Essay 4: Reflection of Self-Writings
My writing was not always the best, and still isn’t. I have a lot of areas in writing that I could still improve on. This is normal for a student who is still learning how to write and efficiently manage my time. With this in mind, my writing skills did not become what they are today alone. I had a lot of help in molding my writing knowledge and toolkit that I use today. My biggest supporter that helped me with my writing skills is my grandmother. She showed me what it took to become a good writer.
My grandmother taught me most of my editing skills. We would sit down and she would help me go over my papers, looking for grammatical errors. I would say to her, “I think I have found all the errors on this paper”. My grandmother would laugh and say back to me, “I have already found 3 grammatical errors on this paper”. I would look at her like she was crazy, and she would help me understand what was wrong and how to prevent myself from doing it again. I would always be amazed of how she was able to find errors in my papers when I couldn’t even see the errors on my papers. I got much better at finding these errors and fixing my sentence structure because of my grandmother and the things I took away from her teachings.
Furthermore, my previous essays that I have written could have been improved in two ways. The first being time management and starting my essays earlier. Time management has been one of the things I have lacked since the beginning of this semester. I have learned though that I need to start my papers earlier in order to see the flaws and areas of improvement. As my peers stated in my previous essays, “Good flow throughout the paper, just needs a better organization of sentences.” I have always struggled with organizing my papers so that they make sense chronologically. On the other hand, writing a well-done essay doesn’t happen overnight. It takes weeks to plan, organize, write, and edit a well-structured paper. This is one of the areas I lacked throughout this class.
The second way I could improve on my writing for this class is proofreading and editing my paper after I finish writing them. Reading my papers out loud was something I failed to do for this class as well. On the contrary, I have improved on seeing flaws in my paper that could change the purpose of my essays. Taking these necessary measures can help me polish my grammar, sentence structure and make my papers that much better.
To end with, my writing still has a long way to go before I can call myself a “well-organized writer”, but my skills have come far from where I started. I have improved on my planning and sentence organization skills. I have also improved on what I write about and knowing what to write about. Always improving and learning as a writer is very important since you write for most of your life. Throughout this course, I feel like I have a better understanding of the different grammar and writing skills necessary to become a well-rounded writer.
HR: quotes from peers from previous essays