May 19, 2017

Dear Alyssa,

For my reflection letter I have chosen the Racial Profiling essay, Juvenile Justice essay,

Brave New World essay and from my process work I have chosen the Into the Wild Dialectical

Journals, the Food Inc. movie, and the annotated articles from the Bullying essay. From this

work, I will reflect on what I learned about the strength of essays, proper use of MLA format,

and using non- dump quotes that I have developed, and my strengths in making my papers

organized and weaknesses such as having weak Introduction and Conclusion sentences. I will

address my academic essays, the proper way to embed quotes into my paragraph that I have

learned, name the areas where I need to improve, such as quote manipulation and goals that I

have for my writing skills.

For this assignment, I chose my Racial Profiling essay, Juvenile Justice essay, and Brave

New World essay. I wrote my Racial Profiling essay, a narrative essay, in November of 2016. I

wrote my Juvenile Justice essay, an argumentative essay, in April of 2017. I wrote my Brave

New World essay, a literary analysis essay, in May 2017.

For my process work, I chose to reflect on my Into the Wild Dialectical Journals, the

Food Inc movie, and my annotated articles from the Bullying unit. For the Into the Wild

Dialectical Journals, we had to pull quotes from all throughout the book and describe how they

relate to different aspects of McCandless personality. This assignment was the first where we

really had to learn to connect quotes from the book to the prompt of our essay. The Food Inc

movie we watched in was for our food unit. The movie exposed several food companies and

described the realities of our food here in the U.S. People in it spoke about how truly unhealthy
and impure all our food really is. Even though the government tries to trick us to believe

otherwise. For our food unit, we had to create a powerpoint with a partner talking about these

issues. Completing this unit not only helped me work on my public speaking but also brought my

attention to the importance of what I eat which I still think about today. The articles we

annotated for the bullying unit were very lengthy but also informative. For this portion of process

work we had to annotate a chunk of articles on bullying. This assignment was the first where we

had to analyze a lot of information really in depth. I think this assignment forced us to keep in

mind so many different angles to the problem and really do our research.

I have learned over the course of ERWC several valuable skills. First, I have learned to

create a claim. For example, in my Brave New World essay, I have a simple but strong thesis. My

thesis reads as follows: I agree that Huxleys fears about what our society would become have

come true. I have also learned to find strong evidence to support my claims. In my Brave New

World essay I used about 10 quotes from the book to support my thesis. For example, I wrote

about how our society has become a trivial culture and used the quote, Orgy-porgy, Ford and

fun, Kiss the girls and make them One. Boys at one with girls at peace; Orgy-porgy gives

release (84). This quote gives an example of how Huxleys fear for our society did come true.

Ive also learned how to integrate relevant commentary into my essays. Typically, there are two

pieces of commentary for each piece of evidence. Sometimes you must give your opinion and

sometimes you must remain neutral. Through this class, I have also learned to properly create a

works cited page. For example, I know that the order of each citation goes last name, first name

(of author), name of article, source, publisher, date published, web/print, date accessed. I know

this as well as how to format a works cited page correctly on a document. I have also gained
knowledge in how to create a final draft for my essays. All of my essays in this class have had a

rough draft before the final draft. I have learned to better my essays in between drafts and catch

mistakes I might have made.

Although I have improved in all the skills described above, there are a couple strengths I

have that have been rock solid since day 1. These strengths include body paragraphs and

evidence. I believe ive always been very good at putting my body paragraphs together so that

they flow nicely. Theyre always structured the way theyre supposed to be and include all the

requirements. Im also good at providing evidence in my essays. I always make sure to pull

really strong quotes from books and articles that I can deeply analyze. Also, I always make sure

my sources are reliable. Along with these strengths, I also have a couple weaknesses I would like

to improve. I have always struggled with introduction and conclusion paragraphs. These

paragraphs are extremely important for an overall strong essay because they are the opening and

closing of the paper. I feel my introduction and conclusion paragraphs are never as strong as they

could be but I am willing to continue putting in effort to improve in these areas.

A specific skill that I can say I can do now that I couldnt do before is extensively

annotating articles. I know how to analyze and take in the information they provide way better

now than before. I am better at understanding the author's opinions and using them to my

advantage to support the claims in my essays.

My critical reading skills have improved greatly although there could still be room for

improvement. I am better at analyzing the books and articles I read. I also have a better

understanding of the way authors are trying to express themselves through their writing. I do

need improvement in using stronger vocabulary words.

 I have learned through this course about the expectations of college level reading and

writing. This class helped me in my sociology and government classes simply because it helped

me deeply analyze the things I read. When I go to college I hope to not be blindsided by the

expectations when it comes to reading and writing skills. I believe this course will help me in my

college career. Thank you Mrs. DiSomma, for being such a good teacher! Ill miss you next year

when trying to figure out process work for my essays.

Sincerely,

Caitlin Beltran