At the beginning of my senior year I came into English 111 thinking that I was already a college level writer. I had taken AP English 11 in the previous year and figured that it would set up me for a smooth ride when it came to writing essays. However, I was in for a rude awakening when I had a partner review my first rough draft. I expected there to be little to no errors in my paper and for that reason I did not even proofread it before I let him review it. Turns out that my essay was not flawless and I needed plenty of revision before I would be able to turn this essay in for a grade. As the semester went on I spent more time on each essay, trying to decrease the amount of errors and increase the content of my essays. I tried to better every aspect of my writing, but noticed the largest change in these three aspects: purpose, style and grammatical and mechanical conventions.
Purpose is an aspect of writing that I have always struggled with. Looking back, it seems silly of me to struggle with the reason I am actually writing the essay, but for some time I did. In a descriptive essay we wrote in the beginning of the year I completely missed the descriptive part until the final paragraph. In the essay I wrote, “I took her to a smoothie place and we both ordered food, but when I told the man at the cash register that I wanted our meals to go she looked at me with a puzzled face.” This sentence alone could have been turned into many paragraphs describing the restaurant and the food we ordered. Instead, I forgot about the purpose of the essay and left a sentence, filled with items to describe, empty, without any detail at all. However, in another essay I wrote, Forward vs. Defender, I understood the purpose and made sure to keep it evident in all parts of the essay. My thesis for that paper was, “Despite the undoubted fact that soccer is a team game, there has always been the argument as to who contributes more to a win; is it the defender or the forward?” This sentence clearly shows that I am attempting to compare which player is more important in a game of soccer, thus nailing the purpose of a compare and contrast essay right on the head. Although I do still miss the purpose of essays occasionally, I have made it a top priority of mine to have the purpose be consistent throughout the entire essay.
I love to tell stories. Unfortunately I write almost every essay as if I am telling a story. In my process-analysis essay I wrote about building a sandcastle. This assignment was difficult at first because instead of writing about how to build a sandcastle I wrote about a time when I built a sandcastle. “The only equipment you need is a twelve-inch deep pail, a small plastic shovel, and plenty of moist sand.” These were the only tools I used when building my sandcastle, but there are plenty of other tools that could be used to make a sandcastle that’s bigger and more impressive. My lack of ability to change style caused me to write a mediocre paper that could have had more structure and more tools to build an efficient sandcastle. I finally was able to change my style effectively in my research paper about doping in sports. I knew that this paper was supposed to be objective and that it would be tough for me to keep my storytelling style out of the paper. I used many voices from writers and athletes to keep my normal style out of the essay. This allowed me to change my style to informative and mature instead of careless and playful. In the sixth paragraph of that essay I talked about the medical side of doping in sports, “Doping in sports is… cures for cancers and heart diseases.” In this paragraph I exhibited a more formal style which was necessary because the health risks of drugs are almost always talked about in a formal style. Without my style control improvement from the process-analysis paper I would not have been able to write my research paper effectively.
I would consider my grammar mechanics at the beginning of the year to be sub-par at best. I have never been someone who pays attention to the little things meticulously which is why I believe my grammar is so poor. In my first essay of the year, a personal narrative, I completely threw everything I knew about grammar out of the window. I started the essay with, “Center court. Boy’s Junior National Volleyball Championships.” Two fragments which were then followed by a few short sentences and then some more fragments. The essay needed serious revision. Fortunately, this was my worst grammatical performance and after a few grammar group presentations I was starting to catch onto a few rules. However, I feel as though my grammar and mechanical conventions are still my weakest part in writing. In many of my essays I still start paragraphs and sentences with the same combination of words I used in the previous paragraphs in sentences. I feel as though I have improved some, but that there is still much more to improve on in sentence structure and putting commas in the right place.
Coming to the end of my first semester of Dual Enrollment I realize that my writing has improved, but that there are still many aspects that I need to learn and improve on. Purpose is now my main focus when writing essays because I know how easy it is to go off on a topic that is completely unrelated to the essay’s purpose. Style is an aspect that I am going to have to work extra hard on to keep my storytelling voice from overpowering the style needed to fulfill the purpose of the essay. Finally, grammatical and mechanical conventions are an aspect of writing that I believe will continue to haunt me even into this second semester. Even though I have become more careful with my writing I still know that I will miss a few commas here and there probably for the rest of my life. The only way to better these aspects in my writing is with meticulous revision and practice. With these ideas in my I believe that I will be able to better those aspects and improve my writing in general.
