Essays
My first essay, which happened to be a narrative essay, was assigned to me so I could write about a personal experience that I wanted to share with others. What I wrote about was completely up to me, meaning I could write about anything exciting, depressing, or irritating. From writing this essay, I really learned a lot about who I was as a writer, and I also learned a lot about what type of grammar was more appropriate to use in different sentences, and punctuation. If I had to change my approach on this essay, I think I would change my mindset and attitude towards what I was writing. Instead of writing about a sad moment in my life, I would have written about something a little more uplifting.
narriative_essay.docx | |
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An expository essay is essentially a piece of writing that is meant to inform a certain person or person's about a specific topic, without any bias within the writing. For me, this essay was my second writing in English I Honors, which happened to be written in a business letter format, to at the time, President-Elect Donald Trump. From writing this essay, I really learned how to write about something that I was, and still am, passionate about. If I could go back and tell my past self anything, it would be to keep writing what you are passionate about, and what you care about because not very many people get the opportunity to.
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My third and final essay was an argumentative essay. An argumentative essay is writing about a bias topic that can be controversial between at least two sides. For this assignment, I was given the option to write for individualism or for collectivism . I chose to write for individualism, because after doing some research, I was more in favor of individualism. By writing this essay, I was able to learn what the processes of writing an argumentative essay were. If I were to go back and change something about this essay, I would recommend writing a better outline that was more detailed and included my sources throughout the outline. I found that as I was writing my rough draft, it became quite frustrating to try and remember which facts or quotes had come from which source.
argumentative_essay.docx | |
File Size: | 19 kb |
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Analysis of My Writing
Over the course of this semester, I realized that some of my strengths of writing are formatting sentences, using proper punctuation, citing my sources and in-text citations, and writing in the same tense throughout my writings. As I have realized my strengths, I have also come to realize my weaknesses, which includes MLA formatting, over-using the same word throughout the writing, and not including the right sources in my research. In my opinion, I have most improved with using a broader vocabulary so that I am not repeating the same words over and over, and finding the most reliable sources to include in essays. After reviewing my essays from this semester, some of my goals for next year are to keep improving in my weaknesses, make my strengths stronger, and to get an A on at least two of my essays.
SPES
SPES stand for statement, proof, explanation and synthesis. The purpose for writing SPES paragraphs is to easily explain, compare, analyze, etc. a story or piece of writing with a topic sentence, evidence from the text, an explanation of how the evidence relates to the main idea, and closing statement. This SPES paragraph is comparing "The Interlopers" and "The Cask of Amontillado." From writing this SPES paragraph, I have learned how to write better paragraphs that stay on task, and include everything that is important. If I could go back and change how I approached this topic, I would explain the message I was trying to get across in a different way.
Creative Assignment
For my creative assignment, I had to write a poem about my favorite food. Naturally, I got in contact with my inner child, and Dr. Seuss. I chose to write my poem about Skittles, which is my favorite candy. After writing my own poem, and then hearing what my classmates had to write about their own favorite foods, it helped me learn that not everyone has the same writing style. Thinking back on this, I realize that this is what makes poets, and even authors successful. None of them are the same, which makes readers want to explore different author's or poet's works. If I had to go back and re-write this poem, I would definitely make sure it didn't rhyme, because trying to find rhyming words took up a majority of my time.
Other Writings
Prospectus
While writing my prospectus for my expository essay, I learned how to integrate quotes, in-text resources, cite my sources, and I learned what exactly a prospectus is. A prospectus is a formally written paper that is not biased within the paper, but you can tell which side of the argument the author supports. This paper is meant to "sell" the reader into believing the side you wrote for is right. In order to write a successful prospectus, the writer must include several reliable sources, and many in-text citations to make the side you choose to write about seems like the better side. If I had the chance to go back and change anything about my prospectus, I would not change a thing. I feel strongly about what I wrote and feel that informing people about Sexual Assault is very important.
Six Sentence Story
A six-sentence story is exactly what it's named. When I was assigned to write a six-sentence story, I was given the opportunity to write about whatever I wanted to, so I chose to write about an actual event that occurred in my life. At first I did not know how I was going to write my story in only six sentences, but once I wrote out my ideas and put them in sentences, it was much easier to change the wording and punctuation in order to fit the requirements. When creating this assignment, I first wrote a list of topics I wanted to write about, so that when I finally picked one, the words just flowed out of my head and on to the paper. From there, I simply just edited some of my punctuation and word choices, making my six-sentence story much more captivating and intriguing.
Six-Word Memoir
A memoir is somewhat like an autobiography, but instead of describing your whole life, a memoir accounts for only one experience that an author may have had. I was assigned to write about a six word memoir about anything in my life. This was difficult for me because I had so many experiences that I wanted to share, but had no clue how to describe them in only six words. So instead, I chose to write about something that applies to what I try to do each and every day. What I took away from this project was that, even though you may not have the ability to go in depth when describing an experience, with the right words you can still make a powerful, descriptive image.
Reflection of English I Honors
Going into this semester, I was dreading this course because English is my least favorite subject out of all of my core classes. Leaving this course, I am so glad that I was in it, because I enjoyed most of the days in this semester. It was not an easy class for me, but looking back at everything I had done throughout this semester, each assignment made me a better student, and it helped me to gain a better understanding of the material that we were learning at the time. My favorite part of the class was reading Romeo and Juliet because it was an interesting playwright that had a great plot-line, even though sometimes I did not pick up on the jokes or what was happening. Towards the end of the semester I wish we would have done more group work with certain things, because I like being able to hear how other students perceive a topic, assignment, project, etc. I learned a lot over the course of this class, and just about everything I learned will be important when it comes to classes in the future.