Freshman year English has been a great writing experience. I
learned how to compose four different types of papers, and most importantly, I
learned about my writing itself. My
writing throughout the year has been remarkable, with the exception of continuous
spelling and convention habits, and writing better on topics I have an interest
in.
Every essay
response that I have received this year sounds exactly the same. Each explains
how my paper is good, but there are minor mistakes, and I should use the
rewrite opportunity to give my paper “the grade it deserves”. I know I have
problems with spelling, it has been an issue I have had my whole life. I even
wrote my Literacy Narrative on my spelling troubles in the beginning of the
year, but as I reviewed all of my essays, I discovered additional convention
issues in my writings.
In my
global issues and literary analysis paper, I put a comma at the end of each
quote, before I closed the quotation. At my old school, I was taught that if
the sentence or passage that you are quoting ends with a period, you should
replace the period with a comma, and place a period after the closing quotation
mark. I later learned that this way of quoting could not always be used, but I
had already developed this habit of quoting. Without even thinking, I would
quote a quotation the way I learned at my old school. I am going to need to
remind myself of the correct ways to quote, so I do not have this problem next
year.
Another convention
habit I found is comma splices. I found a few in my literacy narrative and
global issues paper. When I write a paper, I put commas where I would usually
pause while reading my paper aloud, instead of thinking of where to place them
according to proper writing techniques. Before turning in my papers, I need to
have someone who knows the proper comma uses to look over my essay. Having a
second or even third opinion will help me know exactly if my commas are used in
the appropriate ways.
Reviewing my
essays as a whole, I believe that I am actually a decent writer, but I also
found that I write better on my papers that I have interest in, and my grades
are proof of this. I enjoyed writing about me experiences of not being able to
spell in my literary analysis paper, about Susan, my gymnastics coach, in my
profile, and about child soldiers in Africa in my global issues paper. The
essays that I enjoyed writing about received higher grades than the ones I did
not find fascinating. Although it’s natural for someone to do anything good
that they have an interest in, I need to work on concentrating on my papers
that I don’t find exciting the most, because they are the ones I always do
worse on.
I hope that my writing next year
will continue to improve. Like everything else in the world, the more you
practice something, the better you get. The only way I can improve my writing,
is to continue to write.
Common Errors:
1.
spelling errors
·
“In ‘The Good Girls’ by Frank Arrick, Mary
Louis…”
·
suppose to be Mary Louise
·
Literary Analysis
2.
comma splices
·
“The
‘recruiters’ for child soldiers are not trying to convince children to become soldiers,
they enforce service.”
·
Global
Issues paper
3.
putting a comma at the end of a quote
·
“’I
closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn’t hit her. So I shot again,’”
(O’Neil).
·
Global
Issues paper
4.
run on sentences
·
“There was still one problem, I still had to
conquer the quiz the next day.”
·
Literary Analysis
5.
Not completely explaining a topic
·
I was told that this hold paragraph was
confusing and needed to be explained more.
·
Literacy Narative
“You misspelled words that are
completely unnecessary. I want you to write down these words, study them
tonight, and expect a quiz on them tomorrow.”
I was now realizing how these misspelled
words were a problem. I felt like I had failed, and worst of all, I did not know
why. My uncle likes to say that spelling is genetic. No one in my family can
spell. If that is the case, it was not my fault that I misspelled those words;
it was my parents. There was still one problem, I had to conquer the quiz the
next day.
