Reflection: Improving My Writing

Overall, I feel that both my quality of writing and writing process have improved over the course of the semester. This was important because in my first writing analysis statement at the beginning of the year, the two main things that I wanted to improve on were my quality and process. Throughout the semester, I learned to rely less on teacher comments and revisions and instead improve on my self-revision process, which was almost non-existent before I came to college.

Throughout the semester, I have noticed a great improvement in my writing. In the beginning of the year, I struggled with understanding how to use APA since this is the first class I have taken that uses APA. The most difficult part about APA is the reference page and in text citation. To get a better understanding of how to write a reference page and use in text citations, I would use websites such as Purdue Owl and at times I would also use Youtube. Another skill I developed is learning how to use Logos, Pathos, and Ethos in my writing. Because of this skill, I was able to not only use it for English 102, but also for my Creative Writing 101 class.

This course offers numerous opportunities to improve our writing. In this class, I not only enhanced the skills I already had, but also learned new writing concepts. Before I took this class, I knew that my writing is poor, and I have always wanted to improve it; however, I did not know how and what aspects of writing to improve. So, I came into this class with the ambition to improve my writing, and I have accomplished my goal although there is still room for improvement. At this point of this course, I have learned the elements that successful writing is composed of, and I am now able to categorize the various techniques that can work together to define strong

Throughout the timespan of a semester could you improve your writing to where there would be noticeable differences? When writing for English 1010, I noticed that there was obvious weaknesses and minimal strengths or lack thereof in my writing abilities. In many ways I do believe that I was able to improve in areas pertaining to reading, thinking, researching, and writing.

When reflecting on my experience writing, editing, and completing the culminating journal assignment, I found that it was fairly easy considering how this was an emotional, opinion based paper. This paper probably took me about three hours to complete because I had to thoroughly reminisce on what I had learned this semester. However, after taking a look over my journals, I found substantial growth in myself since the beginning of the school year. A specific challenge that I overcame when writing this paper was procrastination because I finished it as soon as I got it assigned. Additionally, I feel this paper highlights my intriguing flow and unique style of portraying ideas. Accordingly, I am most proud of how I elaborated on specific journals and thoughts throughout this paper. Overall, I hope to grow as a writer in the future by attending meetings at the writing center and asking teachers and peers for advice. In the end,

Over the course of the semester we have written multiple papers with an assortment of topics. Writing the various papers has expanded my writing skills because each paper required different skills to satisfy the requirements of the paper. Through the various strategies we have learned in class I have improved my writing tremendously through using clear and precise language, considering feedback, and incorporating and explaining evidence.

After reading over my summer assignment essay and analyzing the comments and feedback of my writing I feel that I have a lot of work to do to improve my writing as a whole. I feel I had the ideas down on what I wanted to say on my summer essay. It was just difficult expressing them in a way that was compelling enough to the reader. The topics for the essay were not challenging to me because I felt that I wrote a lot about the one I chose on alienation. Throughout my reflection I will discussed the weaknesses and strengths in my writing as well as talk about ways I feel I could improve my writing.

Two ways that my writing has improved in the last quarter would have to be my word choice and detail. I feel as if my word choice is a lot stronger than it has been in the past, and has made my writing a lot more enjoyable for others to read. Detail has been something I have been focused on in my writing and believed it has improved in the last quarter.

I have always had a passion for writing as it has always come easy to me. As with all writers, I do know my weaknesses when it comes to my writing. Personally, I believe my strengths as a writer consist of having organization and logic within my papers. My weakness is having a lack of creativity. I have always had difficulty expressing creativity through my writing and have resorted to writing clean-cut, dry papers. I took this class for a degree requirement, but also possibility to improve my writing skills. Over the semester, this course has polished my writing skills and has taught me many new ones, such as becoming more concise with my writing and going through research steps. Due to the helpfulness of this course, I would recommend this course to all incoming freshmen at the University of Cincinnati.

Reading page after page so far this semester there has been a few things that has really opened up my eyes. The first would be to be really detailed about my writing and not just throwing it together; before I wouldn’t think about what I was going to write and I would just start typing, whatever I came up with I turned it in. I never once revised a paper or reread my papers because truthfully I didn’t really care I just wanted to be done with the assignment. Another thing that stood out a lot to me was the free write strategy. It is my personal favorite now, it really helps you get all your thoughts out but not worry about the really important things. After I get all my thoughts out I can just go back to add more to details to the paper.

I have improved on expanding my paragraphs. This was the skill I felt I needed help with the most. The essays I wrote for this class I had a difficult time with expanding the paragraphs. If I make my point in three paragraphs I wouldn't know what else to say. For example, I had to write a five-page paper about preventing straw gun purchase. In the essay it was difficult for me to come up with new ideas on the topic. Even though I had background information and I had research information. However,

to be an exceptional writer; however, during the course of my writing 120 class I faced a myriad of difficulties in efforts to complete my writing assignments. Assignments such as: a memoir, rhetorical analysis, and blog were relatively new writing concepts I have not yet explored, and with the completion of each, I must say I have grown as a writer. College courses such as writing 120 are futile to the success of students who wish to grow professionally as writers in whichever field of business he or she may choose to pursue. To conclude my writing 120 course, I will begin to reflect on the tasks I have completed in efforts to become an effective writer.

When rereading my major paper one, I noticed a few issues but also a few improvements. My writing had improved from exercise one tremendously, I managed to really focus on making this paper an informational paper whereas in my other writing I struggled with putting my opinion in. My writing also improved in the grammatical sense I noticed fewer comma splices and run on sentences. My paper had taken on a professional tone, that my previous writing lacked. Areas my writing could still use some improvement though is in introducing quotations, when reviewing back through my paper I noticed many of the quotations were awkwardly placed or just not introduced correctly. My writing could also see improvement in avoiding the repetition of certain

Throughout this semester year, I have accomplished four low stake assignments and many different types of writings and reports that I have never experienced before. By looking back to the works that I have done, I noticed several mistakes and learned new methods and skills that are needed for the the various types of writing, such as a police report, an academic cover, screenplay script, and even a social study questionnaire and its analysis. I also developed my ability to work in group from the group activities that Professor. Zuluaga assigned us to, along with the development of my ability to incorporate among the group members and myself.

Essentially, my writing process for all of my papers began while listening and discussing in class with other groups of people. I would use previous blackboard posts from my journal to act as an initial point for brainstorming my ideas. Then, through group discussions I was able to deduce my broader points of interest along with potential sources of intertextual support from the novels. As seen in my final portfolio, the loose leaf pages show all of my notes that I collected for the potential use in my essays. Depending on the paper, I would either outline on looseleaf pages or online and then begin to construct the main topics of my paper while adding potential evidence from the texts to support those arguments. Next, I would return to each of the examples taken from the texts, and then I would analyze them with close reading skills. Thus, I would draw out the support to affirm my claims and apply them to my argument. The peer reviews revealed areas where my analysis was lacking, so after I targeted those areas to increase validity of those points. After checking mechanical errors, I asked a friend to peer review my paper to ensure that the argument was clear to someone who had not even read