English has
always been a more difficult subject for me as a student. I’ve never been a
great writer overall and I find writing stressful sometimes. It is difficult to
for me to get an idea that is in my head into words and down on paper. I knew
that freshmen year in English would be a huge jump from my middle school
English experience. The amount of writing would be increased and graded harder.
I was definitely correct, but I soon found out that the challenge wasn’t such a
bad thing.
This year in
English class, we have written a variety of types of papers. These include
Profiles, Literacy Narratives, Research Papers, and Literary Analyses. These
genres of papers were newly introduced to us and we found that some were easier
than others. For me, the Literacy Narrative and the Profile were not difficult
to write. I find it is easier to write about past experiences and people
because I know them so well and they are interesting to me. The more interested
I am in the topic I am writing on, the better I do. I enjoyed writing those
papers. The only difficulty in these two essays was Voice. Since I had a
personal connection to the topics, I was sometimes less formal than I should
have been. I used exclamations and got some points taken off. I’ve learned from
that and I only use appropriate punctuation and I’ve made my writing more
formal.
On the other hand, I had some trouble writing the Research and Literary
Analysis Paper. They were the first papers that we had ever had to make theses
for. It was challenging to try to think of a thesis and ideas to support it.
That’s where I got lost most points. Out of all the Traits of Good Writing,
Ideas was the most difficult category for me. The Literary Analysis wasn’t as
challenging as the Research Paper because I understood the short story, but I
had to learn about a subject that I didn’t know too much about for my Research
Paper. It was hard to support a thesis about a topic that was new to me.
Citing our sources was troubling because we have never learned before.
There were a certain number of ways you could cite sources and they had to be done a certain way. It was tricky for me because I had to remember to put my punctuation
after the citation if it’s in the body of my paper. The Works Cited at the end
of our papers weren’t as difficult because we had noodle tools to help us. Now,
thanks to Dr. D and a lot of comments about citing, I know how to cite my
sources correctly.
When I looked back at all of my papers, I found out strengths and
weaknesses in my writing. My strengths were mostly in Organization, Word
Choice, and Mechanics. I believe that was why the Profile and Literacy
Narrative where easy to write. I organized them like a story and chose words
that described them in a way that the reader could understand. But my
weaknesses were more important to look at and develop. I saw that my weaknesses
are in my Ideas, Support, and Sentence Structure. Ideas are very important in
writing and I’ve been trying to improve that. I read in my comments about how I
repeat my ideas and support that I’ve already shown and so I definitely have to
work on that. As a read my papers and comments again, I saw that my sentences
don’t flow very well and sometimes paragraphs don’t transition as well as they
should. These traits are crucial for me to improve to become a better writer.
Along with some of the broader
categories of writing, I also have to work on some specifics of writing as I
mention in my Common Errors List. I saw that I repeat a lot of words that begin
sentences such as “There”, “This”, and “These”. I need to find other words to
use so I don’t become repetitive. I also use the words “very” and “really” a
lot to stress something, but I need to find better adjectives that are more
descriptive and less informal. The last trouble I have is with commas and
colons. I never learned how to properly use colons and semicolons and so I try
not to use them that often. I should learn to use them to make writing easier!
When I got the WrAP back, I wasn’t
surprised in the scores in each category. Although I did better than I thought
I would, it really highlighted the struggles that I have with writing which
I’ve mentioned throughout this reflection. After this whole process of reading
my papers, the WrAP, and all the comments again, I have a good idea of what I
can improve for next year in English ll. I plan to take everything I’ve learned
this year and put it into use to develop my writing. If I achieve these goals,
it will make writing easier and a more pleasurable experience for me.
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