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Justin Colvin
Mrs. Raymond
UWRT 1103
6 July 2014
Evolution of a Great Writer
I didnt have a certain event that made me the literate person I am today, I had a period of
time that helped me reach my potential in writing. This happened in my eleventh grade Honors
English class. This was one of my best classes in high school, and my teacher, Mr. Ponikvar, was
very cool and he was young so he could relate to us students. He made all of his classes fun by
being interactive and really relating everything such as reading and essay topics back to our
everyday life. He made me realize that writing wasnt not that hard and that it was possible for
myself to be great writer.
Mr. Ponikvar taught me many valuable lessons about writing that I still remember to this
day, such as making an outline before writing my papers, writing a blueprint thesis, and also to
proofread my paper after I finished it. He taught me two ways to outline which were the web and
also the R.A.C.E.S outline which stood for restate the question, answer the question, cite
quotations, explain the quotes, and summarize the point, but I preferred the web outline because
it was just an easier way to organize my thoughts. The blueprint thesis was probably one of the
most important things that he had taught me in his class that whole semester. When he was
teaching it to us he said that it would be used in every class we take that requires us to write
papers and he was right because the next year my twelfth grade English teacher taught it again to
my class, but I already knew it because of Mr. Ponikvar. Proofreading my paper was something I
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always over looked because I just believed that it was a waste of time, but he kept pushing me to
do it and as a result I started to receive higher grades on my paper. This time period of eleventh
grade English was important to be becoming the literate person to day because I learned a lot of
skills in that class that Ill use for the rest of my schooling.