My Improvement As A Writer

Over this quarter of English, I have learned many things out of the three to four essays that we have written. I have learned how to write college papers in the appropriate page requirements. Our teacher noticed after the first two essays we wrote that we suffered from sentence fragments, sentence run ons, and comma splices. I have learned how to fix those errors in my papers that I write. A thing I have learned about myself as a writer is that I write very well when a paper is about my personal life because it is easier to write about yourself than about a topic that you are just researching for the first time. If the paper is about my life experiences, I would get a good grade on it.

A semester has passed since I started college and my journey of becoming a better writer. It has been a very important semester for my future college career, and I would not be here without the things I have accomplished. The composition program has really helped me to prepare for what college writing is all about. Now standing here and looking back I could not imagine how it would be without that class. I believe my English, and my writing is better than it has ever been, and all thanks to the composition program.

After this semester of English 102, at Bristol Community College I feel that I have gained the skill to articulate what I want to convey to the reader in many ways. I don’t just look at grammatical error, but instead I look for ways to make my sentences more effective and concise. Nevertheless, I hope that this strategy will continue to help me improve my writing even further on in the future.

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

From writing thoughtful poems to research papers, I have experienced composing a diverse portfolio of literary analysis and criticisms throughout the school year. I started out the year writing minimally. By the end of the year, I noticed I was able to express my ideas and thoughts in a more clear and concise way on paper. Ultimately, each composition allowed me to widen my horizons as a writer and see how I could improve as a writer.

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

“ There are your radish seeds everyone.” Said Mr. Susick. The whole class looked around at each other with a blank confused face. It was the first day of junior year in my English class. Mr. Susick started talking about how our first assignment would be to grow radishes. We were all thinking, how in the world does gardening relate to English class. I had heard about this project from previous juniors but none of them said what the real reason was. All Mr. Susick said was that you need to let the project teach itself and get into nature. He left us with one bit of information along with the requirements to start. The main goal of the assignment was to extract your own universal truths. For the first time in English class,

Writing Is a kind of typing symbols, letters and other writing tools to help the writer communicate with the reader or connect his ideas. It is the fourth skill in language skills and the most one that needs creation and imagination. In this essay, I am going to write about the importance of developing writing.

This semester in ENG 101 I went in with a better perspective and view of what the class would be like versus last semester when I hated that I had to enroll in ENG 100E. I knew that it would be similar to ENG 100E but with more emphasis on writing and actually putting to use everything that we learned last semester. Although my ACT score was the reason that I was in ENG 100E last semester I am really thankful that I had to take that class, because it actually helped me this semester with ENG 101. This semester I was more involved and actually participated versus last year where I rarely opened up to answer any questions in class. I as well feel as if taking 100E has helped me this semester to become a better writer with adding more description to my essays to make the reader actually visualize what they are reading or have read. Even though I still may not be the best writer I am able to see for myself that I am no longer that inexperienced writer who’s blinded by their writing errors. I am able to take advice from others for my writing without being offended my mistakes, and I know that they are just trying to help me in the long run.

I did not have a firm writing philosophy before this semester, but I to some degree I understood the importance writing can have on a situation. Now I understand that writing has two outcomes: gaining support or losing support. When writing an essay it is best if the writing is as specific as possible. This way the audience is hopefully not left with a confused opinion about the topic. Since the beginning of the semester I have put a conscious effort to change my writing style. Instead of the box format that is learned in high school I try to use a more graceful approach while still being organized. Also, I evaluate the credibility of a source before I use the information to support my thesis and understand the roles of using ethos,

I believe I have made tremendous progress as a writer from the beginning of the year. I feel as though I am a total different person as a writer than I was at the beginning of the year. I know I have made progress in the area of citing sources and knowing whether or not the sources are reliable or not. I think I have come along way from the beginning of this course.

The Memo will directly address my growth as a writer throughout my time in EH 101-13. It will also highlight my current strengths and weaknesses in my own personal writing style.

This quarter has been very beneficial to my writing skills and has significantly made me a better writer. Previous quarters I felt as though I was just writing because I had to, but now I am actually enjoying what I am writing and reading about. Not only have I become a better writer, I have also become a better reader. I have never been a big reader and because of that I didn't really ever look into the meaning of things in stories. This term, symbolism and themes have been able to stand out to me because I am actually investing time into my reading and not just skimming through it.

My writing skills which I have worked on over the few months I have been in English 102 have changed quite a bit in my opinion. There are many things which I have improved upon that were amongst my weaker writing skills when the year began. On the opposite side of that point, there are also many things which I still need to improve upon if I want to truly elevate my writing to a level that I will be confident in. Finally, I have gained new skills outside of writing from this class, particularly the activities which we did in class at various points throughout the year. These things all cumulate together to give me an appreciation of English courses which I did not previously have.

Sometimes good things can come from a bad situation. Reminiscing on occasions that effected my life, some were so minor and some changed my life’s coarse completely. Childhood memories don’t always stick but the ones that do are worth everything. Writing letters to my father changed a lot about the kid I was and who I have become today; it taught me perseverance not to be ashamed and gave me the awareness to work on my writing.