Purpose is an aspect of writing that I have always struggled with. Looking back, it seems silly of me to struggle with the reason I am actually writing the essay, but for some time I did. In a descriptive essay we wrote in the beginning of the year I completely missed the descriptive part until the final paragraph. In the essay I wrote, “I took her to a smoothie place and we both ordered food, but when I told the man at the cash register that I wanted our meals to go she looked at me with a puzzled face.” This sentence alone could have been turned into many paragraphs describing the restaurant and the food we ordered. Instead, I forgot about the purpose of the essay and left a sentence, filled with items to describe, empty, without any detail at all. However, in another essay I wrote, Forward vs. Defender, I understood the purpose and made sure to keep it evident in all parts of the essay. My thesis for that paper was, “Despite the undoubted fact that soccer is a team game, there has always been the argument as to who contributes more to a win; is it the defender or the forward?” This sentence clearly shows that I am attempting to compare which player is more important in a game of soccer, thus nailing the purpose of a compare and contrast essay right on the head. Although I do still miss the purpose of essays occasionally, I have made it a top priority of mine to have the purpose be consistent throughout the entire essay.
I love to tell stories. Unfortunately I write almost every essay as if I am telling a story. In my process-analysis essay I wrote about building a sandcastle. This assignment was difficult at first because instead of writing about how to build a sandcastle I wrote about a time when I built a sandcastle. “The only equipment you need is a twelve-inch deep pail, a small plastic shovel, and plenty of moist sand.” These were the only tools I used when building my sandcastle, but there are plenty of other tools that could be used to make a sandcastle that’s bigger and more impressive. My lack of ability to change style caused me to write a mediocre paper that could have had more structure and more tools to build an efficient sandcastle. I finally was able to change my style effectively in my research paper about doping in sports. I knew that this paper was supposed to be objective and that it would be tough for me to keep my storytelling style out of the paper. I used many voices from writers and athletes to keep my normal style out of the essay. This allowed me to change my style to informative and mature instead of careless and playful. In the sixth paragraph of that essay I talked about the medical side of doping in sports, “Doping in sports is… cures for cancers and heart diseases.” In this paragraph I exhibited a more formal style which was necessary because the health risks of drugs are almost always talked about in a formal style. Without my style control improvement from the process-analysis paper I would not have been able to write my research paper effectively.
I would consider my grammar mechanics at the beginning of the year to be sub-par at best. I have never been someone who pays attention to the little things meticulously which is why I believe my grammar is so poor. In my first essay of the year, a personal narrative, I completely threw everything I knew about grammar out of the window. I started the essay with, “Center court. Boy’s Junior National Volleyball Championships.” Two fragments which were then followed by a few short sentences and then some more fragments. The essay needed serious revision. Fortunately, this was my worst grammatical performance and after a few grammar group presentations I was starting to catch onto a few rules. However, I feel as though my grammar and mechanical conventions are still my weakest part in writing. In many of my essays I still start paragraphs and sentences with the same combination of words I used in the previous paragraphs in sentences. I feel as though I have improved some, but that there is still much more to improve on in sentence structure and putting commas in the right place.
Coming to the end of my first semester of Dual Enrollment I realize that my writing has improved, but that there are still many aspects that I need to learn and improve on. Purpose is now my main focus when writing essays because I know how easy it is to go off on a topic that is completely unrelated to the essay’s purpose. Style is an aspect that I am going to have to work extra hard on to keep my storytelling voice from overpowering the style needed to fulfill the purpose of the essay. Finally, grammatical and mechanical conventions are an aspect of writing that I believe will continue to haunt me even into this second semester. Even though I have become more careful with my writing I still know that I will miss a few commas here and there probably for the rest of my life. The only way to better these aspects in my writing is with meticulous revision and practice. With these ideas in my I believe that I will be able to better those aspects and improve my writing in general.