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Reflection on writing personal narrative
Reflection on writing personal narrative
Reflection on writing personal narrative
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Throughout the semester, I’ve learned many stylistic techniques and felt more confident and expressive in my writing. All my pieces in the portfolio revolve around my personal identity, which I had not intended in the beginning. I wrote about a significant childhood memory, a long lost beloved place, the topic of animal rights, and a consistent pattern I’ve noticed that has shaped my outlook on my life and on myself. These were stories that many people do not know about me, so it meant a lot that I could craft essays on these experiences and illustrate how they truly matter to me. In all of these essays, I wanted to convey vivid and genuine details to allow my audience to empathize, grow, and learn with me. Through incorporating forceful diction
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.
Although a personal statement is supposed to be mine, in the back of my head, I was thinking that an admission officer would look at this sheet of paper I had written and base my admission on it. Then I felt that although this was supposed to be my story, it was not really what I wanted to say because the purpose was to please someone else. At a certain point, all creativity was gone and my only goal was to have a perfect personal statement. The need to have a perfect personal statement did not allow me to write an essay that was truly me. I already had my mind set that I was going to write what I thought the reader wanted to hear instead of what I truly wanted. I decided, however, that although the two questions of “Is it good?” and “Does this suck?” Barry presents would haunt me for the rest of my life, if my personal statement was not truly me, then I was getting into schools for the wrong reasons. It was surprising how, for so long, I struggled writing this life-altering essay and when I just let it go, and started writing without worrying about perfectionism, I “…was both there and not there… and the lines made a picture and the picture made a story” (124). I was able to write an essay that mattered to me as opposed to something that was a misguided version of myself.
As the semester finally approaches the finish line, I revisit my past work to compare and contrast how this class has developed me into a successful writer at the college level. Throughout the year my writing style has developed and become broader as I have learned how to incorporate more of my personal views as well as reliable, unbiased information. This portfolio is a representation of how many things I have learned along the way while being an English 102 student.
Writing isn’t my strongest suit and always has room for improvement. Throughout this semester writing composition 10103 wasn’t my favorite class in the world, but it was a great learning experience to improve my writing skills. Transitioning from a high school academic English class to college level writing class was a big step for me. I spent countless nights where I would just stare at my computer screen having no idea what to write, but practice makes perfect. Having a professor with high standards in his students in their writing skills really made me push myself the hardest I have ever pushed myself in a writing course. The work in this portfolio shows that I have improved in using methods of organization and sentence structure. Although I made drastic improvement in my organization and sentence structure methods, I have much more room for improvement in my writing skills, and also need to improve my essay planning and writing my essays on time.
In this portfolio reflection essay I will be addressing the five essays I have written for my English 101 class. Along with addressing the five essays I have wrote I also will be stating my strengths and weaknesses of those essays. The five essays this portfolio will include is a diagnostic essay, revised narrative essay, profile essay, evaluation essay, and arguing a position essay. Those five essays I have written over the course of this semester have been very helpful towards my writing skills. Punctuating, staying on topic, my introductions, and conclusions are areas I struggle with when writing papers, but by writing those five papers during this semester has helped me improve on those areas.
The first essay, “Literacy Narrative” was written towards a very general audience. Basically, a narrative is written to whoever reads the work. When I wrote the piece, I was not really focusing on who I was writing to, because the audience was so broad. I was basically telling a story about how I have progressed as a writer over the years. In a sense, I was writing more to myself than to anyone else, because I was reliving personal experiences and rekindling old memories. I was writing for self-discovery. The other part of it was that I was writing to the class members and to the professor as well, because I was telling the story of my life as a writer to other writers who might benefit from the things that I learned. In my next essay piece, “discourse community of vaping”, I was writing to a more limited audience. This piece was very simple and unique. The reason why it was so simple and easy to explain was because I was in the vaping discourse community, and I was prepared since my professor explained the topic thoroughly. Finally, the third piece, “Writing Research” I wrote in a more thorough fashion, to explain how writing by hand and typing have pros and cons. I was writing with those in mind that possibly have had experience with writing books, especially authors and major writers. I included these pieces in my portfolio of this
Identity-“Ones personal qualities.”Identiy is something only he or she can fully define. My uncle says I am affectionate,cheerful, and calm. My grandmother sees me as slim, pretty and sweet. My dad described me as perky, cheerful and happy, my mom says beautiful, gentle, and self-conscious. These adjectives describe me accurately, yet they are only abstract versions of me. Adjectives cannot begin to describe me and I aknowlege these descriptions for what they are, a condensed translation from my outward self to the world. It is impossible for anyone to understand me completely because nobody has experienced the things I have. My mother has never cherished a raggedy doll named Katie and my father never spent hours upon hours making collages and scrap books for his future children. My uncle never hid in the back of a pick-up-truck and traveled four hours to New York and my grandmother has never walked hours in the rain looking for the Queen of England. My identity is something only I can define.
