work and determination I will improve as a writer throughout my college years.
This semester was my very first semester as a college student. Being the first, it was probably the semester I would learn the most in. I learned the expectations for writing that I will have to live up to for the next four years of my college career. Though my high school teachers were usually demanding because I was in the Honors English section throughout high school, writing in college has still ?raised the bar? for me. Also, in high school, we would have weeks to pick a topic, create a thesis, outline the paper, write the paper, and then revise the paper. In college, the time restraints are not quite as lenient. I?ve had to learn to manage my time and be more productive with what free moments I have. Strangely enough, I?ve found the college English experience to be much more rewarding and enjoyable than in high school.
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.
I still had the typical grammatical errors and sentence fragments, but there were not as many. I could see my writing skills were improving based on me actually taking the instructors corrections and advice into consideration. When I created my revision memo for this essay, I attempted to finally perfect the common mistakes I had made. Making my sentences a little longer
This class has helped me realize my strengths and weaknesses in literature. This has allowed me to grow and realize that I am a work in progress. I am confident that by the end of this class my big issues in writing will be improved. Each assignment in this class is helping grow and is making me into the writer I know I can be.
Before taking English 1A, I was a discouraged writer because as an English learner, I did not believe that I had any ability to be an acceptable writer. Therefore, I did not have any joy while I was doing writing assignments. However, I have gradually loved writing through this semester. I fortunately got plenty of helps from my classmates and professor; thus, my writing skills have gotten improved a lot. I currently can feel that writing is a quite enjoyable process, and I like delivering my ideas to other people by writing, too. I am really proud that I have enhanced my pre-writing skills, writing structure and revising skills and have learned how to write an effective thesis statement and how to deal with rhetorical analysis. However, I still have lots of deficiencies in my articles, such as grammar problem and the lack of logical transition.