My Writing Reflection

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).

In the reading assignment the author, Dan Melzer breaks down his tips and techniques into seven sections. His first tip is looking for key words in the assignment. There were certain word(s) in this section that Melzer asks the reader to pay attention to. These words may be the key on how to write your paper, depending on how your professor uses the word(s). The second technique used is narrowing down the type of genre your essay is. By figuring out the genre of your paper you are able to get down to the more detailed questions that you must ask in order to meet all the criteria asked for. The third technique is figuring out who your audience is. When you are able to pinpoint your audience you are able to see how to structure your exam or

An essay is a great way to express your knowledge in a topic and also learn new skills involving reading and writing. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing. To turn those weaknesses into strengths, I have practiced my writing and took the advice given by my peers and professor. Throughout this course, I have overcome many of my writing weaknesses such as citations, thesis statements, and transitions. Although there are still skills to improve upon, I have improved these skills by taking my time with each essay, proofreading them thoroughly, and reflecting on my work when finished.

People have many ways that they write. Some do a process of doing drafts so they can look through, edit and make the paper better. Others will just write a paper and turn it in. My process consist of starting with making a thesis. Then from the thesis I create the topic sentences for the topic at hand. The best way to write the essay in a good format and have good detail in the writing I would write a paragraph a day. By doing that process it allows me to get what is needed out on the paper so none of the paragraphs are mixing content and making the paragraphs less structured. This process not only makes writing essays less stressful while also getting the paper done quickly.

Throughout my first semester at the University of Portland, the quality of my writing progressively increased. My English 112 class contained many different activities that contributed to helping me become a better writer. Informal writing assignments, class discussions, peer review sessions and the writing center were just some of the resources available to me that helped progress not only my writing ability but my overall reading & writing analysis skills as well. Not only did I make new relationships with my peers, these relationships also helped me understand the content more thoroughly, work out any problems that I had with my ideas, and encourage me to be more social among my fellow classmates as well. Nearing the end of this

I have been practicing on how to improve my writing over the past few weeks, which has taught me a great deal about writing. My teacher would like me to evaluate and explain my strengths and weaknesses in my own writing. This evaluation is in between my two essays. One on my own and another with my teacher's help. I have strengths and weakness in my introduction, body paragraphs ,and my conclusion.

After looking back at all the writing I have accomplished in this class and experiences I have faced in other English classes, I realized how they have affected me as a writer and where I stand as one as of now. The writer I am today has been greatly benefited with years of learning English in school and other literacy sponsors. Throughout the years, I have learned a number of ways to write and I have been positively impacted by these methods. I now know the type of writer that I am and how I write best and in under which conditions. Now, I have my own writing process that most likely differs from my peers.

When I look back at my writing before having any college experience, I can see that I had a lot to work on. I can say that I was never really a big fan of writing anything much less essays. Even when I was younger, I just did not have a great big interest in writing. This was because I felt that I could not elaborate as well as others. I was not use to having to write anything really, but I now feel that I have a better grasp on the steps that I need to take to get my writing on the level that it needs to be.

We are already midway through the first quarter of my last year as a high school student. I find it hard to completely grasp how quickly this year is passing and yet I feel like we've already accomplished so much.

Olympian, Kim Collins said, “Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection.” This quote can also apply to students in school in many different ways. Students always want the best project or writing grade that they can possibly get. While that is a worthy goal it is not realistic because students are not perfect and they are still learning, and developing important skills. In my personal essays throughout the year I did strive for perfection, but I learned that I could not do it. I had to make slight improvements to better my writing for the next essay.

I learned a lot about writing and reading from this course, writing became more easy, even my fear of writing essays has been diminished. I learned to be a critical reader to write better. I started to read more and look at different topic, although not much as I wish, but still it enhanced my writing. I now take notes more often than before. I no longer judge a writing by my emotions instead by what it presents of ideas and facts, I keep in my mind that it just reflects the author’s ideas and opinions not necessary the truth, and that my reflection and response of a writing may be the same or differ from others. Using a double journal became the better tool to capture all my thoughts with the ideas of

While I was starting the process of writing the connection narrative I felt that my writing was going in the right direction. When I finished my rough draft, I knew more work was required in order for me to get a high grade which I would eventually work on. Going into the peer review I felt nervous because I received low scores on my previous papers by my peers. When I got back both of my reviewed papers I was surprised, to say the least. I thought I understood the purpose of the prompt better. I lacked details on how the issue connected to me which discouraged me to keep writing. I felt embarrassed that my peers had reviewed my work. It was hard to accept that I don’t always have strong writing. I do appreciate the feedback they gave me which allowed me to rewrite everything in a way that would address the prompt and would be better understood.

It is an inseparable part of an English essay. I was confused about how to find evidence to support my claim. After taking this class, I understood that an idea can be developed through providing sufficient and convincing credible sources, personal examples, and reasons. Take out of class essay 1 as an example. When developing my idea of the positive sides of a college degree, I provided data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, personal work experience, and a credible article for the New Yorker Magazine to explain and support my claim. Hence, I believe that I made an incredible progress on the development of

Narrative essay tells a story or experience about my own personal experience to send an important message to the audience. I also learned that narrative essay does not have to tell a story but also to tell what I learned from that particular experience. The second essay we did in this course is cause and effect and the topic I chose was the major cause of school shootings. Before writing about this topic, I learned that organizing my essay will help me a lot to completing my essay. After picking a topic, I learned that it is important to research about my topic because I have little knowledge about school shootings. I started by making a list of possible effects related to the cause to help me with my topic. I then analyze the effects on the list I made and pick three that can have a strong argument to my topic and made this as my main points of my essay. By doing this, it will help me breakdown my topic. The most importing thing I learned when researching in many different sources is to include references and sources on my paper. This is very important because I want the reader to know that I am giving credit to the original source. I also learned major formatting styles where I learned how to properly cite sources in different styles like APA and MLA formats. I used MLA format for my citations because it was the easiest one to understand. The third essay we did in this class was argumentation and the topic I chose was

Throughout high school, I was regularly told that writing was not my strongest skill. My teachers would constantly “shoot down” my writing because it was never “good enough,” except I never understood what that truly meant. However, this class helped me realize that my writing has “potential for greatness,” but it just requires some more time, thought, and clarification.