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.