Over the course of the semester, I feel that I have grown as a writer in many ways. When I came into the class, there were skills I had that I already excelled at. During my time in class, I have come to improve on those skills even more. Before I took this class I didn’t even realise what I was good at. This is the first class where I felt I received feedback on my writing that helped me to actually review my work in see what areas I lacked in and where I succeeded. Some of the skills I had shocked me as I didn’t think I had those capabilities in me. One of our first assignments that our class did was write a response to a piece of work we read, and use that for inspiration in on our own poems. I wrote a poem about a necklace that held meaning to me, and the end result surprised me. At first I thought I would fail the assignment because I didn’t This once again showed in my first essay while I was telling of my parents wedding. In another passage, I’m telling of what was going on from my perspective. I write, “My uncle and I got into quite a bit of trouble for running around and not being there for pictures when we needed to be. I was out of breath from running away from my duties as the flower girl. I would run into different scenes where the photographer was taking pictures.” I believe I had really good use here in putting the reader in the scene, and describing what was going on. When writing about my shaping influence for my third essay, my research paper, I first had to set the scene for the readers and give them a reason to read. In order to do that, I had to describe why this topic affected me. These capabilities that I have are ones I was able to develop on over the course of this semester. Now that I can recognize my skills, I can focus on how to improve these skills even more. Even though I’m good at poetry, description, and narration I can still build and improve these
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.
The reason I use such personal examples is because I think that it will help the readers of my essay understand that originality is something that I have experienced as being difficult to achieve. I feel that if I make personal connections in my writing other people will be more apt to connect to my writing, and interpret their own meaning. At the start of my English course I tried to not make personal connections in my writing; I thought it was unacceptable to do so at the college level since it was unacceptable in my high school English classes. After only two classes I realized that the English 101 class I was in was asking me to explore my own thoughts and interpretations of texts so that I would be prepared to write this very critical
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.
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.
...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.
As my English 101 class comes to an end, I have realized how much I have transformed as a writer. In this essay, I am going to explain what I realized my strengths and weaknesses are as a writer and how they have manifested themselves throughout the quarter. I was skeptical at first coming into this class knowing that English takes formidable work and dedication, but I am very proud of the progress I have made. We completed a great deal of work throughout the quarter; from grammar exercises, summary reviews, and two challenging essays. Throughout the quarter I found myself improving in each category. As a writer, my skills and confidence have developed into more clarity and thought, something I have always wanted to be, as a result of a well constructed class that led to a superb educational experience.
I have always struggled with this as an author. All writers have strengths as well. This helps use in are writing. One of my strengths as a writer is I can come up with very creative ideas for fiction writing, this is not difficult for me because I have a good imagination. In addition I think that I am very organized in my writing as well.
One skill that I wish I had time to improve on is citing sources in MLA style. Through the course, I refused to seek help from my professor until week seven, one thing I regret doing. that could have allayed the fear and doubt I had about this course. Any questions I had could be cleared up as the course progressed. My essays through the subsequent weeks have demonstrated my strength and weaknesses. I do not have many strengths when it comes writing, but still I consider my greatest strength in writing to be being able to clearly understand the prompt and answer it correctly, especially with the analysis essays. I think this is just because I spend most of the scarce time on hand just to think about the prompt, for example, when I was preparing for my rhetorical analysis essay on globalization I thoroughly read both article on globalization by both Kwame Anthony Appiah and franklin Foer .An obvious struggle I have as a writer is organization and transitions. I tend to jump from one topic to another and sometimes cover. I should have used more transitional words in between sentences and paragraphs to make my reader understand the logic of my paper. I have not had enough writing experience and the writing process is difficult for me. I do sometimes admit that it takes days to complete one assignment, but it will be worth it when I become a proficient
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.
Overall, I believe that this course has enhanced my writing. Previously, I never added an element of first person in my formal essays. I believe it was because in high school there was a bad connotation with it, but now I’ve learned that adding my own opinion enhances my essay and makes it more interesting and elaborate. I think it’s really useful to incorporate my own opinion throughout my essay to make it more personable and relatable. I’ve also found that the They Say, I Say book has helped me a lot in terms of structuring and formatting my thesis statements and topic sentences. This has majorly improved my writing and has allowed me to be more clear and concise with my ideas. Before, I always struggled with writing my thesis and topic sentences
During the course of the semester, all of the writing and research skills I developed helps to strengthen my self-confidence in many areas and it aids me in achieving my goals for the future. By developing more effective research approaches for finding and citing sources, I advanced from an inexperienced writer to a confident writer with the suitable knowledge to create effective essays to capture my audience. Having confidence in my abilities to use the skills I learned will help me to become a success in college. With more practice and valuation of my strengths and weaknesses, I can continue to improve and become an excellent communicator in the future.
Looking through my past submissions and pieces of work throughout this past semester, I have made many realizations in regards to my progress as an English student. Through re-reading my writing, and reviewing the feedback I have received on my writing, I can recognize my growth as an English student. In addition to realizing my growth, I am also able to see a lot of areas that still need work. This past semester I have faced many challenges, I have pushed myself to go outside of my comfort zone, and I have excelled in several areas. After analyzing my past works from this semester, I have identified many re-occurring strengths and weaknesses from each unit, as well as challenges and goal assessments for myself in the future.
Much like Benjamin Franklin believed, I feel that a person should take advantage of the time the person has in life with activities a person wants to do or needs to do. A person should not spend much time on activities the person does not want to do. Life is way too short to concern oneself with work or other activities one wants nothing to do with all the time. When possible, I try to forget about my responsibility and just let go of the ‘things’ that do not matter to me. I think a person should try to occupy oneself with something productive, worthwhile, or necessary at all times. Even though a person’s life is left up to a person to live, I cannot imagine thinking that I owe my time to society through working a job that I simply despise. I am a compassionate person, but I do not owe anyone anything regarding my time.
In high school I didn’t consider myself that great of a writer, but I always seemed get decent grades on what I wrote. I mean I might just not be giving myself enough credit on my writing. I’m not really sure; I guess I don’t really think that I do anything that greatly. A lot of people did want my help writing their papers in high school, so I guess I couldn’t have been but such a horrible writer. In high school, the most important things to me weren’t the people, the experiences, the parties or any of that; I prided myself on my work. Now that isn’t all bad because it got me the grades to get into my dream school, but I think that I lost of what could have been a great four years of my life. I’m glad that I’ve had that experience though because now I realize you need balance. You can have fun and do you school work too, you just have to stay organized and on top of things. I’m really hoping that this will be a great five years for me, and that my writing will improve over the course of this semester.