The way I improved my paper was taking my instructors constructive criticism and making the necessary corrections, to the best of my ability. I had obvious problems with the comma usage, dangling modifiers, and it was no question that I have to improve my vocabulary. Referring back to the text book and using the Thesaurus definitely helped me make the best revisions that I can make. The most challenging part of this assignment for me was to expand the use of my vocabulary. I know a lot of words; I just don’t use them in my everyday conversation, thus making it more difficult to incorporate in my essay.
I have always just gave myself the excuse that I am not a good writer and that’s how I am going to live. After reading chapter one I recognize that I have been letting myself live without giving myself a chance to catch up and learn what I need to know about the subject. After learning what is taught to me in this class I will need to keep using my new writing skills or they will be lost. My strengths are reading and understanding the assignment, typing the paper on the computer and generating creative writing skills. My weakness are using correct English grammar and punctuation, staying on topic and citing and references.
Writing this poem allowed me to look back into those past experiences and let go. I can honestly say that until writing this paper, I was allowing my past experiences hold me emotionally hostage. When I graduated from Highline Community College and decided to attend The Evergreen State College, little did I realize how impactful this college would be; affecting my desire to express my thoughts and views about the world. The Evergreen State College opened the door to writing; a door that had been closed for a very long time. Although I hadn’t yet become comfortable writing about my past during the first few quarters of school, I enjoyed writing for academic growth.
You get to meet new people and actually be in the real world. It makes me have different views about my life other than what I had in my head about three years ago. I hope that my college life will be successful and I will learn lots of new things within the years. Now my last English experience was kind of a disaster, but I did learn a few things that I didn’t know that was important. I learned how to write a topic sentence and what its purpose was to it.
Roberta McGarry Diagnostic Essay Writing Goals In this course I hope to learn a lot to improve my writing. The last time I was in school was 20 years ago. I haven’t had to write anything since except the occasional email at work. I feel that I have never been a great writer. Therefore my first goal for this class is to refresh my memory on writing a good paper.
I couldn’t understand why I had to read so much in the first week. However I fought through the readings and discovered that my preferred model of argumentative writing was the classical model. I also found I could understand the appeals of the Toulmin model and the Rogerian model. With this in mind I examined the essays in the reading clusters trying to identify the use of these models. This helped me to develop both as a writer and thinker because I had to try and understand where the writers where going with their arguments and the techniques they used to appeal to their readers.
Unit one also taught me to reevaluate how important certain priorities when it came to writing. I learned from the other unit one authors, Joseph M. Williams and James E. Porter, that when an essay is read by someone who is looking for grammatical error or plagiarism instead of content, they will often find the error and ignore the content. Although I do still know the importance of grammar and originality, this class and the grading style has let me put those constructs in the back seat until the editing process, instead of making them something I had to constantly worry about. I don’t believe that good writing revolves around grammar, but rather how well your words can convey a message to the intended audiences.
I’ve always had a hard time turning in any homework and this is the year I need to start doing it. I think by doing these things I will meet my goal of graduating. Another goal I would like to me this year would to improve my essay writing skills. I’ve never had a real hard time with essays but there is always room for improvement. In English this year I will have to
Jordan Taylor 4/24/12 Composition II Polites Reflective Statement In this course, College Composition II, I have learned many forms of writing effective argumentative pieces. The main thing I learned this year is how to effectively use sources to aid me in my argument. Along with that I learned that some sources are not credible and will not influence my writing much, if even at all. This helped me get better support in my arguments because I had credible sources that supported my argument. This course helped me utilize my sources better, made me realize my true freedom as a writer and understand how text may represent and have different meanings to other readers.
Going into AP English class, I knew there would much to learn and that I had much room to grow. After looking back critically over the work I had done throughout the first semester of my junior year, I realized that I have already come a long way. After looking back at the comments Mr. Murphy had written about my writings and the notes I had made to myself, I noticed that my conclusions, thesis, organization, word and verb choice needed work. In contrast, some positive aspects about my writings were good insights, citations and flow. When looking back on my old free responses the reoccurring weaknesses were my conclusions and thesis statements.