Dear Professor Heller,
At the start of the semester, I had made a personal goal for myself which was to improve my English verbal and writing skills. I feel after working on different essays, writing pieces and finally the research paper, I have learned a lot and have become a much better writer. Over the last few weeks, I have also felt that I have accomplished my goal of becoming better at my English verbal skills as I made it a point to practice a lot as English is not my first language and I have always struggled with proper pronunciation and grammar. A few of my friends read my essays and they were pleasantly surprised with my work and complimented my progress.
I would like to start by discussing the first assignment which was the point of view essay. I had a great amount of difficultly in understanding and working on this assignment but when I got the hang of it, I really enjoyed it. This was something that I had not done before in any of my writing classes so I think it was a great addition to my writing skills. I must admit writing in a positive and negative way about the
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I feel when I write narrative essays, I’m narrating a story which gives me freedom to express my thoughts without any restrictions. Also, the topic I chose which was related to acne is really personal to me and writing about it was emotionally straining for me but I guess that’s what led to it being a good writing piece for me. I think writing leads us to express our inner most issues, desires or complexities in a very beautiful manner. I have been struggling with this issue for a long time and writing about it really made me feel great about myself. Although I didn’t receive good grades in this particular assignment, I think it helped me to understand what narrative writing is all about in a great
In the second assignment, I wrote a personal story, it was about my experience in my previous job, back home. I focused more on an interesting story that I witnessed it while I was working there, I believe I turned into an enjoyable story. However, I did not get a decent grade, it definitely, was my bad that I did not revise my paper not pre-reading. Consequently, the grade was worth learning. Also, I improved my skill of describing a scene, that I should to help my readers to visualize the scene and keep them interesting by connect the dots with each other. For instance, in the first paragraph, in the fourth page, I ended it up with, “I approached the the back entrance there wasn’t a door; there was hill in the hallway and the flame was just
I would like to start off with thanking you for having the time to review the work and effort that I have put into my English 101 Final Portfolio. In the time in class that I have had this quarter I have learned new techniques that I had not known before in writing, for example I have learned about how to build paragraphs in a correct formal way. In my work in the portfolio I hope to show how my skills as a writer have improved from the work I have done before. I plan to take the experience that I have had in this class and take it with me to help me improve as a student on other class topics. In the time that I have been in class I believe that it has helped me in a positive way to help me manage my time, along with building my confidence in writing. In this beginning of the quarter I had many challenges when it came to writing a paper and I feel that I have improved my skills when it came to writing an essay.
When writing a five paragraph essay, there are five steps one must fallow in order to attain perfection, these steps include understanding the question, brainstorming, writing a rough copy, revising, and creating a final draft. The first and most important step is understanding the topic. The topic of the essay is what the essay will be about and if this is misunderstood, the whole essay will be off course. The second step, brainstorming, will help organize thoughts and ideas so they flow amiably. There are many different ways to brainstorm, some of the most helpful are making a web of ideas, making a list of ideas, or creating a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the conviction. All these ideas will be related to the topic at hand. For example, if the essays topic is about how the earth is affected by global warming, then the brainstorming ideas might include the ozone lair being reduced or how global climate has raised. The third step when writing a five paragraph essay is creating the rough draft. The first draft must have all the features the final will, but does not have to be...
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.
Throughout the semester i only learned few new things but i did improve and solidify my skill of writing. Before my first year of college my skills have always undermined by other high school english teachers and with that came disappointing grades. I am writing this paper as a reflection of the semester and the progress i have made as a writer. I now understand many things that my high school teachers have done a poor job demonstrating and i am grateful that i decided to take my own route in my education instead of their syllabus. I entered the semester with anxiety that i would perform as i did before but i clearly outdid my own expectations by receiving top grades on my essays.
Over the years of my schooling, I have gradually developed my writing preparation to help me become a better writer. I continue to find ways to improve my writing abilities by working on my weaknesses and by incorporating the feedback I receive from my peers and my instructors into my essays. At times, I still struggle when preparing to start my essay, but with precise and organized planning and obtaining the help of others, I am certain that I will become more proficient in my writing
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.
I am sitting in my bed, thinking about my process of writing as I am trying to go through it. It seems the more I think about it, the less I understand it. When I am writing, I don’t think. Which I know, sounds bad. But, I spend every single moment of every single day over thinking, over analyzing, and over assuming every aspect of my life. When I’m writing, I’m free from that for just a little bit. Until of course, my hands stop typing or the pencil (no pens- never pens) stops moving, then I’m right back on the carousel that is my brain. Heidi Estrem says, “...writers use writing to generate knowledge that they didn’t have before.” (Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity 18). I believe my ability to write without an exact destination
I have reflected over my written prose of this past semester I have come to understand my strengths and weaknesses in my comments and short essays. I reviewed the goals of the course to understand how they a line with my abilities and future goals. My strength lies in in my ability for contextualization and critical thinking. My weaknesses are in my ability to write and frame an argument based on evidence within the text. The stated goals of the course helped me to outline my progress over the semester. However, for me, the most important part is my ability to move forward and better my written prose. In a review of this semester, I understand how I have progressed towards certain goals and how to move forward with my future goals in the semesters to come.
The narration paper we wrote at the beginning of the semester was an eye opener to me. When the assignment was first given I remember thinking it was going to be easy. I choose to write about the impact juvenile detention center had on me. I wanted to focus on the positive aspects of my experience in a juvenile detention center. I struggled to get my point across because I focused too much on why I was there instead of my experiences. My writing skills improved from this paper was my sentence structure.
Every person has their own unique way of writing which makes their writing stand out among the other people’s writing. Weather a person’s writing is full of high leveled vocabulary to a person use of complex sentences. Throughout the semester I had many times where I felt that my writing was weak at certain points or at times where my writing skills to started to improve. The major assignments and the short answer responses helped improve my skills as a writer. Even though all three major assignments helped improved my writing skills, the one that had the most effect in my writing was the report essay as it helped discover new methods while also the short answer response number 4 helped me to analysis images in an aspect that I did not know before.
Before this class, I never thought I was a good writer. I never put much thought or effort into any type of English work. I was always good at answering short answer response questions because I got my point across in a timely fashion. Reading wasn’t my strong point, so over this past semester I have point a huge emphasis on my reading and writing skills, hoping that before I headed off to college I would learn these crucial parts of English. I took this class to improve my writing, reading, grammar, and thinking skills to become a better all around student. College English has done a great job of getting me ready for the real deal college classes. I now understand what it takes to write a good college level paper, and how much work and effort I have to put forth to reach my goals in life.
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 to see what areas I lacked in and where I succeeded.
I was shocked to see a lot of red pen marks on my paper, full of positive and negative comments. The negative comments were the feedback my English teacher gave me to help me fix my errors. It was so helpful to receive feedback and improve my writing because at first my ideas where all over the place and after I broke it down to big junks to make it clearer. Knowing that I was able to re write my essay again I was calm and did a new draft with a more cohesive
Self-Assessment Commentary Looking back, at the beginning of the course, I desperately desired to sharpen my writing skills to a great extent. The aspects I craved for improvement were to write essays more smoothly, to come up with suitable examples to reinforce my standpoints, and to convince readers through my essays. My plan to advance the writing skills was to read good English articles, to join writing workshops, and to go over academic materials. However, I only achieved one goal this semester, which is reading academics materials.