It takes a lot of time and practice to improve writing skills and develop thoughts. I am currently in the period where my writing skills are developing. For me writing means practice, practice, and more practice; Just how I had mentioned in my First-Week Essay. I have to take baby steps while writing because it is too hard for me to try and perfect all areas of writing at one time. At school students are not taught a whole months worth of information in a couple days because then they would be missing al the little pieces needed to complete the big puzzle.
It is the same with my writing, right now I am slowly putting together the little pieces to make them bigger and complete. This essay is a reflection on my previous essays from this semester; focusing on the difficulties I face and have overcome in writing. In my First-Week Essay my writing skills were somewhat better than I had expected them to be. For the most part my writing skills were adequate; however, I did have some areas where they were very good and others where they were developing.
My two main areas that deed development were punctuation and effective transitions. The problems with my punctuation were the proper use of commas and semi-colons. Some of the mistakes with commas was the absence of them. One sentence in which I omitted two commas is: “no matter how much practice I have with writing[,] I still feel like I need morel,] or I need to try different techniques. ” I had looked over the need of the commas in the sentence because I had thought that the sentence was fine without the two commas.
After reading back through my essay, specifically the sentence I mentioned previously, I realized that the commas were necessary in order to have an effective sentence. In my next essay I was able to fix my punctuation errors but I encountered other difficulties instead. In my Reading Response Essay, where I responded to Anne Macintosh’s essay, “Propaganda Techniques in Today’s Advertising”, I lacked critical thinking, effective transitions, examples and details. All of which are needed to write an effective and scholarly response essay.
Critical thinking is not hard for me; however conveying my thoughts in writing is a challenge. I have a difficult time structuring my sentences, using transitions, and providing examples and details. Sometimes I forget that the details and examples are very important in specific essays such as the Reading Response Essay. One example from my Reading Response Essay in which I did not use transitions is my introduction paragraph. In the paragraph I mentioned how “children are unaware of propaganda techniques and how they work.
They see something that appeals to them and they want it no matter what” and then I skipped to my thesis statement which was glittering generalities, plain folks, and bandwagon are the three most insidious propaganda techniques out of the seven mention by Monoclinic that have had the most impact on my life. ” I didn’t use any transition between my sentences, I simply skipped from children, to my life, and left readers confused because I went from point to point hastily and not smoothly. Puzzles can be very frustrating a majority of the time but the satisfaction and relief accompanied with them overweight the negatives.
The same may be said for papers. Stress and frustration are two major By classifiers may be said about me. However, the stress and frustration can become limited through the practice of writing techniques and development. This semester I focused on slowly improving my writing, by learning how to express myself, in writing, through much practice in my Writer’s Notebook, and by adding more details to my points and ideas. As I reflect on my Writer’s Notebook from the beginning of the semester till now, I have noticed that I have gone into greater depth to respond to the
Writers Notebook questions. I had first noticed this because my most recent entries have been longer in length than the first few that I was assigned. However, I have put more thought into my writer’s notebook responses and as a result have been able to express my opinions better than I had been in previous writing responses and essays. I believe that my writing is slowly developing; the changes may be minor and hard to see for some, but for me, they are completed sections to the puzzle. My writing is becoming a work of art.
