Progressing Steadily in Academic Writing Skills

Overall this semester, I believe my writing in this course has been one of my strongest areas and I am excited to keep getting better at this skill. With my mother’s help during middle and high school, my papers have improved significantly and now I think I have a firm grasp on writing for various disciplines, but particularly professional settings like social work. I picked up on APA format quickly after doing MLA for several years and it now feels like second nature to me. There are certainly still formatting areas to improve upon and learn more about, but at this stage, I think I am progressing steadily. Thirdly, I am able to find appropriate sources easily to reference in my activity analyses, which is crucial as I advance in the program.

I I frequently received this comment and it perhaps stems from English classes in high school where I was told to “embellish my sentences” and make them more interesting for the reader. Since coming to college though, I have slowly realized this is unnecessary when writing for professional settings and only is important for pieces meant to entertain an audience and capture their attention. I have been working on this throughout the semester and there has been improvement when examining all of my papers and their feedback chronologically. In particular, I tend to overuse “very,” “a lot,” “always,” and “never.” I believe I use these to overemphasize what I am trying to say and they are unnecessary as long as I have developed my argument clearly. They are vague qualifiers and rarely have a place in professional writing. As a replacement, I could use more descriptive adjectives and adverbs to emphasize my point without having to use extra

I strive to improve my abilities in all academic areas and writing is particularly important in the social work field. Each day, I will be required to write case reports, referral documents, and other pieces, so it will be of great benefit to refine my skills while in my undergraduate career. Therefore, I do believe that if I put my mind to it and keep working on removing extra words from my papers, my writing will improve over time and I will receive even better feedback from professors. I am thankful this class offered me the chance to explore different kinds of professional writing styles, such as reflecting on an interview with another individual, examining my own background and beliefs, and relating course material to real-life situations. It was good preparation for what I will need to do in future classes and in the field, so I am glad a writing-intensive course like this one is required prior to entering the social work