Reflection In Writing

In elementary school, I learned to write sentences. As time went on I learned to put those sentences in a paragraph which was three to five sentences. When I finally entered high school I learned to put those paragraph together which made the essay. When I was in English composition one writing had so much more than just having five paragraph. The writing was a way of expressing your creativity, idea, values, and emotion. It is not focusing on making five paragraph you could do what made you happy as a writer. There are countless abilities that writing has. The most powerful thing writing can do is change the opinion of thousands. But what is exactly English 1100? It is about improving your writing, reading and thinking skills or improve them. There are seven learning outcomes students that can get from this class, for example, communicate effectively, demonstrate rhetorical knowledge, engage in critical thinking, writing and reading, develop effective composing processes, collaborate during the writing process in a social setting, use appropriate convention for format, documentation, and editing, Adapt composing process to electronic environment. By end of this course, all student should able to demonstrate those learning goals as stated in the packet.

Over the past four months, I have made great strides as a writer. The area where I have seen the most growth is in my use of the writing process. Prior to my enrollment in this course, I would sit down and write all my papers in one sitting. This class has taught me how to lay out a plan for my papers. I have learned how to effectively brainstorm/research, draft, and revise my writings before I complete them. Also I have learned to not just stop there, instead I am now going back and reflecting on my work after I complete it. This allows me to identify where I prospered and also where my downfalls may have been. With this information, I am able to apply this to future writings of mine; lessons that will stay with me forever.

Before I entered this class my writing abilities were average, but I knew that with further learning and practice I could develop the skills to become a better writer. During the GSW 1110 class I have learned various new skills through four essays. Some of the new skills that I gained throughout this class are: how to locate both textual and visual sources, write effectively to audiences with opposing viewpoints, write to a variety of academic audiences, practice the process for drafting texts, demonstrate the control over grammar and mechanics, and critical thinking. The skill set that I have obtained in GSW 1110 clearly represents how I have grown as a writer and am prepared me for future classes and a future career.

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.

Since the first day of this class, every aspect of this class has been a learning experience for me. As I have said before, my Senior English class was very thorough as far as teaching the basic rhetorical tools and the skills necessary to analysis a piece of writing, but coming to college, I lacked the skills needed to actually put those skills into practice in my own writing. My knowledge of revision and drafting was limited by my habits of only editing grammar or changing a few words to sound like I was academic or qualified. Even though a great deal of this course focused on the skills necessary to be an efficient and effective writer, the last portion of the course was very useful to the development of my skills as a writer. Through revision, I learned how to take unorganized jumble of ideas and claims and arrange them into a piece that makes a useful and compelling argument with a purpose in mind. I find it hard to admit it but I actually found that I enjoyed the satisfaction of revising my work and making it better.

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.

No one said college was going to be easy. Over this past semester I have gained some support with creating better essays, but also lost some as well. Essays can be difficult if you do not know what you are doing, in some parts of this semester that’s how I felt. Being able to change from high school papers to college paper is different. Over the past semester I have learned to write about many different things that I have not done before, from different audiences to different types of essays, also learning to have to take other people’s thought and put that into my essay to help me improve. In this essay, there will be many things happening, like my effects of each different essay, reflect on the relationship between writing and critical thinking, how rough drafts help improve, and also the purpose goals of my writing.

Writing is a skill learned many times throughout a person’s life, from understanding the errors and revision of their compositions. Many basic revisions are in grammar and spelling that are easy to correct either from knowledge through books or online tools. The skills to revise writer’s own work consist of recording the metacognitive process of the revision. Metacognitive is “knowing about the knowing” which help the writer learn the checking process of the work while improving and adjusting the composition. To better understand how this process work, I have chosen these three assignments and made the correction to reflect the sentence structure, stronger thesis, and development of a better style. The notes documented in the revision is the awareness of the decision the writer has made. This will address the common attributes of the three essays and correction made.

The Writing II course has been my most interesting and rewarding class. Even though I could not complete the class, the course is not over for me. Before taking the class, I acknowledge I have much room to grow in writing, but I did not know where to start. Writing has always been unclear to me in many areas, and this class helped me to unblemished my understanding. In this class, I have acknowledged my weakest areas in writing, but my most astonished ambiguity was determiner noun and vocabulary. I did not know I was using determiner incorrectly and vocabulary span is so important in academic writing. The English Simplied book is an easy and an excellent learning tool that was used in this course. It covers all areas in determiners.

After reading the articles written by professional writers, I found that I will have to reevaluate the way I do my writing. Before this point, I found myself in the role a normal student that believed that after the first draft was done, the writing was done. I always thought of rewriting and revising as an afterthought. Many times after I finished my first draft I would assume the work was done and I just need to correct for spelling and grammar. I believe many times I was just being too easy on myself. As Mr. Murray said, I now know that I must learn to be my own “best enemy”. Through learning the amount of work in this course, I am realizing that I must start my writing process earlier in order to give myself more to rewrite and revise.

I have made a phenomenal amount of progress this semester. English 101 has made me a better writer and editor. Because the modules and peer-editing reviews it was easy to correct and learn from my mistakes. As a writer, I think I can still make an amount of improvement. With it being from mechanic errors and to clear organization skills. As for providing clear and relevant examples I have made improvements. I say I’m an average, but growing writer. I have my skills and weakness, but I still try harder.

In the ninth grade, my Literature teacher introduced poetry to me in the form of spoken word. I would have never thought that a Shakespeare recitation assignment would have been the window to a world of one of my greatest passions. Since then, I immediately hit the ground running; performing and competing in poetry slams and competitions in my hometown community of Augusta and around the state of Georgia. I knew that words were what I wanted to dissect and assemble, and the stage was where I wanted to be. Years later, I chose a Creative Writing concentration at Georgia State University, and the embarking of a distinctive style began. I soon became torn between the voices of spoken word and written poetry. I learned that there is a skill and a beauty to both, and I have been able to begin fostering a different skill at GSU. The conservational and sometimes rhythmic style of my performance poetry has infused with the illustrative and technical style of my written poetry, and vice versa. The diverse curriculum of my professors, critiques, and insight from other poets in workshops have helped me to become comfortable with owning a distinct and unique voice on the page, as well as the stage.

In the first grade, I had trouble reading. Every day, I was sent to work with a reading teacher to help improve my ability to read. I remember that at the end of each session, she would give me orange tic-tac’s if I did good that day. I thought that she was doing it to be nice but now I realize that it was a way to introduce positive reinforcement. It must have worked because after the first grade, my reading level soared, and I did not have to meet with orange tic-tac lady anymore. For the remaining of my elementary school years, I would spend hours in the library reading books, especially chapter books. It was not until high school that I started having the option to write narrative papers. I realized I enjoyed writing those types of essays. After reading Stephen King’s essay about how reading and writing go hand in hand, I started thinking about how much more I should read to be a better writer.

I took the 2017 summer semester Writing 101course at UMUC. I took this class as an elective and because I enjoy writing. I am glad that I chose to take this class and could learn from it. While taking this class, I learned a lot about what I did and did not know when it comes to writing. I also learned some areas that I need to improve when writing papers.