Freshman Year Writing Reflection

            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.  

           

           

free reading log

"The Hunger Games" Pages: 103 Minutes: 150

"Call Me Maybe" by, Carly Rae Jepsen

      I chose “Call Me Maybe” by, Carly Rae Jepsen for my song annotation. I listened to this song multiple times this weekend at a gymnastics meet with my teammates, but I never really knew why it was so catchy. After looking at the song more closely, I found that it is filled with end rhyming, like in most songs, but the pattern of this end rhyming is one factor to the song having a catchy sound. In each stanza of the song, the first three lines all rhyme, but the forth line of every stanza ends with the word way, maybe, or baby. One example of this is at the very beginning of the song.

I threw a wish in the well,

Don't ask me, I'll never tell

I looked to you as it fell,

and now you're in my way

     Another thing that adds to Call Me Maybe’s catchiness is the syllables in each stanza. Every line in each stanza contains the same amount of syllables, which gives the song an easy beat to follow. Also, every time the chorus of the song is arising, the song changes its flow. There are words that end with “in’” and short pauses in-between little phrases. Each phrase is sung louder and louder, building it to the chorus, sung the loudest.

Your stare was holdin', Ripped jeans, skin was showin'

Hot night, wind was blowin'

Where you think you're going, baby?

[chorus]

      Even though the song is extremely repetitive, it is filled with many elements that make it almost impossible for someone not to be able to memorize all of the lyrics.

What Makes Me Like "The Hunger Games"?

      During spring break, I continued to read “The Hunger Games” for my free reading. I am about half way through the book and I absolutely love it! On Easter, my sister and I were talking about our favorite parts of the book and comparing it to the movie. My parents had no clue what the series was about, so we began to explain. Right away my mom asked, “Why do y’all enjoyed reading a book and watching a movie about children killing each other?” My sister and I looked at each other. We weren’t really sure why the violence and deaths of “The Hunger Games” was so entertaining for us.

      Usually, I cannot stand even hearing about violence. I don’t like watching any kind of gruesome movies, or reading, in detail, about a murder. Even though most of the stories are made up, it makes me sick to think about it. I guess since in “The Hunger Games” the government controls the people; it makes it less disturbing, because I know it wouldn’t happen today. But it is also based in the future, which means it actually could have a possibility of happening. Maybe it’s the love story hidden in the war throughout the story. The truth is, I am not exactly sure why I enjoy “The Hunger Games”. What do you think about it? 

Minutes: 150   Pages:74

"The Hunger Games"

I love how every weekend is beginning to be sunny, as summer gets closer. Sunday, I was able to layout and read my free reading book “The Hunger Games”. I know most of you have already read the series and the movie has already come out, but I am finally starting to read them. When the books first came out, I had no interest in reading them. I was eleven at the time, and I couldn’t even understand why people around my age would want to read a book about children killing each other. After seeing the movie, I decided that I had to read the book, especially since I have heard so many good reviews on it.
            Although I have only read a few chapters, the movie goes very closely to the book, and I now know why boy and girls of all ages enjoy this book. The action keeps the boys interested, while the love story keeps the girls reading with emotion, falling in love with the boy themselves. Having a female narrator definitely makes the book a lot more appealing for me. I can’t wait to finish reading it, and get to compare it to the movie completely. This time, I hope to read the next book of the series, “Catching Fire” before the movie comes out.

120 minutes (30 for poem) 67 pages

"My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke

I chose to read “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke for my poem. Sometimes, the title of a piece of writing can have some hidden meaning, but in this poem, the title plainly states what this poem is about. It was easy to discover the rhyme scheme. Each word at the end of every line rhymes in pairs. I recognized it the first time I read the poem, but that made it harder for me to find other characteristics. I had to re-read the poem multiple times, aloud and in my head, to finally notice other elements hidden in the writing.

After looking at the poem closely, I found that there are multiple words ending in “ed” such as “romped”, “battered”, “missed”, “scraped”, and “waltzed”, making the poem written in past tense. By counting the amount of syllables in each line, I found that the first and third stanzas contain the same pattern of syllables in a line, but they are opposite. In the first stanza, the pattern of syllables is 7,6,7,6, and in the third stanza it is 6,7,6,7. By doing this, I also found that every line in the poem begin with a one syllable word. The poem contains one simile “But I hung on like death”, but it is filled with descriptive phases that I can relate to, which makes it really easy for me to paint a picture of the events in my head.