Reflective Essay: Improving My Writing Skills

Transitioning from high school to college can be overwhelming. Before English 1301, I did not worry about preparing for college. I quickly realized that my little background in writing essays was not enough for college courses. Writing is not just a skill that I will need for English classes. In college, I will have to use effective writing skills in all my classes to complete research papers, essay tests and communicate with professors. Throughout my education, writing strategies persisted to be a challenge for me. I dreaded writing because I could never find ways to transition my thoughts from my mind to the paper. Ironically, a class that petrified me due to the amount of required writing ended up helping me in numerous ways. English 1301 and my professor prepared me for college and real life by giving me a foundation of effective learning strategies.

After taking AP English III, I became better at organizing my papers, but realizing I need to improve my grammar skills and staying focused on my supporting points. All throughout my writing career, I was always thought to be an outstanding writer, especially using vocabulary above my grade range. Naturally, I would see myself as an excellent writer as well until I took Mrs. Bingham’s AP English II course. Mrs. Bingham always gave pointers, tips, and work to improve my class’s writing skills as a whole. I would submit each assignment with high hopes and secretly expect to receive them with minor or no markings or point deductions.

As I look back over the past semester of English Composition, I realize that I have grown as a writer. Not onlyhas my understanding of the writing process changed, my whole attitude towards composition has too. This composition course has made a significant impact on my learning experience and has given me tools to take forward into my future educational and professional goals. Throughout this course, I have discovered things about myself as a writer and know some of my strengths and weaknesses. I now feel more prepared for future writing assignments, whether for work or for school. With the instruction given to me over the past few months, I have grown as a writer and gained confidence in my writing skills.

Although coming up with a good essay may be easier said than done for some people “What is the Value of a Human Life” by Kenneth Feinberg is an excellent example of what goes into a good essay. Incoming English 1301 students would see how writing a strong introduction and conclusion could attract the reader 's attention and give the reader an idea of the essay 's focus and bring closure to the reader, summing up the points or providing a final perspective on the topic. Including quotations can also be an effective way to make a good essay because with the right quotation presented properly can add spice, interest, thought, effectiveness, and support, to your writing. Finally English 1301 students will see how Feinberg remained focused on the main topic of the essay. Staying focused on the topic of the essay is one of the most important aspects of writing a good essay because establishing a clear focus helps readers understand the point of the piece of

Over the course of this class I have greatly improved my writing skills. Although I have kept my grade at a 95% for each paper, it is evident that I am a different type of writer from when I wrote my first paper in this class. By improving on quote integration, correct grammar, and strong thesis', I have been able to become a more skilled and better all around writer. It is especially clear to see the improvement in my spelling and grammar. On the first paper I made 6 mistakes, the second paper 4, and the final paper none. The constant decrease in mistakes comes from, learning to challenging myself to reread my paper numerous times until I feel that it is as perfect as I can make it. The grading deduction for every grammar and spelling error really pushed me to make sure that I hadn't left any mistakes in my paper. I also have gotten into the habit of having my peers and my parents read my paper, following the peer evaluation. I like to hear as many peoples' opinions as I can before I turn in my paper. I know this will be a very beneficial habit in college.

I am thinking about my action plan as a writer have I improved, have I met the goals I set out to achieve on my first day of class, and what have I learned in this class? I will go over my time in this class and review the various topics I mentioned above and more. Looking back over my time in this class I will critique and praise myself. How I felt about writing when I first started this class compared to how I feel now, I would have to say I am more comfortable with writing. In this essay I will review how I have improved as a writer, my greatest challenges, and how has my writing changed from how it was at the start of class to now.

Initially, when I first walked into class, I had no respect for writing papers or the class. However, as the weeks progressed and the weeks went by, I’ve slowly gained the respect that English deserves. While it is still fairly difficult for me to formulate my thoughts and turn them into cohesive, well-structured sentences and paragraphs, I now know that most of what I write now is so much better than what my writing was when we initially started. It is through practice and revision that my writing has improved.

