All of the writing we have done this
year has shown me my strengths and weaknesses, such as my common errors, and
aspects of writing. Every time I re-read a graded paper, I always noticed that
I made a mistake, grammar or organization errors. I also noticed these errors
during the peer reviews. The writing we did this year included Narratives, blog
posts, and a Profile. All of these assignments involved a variety of methods of
how to successfully plan and write the paper.
People
always said that in High School, we would have to write many papers. This
information for me was a shock, because of my organization and supporting
details. I figured out that planning my ideas in some sort of visual chart,
such as a flow chart, helped me organize my thoughts in order for me to write
my paper. I eventually became routinized in planning my ideas (which I had not
done before). In doing so, I started strengthening my support in my papers. The
rubrics you gave to us before most papers also helped me when I was proofreading
and going back to add or remove certain statements.
I
then noticed another problem I had with writing assignments. Recently, I
discovered I had a disorder in reading comprehension. It explained why I was
not grasping the concept of the paper. In other words, I did not understand
what to write the paper about. I usually felt confident about papers that I had
written, until I received a grade for it. I sought help from you, Dr.
deGravelles, and we focused on the Literary Analysis. The Literary Analysis was
the paper where my disorder shown itself the most. My thoughts were very
unorganized and the sentence fluency was tough to follow along. I then found a
simple way to help this aspect of writing, which was once again making some
sort of flow chart.
I
had gathered lots of information on my research paper topic and assembled them
into ‘noodlebib’ notecards. Them when it came time to write the paper I had
taken a few days trying to cram in more information and repeat ideas just to
try and reach the length requirements. With haste, I turned in the paper
confidently with out proof reading it that well. When I received the grade for
it, I was astonished at how horrible the conventions of the paper were. I had
many repeated words, run on sentences, comma splices, and punctuation outside
quotation. I then doubted myself on why I chose such a difficult topic. In the
comments for the paper, you specifically said,
“You need to put a lot more work into proofreading”, I agree with this
statement. I have learned and will try to make writing a paper as easy as
possible next research assignment.
The
WrAP assignment is a different story that mainly involves time management and
limited planning. Since we only had two class periods to plan and write it,
there was no way I would be able to make a successful above average grade. Of
course, when the assignment had been graded a returned, organization was the
lowest scored of all of the aspects. So, I still need to work on support or it
will come back to get in later school years. I hope to resolve this issue in
the near future. I feel it would greatly improve my writing grade.
The
highlight of writing in my year of English 1 was the Profile. I had made the
highest grade on it out of all of the other papers. It is also the paper that
showed my common error the involved keep the same perspective throughout the
whole paper. Every paper throughout the year taught me another issue I had when
writing. It seemed as if every different paper we wrote involved a different
style of writing that challenged us to find new strengths and weaknesses.