Ever since I was little, I have had this strong pull to the world of writing. Controlling words and creating something that is solely your own really got my gears running. As the years pressed on, so did my writing style. With each coming year, my writing has grown to be what it is today. While it may not be perfect, I do know that I have a certain drive when it comes to style and the strength of my words. When I came into ENG 111, I was ready for some motivation, for I haven’t written in a long time. Each assignment helped me grow and learn what my writing style truly is.
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.
This is a personal story of mine. The story takes place during most of my adolescence. It is my journey through different homes and schools. It begins more than a decade ago. In this experience, there were many friends and family members.
Over the past 11 weeks we have been given different writing prompts, for my portfolio I chose my favorite 4 pieces. The first piece I chose to share is my personal narrative. I chose my personal narrative as my first piece of writing because I think it gives the reader a good idea of who I am as a person and also as a writer. This narrative gives the reader an in-depth look at one of the most important times in my life. I think it shows the kind of emotion and thought I put into my pieces of writing. I was able to express my thoughts and feelings about my father’s passing and the things that happened after through this writing. I enjoyed this narrative because I was able to take this important time in my life and get
Transition is an element many people struggle with at one point in their life. For students, transitioning from high school to college is quite a difficult task to quickly overcome. Personally, from reading Sondra Perl and Nancy Sommers articles, they have given me a better understanding of what sort of identity I obtain in college at this point. Day to day writing has taught me what sort of writer I have developed into throughout my college experience. Throughout my transition into college and reading Perl and Sommers articles, my writing identity has changed dramatically using a specific writing process. These writing techniques have changed into my personal life and how I write to several sorts of audiences.
A person's identity is crucial in the decision-making process and behavior. The individual's identity depends on many aspects of their life and environment where they were raised. Many people's sports, clubs, or hobbies are what forms their identity. Personally, my early life and family dynamic have molded my identity mainly but, one aspect of someone's life cannot be the only contributing factor. Other contributing factors to my personal identity are having to move my junior year of high school, living with not only my grandparents but my aunt and uncle at the same time, and my faith.
My placement essay was such a distant memory, that I did not even know what to look for and where to find the old assignment. Being so comfortable in my position of being a student at Montclair State, it seems as if I had forgotten the steps taken to be in this state. I can remember the pressure felt with dealing with the task of expressing myself in a brief essay. My struggle was explaining the person from my past and who had become at that point in my life. When thinking of my life, I thought it possessed so many experiences and character with depth that it was impossible to smash it into one essay. Yet, I was able to learn that it doesn’t matter how much you say and what you say, but it matters how you say it.
I identify as a sixteen year old Egyptian American high school senior. That’s quite a mouthful! For a large portion of my life, I attended a private school, NUIA, and at the beginning of fifth grade, they offered me an option to skip fifth grade and go to sixth. I immediately said yes. Although, when I look back now, the only reason I said yes is because the middle-schoolers had lockers, and I thought I would look cool if I had one too. This, along with the fact that I started school a bit early accounts for the age disparity between me and my peers. Although, quite often, I find myself behind my friends in sports and fitness, I more than make up for it in personality. When I ran for Senior class president(where I placed second of four) last