English 101 was a class that I put off taking my first semester because I knew that this was one of my weakest subjects. As time moved on, my skills improved, even though I always dreaded taking this class, because I had a fear of writing bad papers. I chose to have a positive attitude an open mind about my writing assignments to get the best outcome. I learned to be more organized and set time aside to read the book, write down the key points that I want to address to my paper, then analyze what I’ve written. Nevertheless, by doing this, it helped me to make the appropriate changes when it came time to submit my final drafts. It was imperative to be organized, then put thoughts into words and this shows my ability as a writer with expressive

I have taken some classes on writing and have improved my writing drastically over the years. As with everything, there is plenty to improve on. My high school was a college preparatory school, so we did countless papers. One of my strengths is to be able to come up with a paper fairly quickly, but I do need to improve in some areas. Things I should improve on are word choice and sentence fluency. I have had quite a bit of experience with writing, but as with everything, there is room to improve.

In the past few weeks, I have seen myself grow step by step to become a good writer. I have had to work on essays which took time and effort and a few corrections from my peers and my professor. I have become accustomed to new writing skills and techniques which I believe will be of great use in years to come. I intend to incorporate corrections provided in class and even in peer group discussions into my writing. I believe learning is a process which demands discipline and proper guidance. I am thankful that I have managed to acquire all the aforementioned elements in my journey to become a proficient writer. I have grown from an amateur that was completely out of touch with the facets of proper writing.

Being born in a family that has a love for mathematics, I was not exposed to writing that much when I was younger, and as I grow up, I tend to stay away from anything that has to do with writing. Therefore, my skills were lacking compared to other people. Even though I did not have the worse grades in Writing class, I still did not consider my essays to be well written. However, the two writing courses in USciences, which are WR 101 and WR 102, have helped me a lot in strengthening my writing skills. Three of the papers that I wrote within this first year of college are: Literacy Narrative, Editorial, and Long Argument. These assignments showed how I grow as a writer throughout the year as I learned how to write different types of papers.

During the course of this semester, I feel that I have grown substantially as a writer. I think that I could improve even more with practice as well as using a few resources. This class has helped me drastically by improving my writing structure but I think it could have been even better if I had spent my time more efficiently. Overall this class has been very beneficial to me and I think it will really help me in the future.

At the start of my freshman year, literature and language had no interest to me and I feel as though my writing reflected that. When it came to learning how to improve sentence structure or understanding the author’s purpose I was disengaged and didn’t completely grasp key concepts that would have improved my writing ability. But as my time in high school has gone on I’ve come to better understand how important it is to know these skills and that has made a huge and very visible difference in my writing. And because of that writing has become an outlet of personal expression to me as opposed to just being an obnoxious part of English.

Their devotion to showing and writing alongside the information and thoughts I have gotten notification from them has demonstrated to me that writing could be fun, significant and fascinating. I have not read a lot of writings but rather might want to that is whether they are half as intriguing as the topics we have talked about in class room exchanges. Something else that has affected me to enhance my writing skills is simply perusing a percentage of the great and awful case. Every writer has their qualities and weaknesses. Typically my qualities are exceeded by my weaknesses. Things I truly battle with are things like grammar, APA and MLA arranges so when it comes time to compose I could have incredible substance that is truly intriguing yet my evaluation is squashed by sentence pieces and mechanical mistakes. I thought well on the off chance that I haven't got it at this point I should forget about it. In any case, no, from what I have learned this semester and with somewhat more practice I could defeat those issues and could truly add to my writing. In the vast majority of my papers I predominantly concentrate on the substance. From these writing classes, I understood that how we adore or loathe writing does not decide our skills. There is dependably an opportunity to get better in the event that we are awful at something. We would get negative inputs and coming up short grades now and again however we would likewise get passing grades or awards different

Two following types of inventions that I will use as a future writer include, brainstorming and freewriting. Brainstorming is producing ways with a group of people or by yourself of generating new ideas around the same type or area of interest. To do brainstorming you can either do it by yourself, or if with other partners to bounce ideas off each other which bring up new different ideas others can use. To help write out a brainstorm you can either write down different ideas as they come to the mind, or start with an objective and set a timer, and with that set up a flip chart, or a tree diagram. I will use brainstorming by helping me generate new ideas as a writer that will help me on essays or other things in the future, which in the end will make me an overall better writing. The second invention I find helpful as a future writer is; freewriting. Free writing is a pre-writing technique with a set