Throughout this course, Ive learned and improved significantly with

my writing. I developed skills I didnt have before coming into this class.
Paper one, two and three were all challenging in different aspects. A very
useful writing technique I learned was that all essays dont have to follow the
five-paragraph essay structure that my high school taught us to use for
almost every assignment we ever did. I always felt restricted and pressured
to follow exactly that format and now Im able to be open with my own ideas
and body structure. In doing this, I feel my writing sounds less forced and
more understandable. Another significant difference I came across was the
word count. Ive never written an essay that was more then three pages until
coming into ENC 1101. This alone was a big difference that was hard for me
to adapt to and meet the word requirement. I found myself repeat things I
already said in a slightly different way but it meant the same thing. Also I
never wrote four rough drafts before and then a revision. This allowed me to
visually see how Im improving and that Im noticing the little errors that I
could prevent. Without doing multiple drafts and having the privilege to peer
grade, the essay I would of submitted would lack in many areas. Having
students and my teacher critique my writing in an encouraging but useful
way helped me further understand how I can improve. The one problem that
stood out to me while doing my revision for all three papers was that I dont
go in depth enough about a certain subject matter and left the reader with
questions wondering why or how. Furthermore, I saw the improvement from
the first paper I turned in this semester to the last essay. It was an

outstanding difference and great to know Im improving after writing for all
these years.
Paper Two was by far the most challenging essay and my grade
showed that. My ideas were well developed and I had the right idea,
however, I went into too much background and that wasnt required for this
essay prompt. In doing that, it lost the focus of the assignment and made the
reader wonder why I was sharing that information. I always thought it was
important to give an idea of everything going on in the introduction and then
go into detail about the why he chose to make the lyrics so different from the
video. However, I receive helpful advise from the reading writing center and
the gentlemen informed me that providing background information about the
artist is useful in some papers but not paper two in particular. Additionally, I
struggled with citing my source throughout my essay and with the work cited
page at the end. I was never properly shown how to do so and I struggled
with following the examples on the Internet. I was able to make
improvements and further learned how to properly cite the sources needed.
Another problem I faced in my final draft four that I changed in my revision
was how much I used the word I. Paper two was a formal paper and the
assignment wanted me to address why the artist had such a different
message in the text and visuals alone. I stated over and over again I
thought and I interpreted and that made me sound less convincing and
too much of my opinion even thought this is somewhat of my own
interpretation of Hoziers song Take Me to Church. In my revision, I

changed my entire sentence order and structure and that helped clear
everything up and follow the assignment guideline accurately.
Additionally, Paper One was somewhat of a challenge. In the beginning
of my essay, I started off strong with the minor error that I started my
introduction hook sentence off with a fact, which isnt allowed in a personal
narrative. The hook itself should be about me and set up the tone for the rest
of the paper. I didnt have as many areas I needed to revise like I did in paper
two but I had a specific problem I needed to address that occurred later in
my paper. I began to start talking about how Facebook changed over the
years and why Im a Facebook user now unlike the previous years before. I
lost my story line and began to sound like a saleswomen for Facebook
persuading people to use this beneficial website. I corrected that error by
tying it all back into how it help me in a positive way by not being allowed to
make an account when it was popular and the cool thing to do. Just like my
other papers I had little mistakes that were simple to correct but if I re-read it
though one more time, I could of potentially seen them myself. Its important
to do multiple drafts and edits because this is an excellent way to catch them
yourself, making your writing look cleaner and not rushed.
Lastly, Paper three was a fairly easy essay for me to write. I felt it was
easier because I was very passionate about the topic I chose. The Mentos
advertisement clearly was stereotyping the weight of a woman and leaving it
up to men to decide what they believe to be beautiful. This isnt how we
want our society to go about friendships or even relationships and thats why

I created an anti-advertisement. I tried as politely as I could to address the

girls by description of the overweight/heavyset girl and petite/skinny girl.
I contemplated changing it to as the taller or shorter girl but then I thought I
would get off track with the topic and it would get confusing as I went along.
Like I said in paper two, I came across a similar problem with citing my
sources throughout the essay. I was able to make this correction in my
revision to help further improve my grade.
In conclusion, this course has taught me plenty of useful strategies
that I will remember in all the papers I plan on writing in the near future. I
will recall and use all the critiquing notes I received throughout these three
papers and ask myself those same questions while Im re-reading my own
papers before submitting them. It was evident that just with this course
itself, I already made an improvement with my writing. I feel this course has
prepared me greatly for the next English courses I plan on taking during my
college career.