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Estrellita Chinchilla

Professor Beadle

English 115

6 December 2017

Looking Back

Improvement comes in many forms, the one thing that remains the same between them all is

the amount of work and effort that goes into improving. Nothing worth getting better at comes easy,

wanting to improve comes at a price. For writing the only way one can improve yourself is to write,

write, and write some more. It improves with practice, learning the proper ways to cite, gathering

information, and taking the time to revise. During this semester my classmates and I were presented

with numerous opportunities to demonstrate our skills. And I know I do not speak for just myself

when I say that for a fact our writing has improved. All of us has our strengths and weaknesses but

with the amount of writing and assignments we had the chance to practice our skills and show off

what we learned in class. Personally my essays have improved and this is seen in the improvement of

my grades. I went from getting a C to a B. Three areas in which my essays have improved in

grammar, creating a stronger thesis, citations, and most importantly staying on topic.

When I was working on the first essay for class, Project Space I was living in Los Angeles and

commuting on a daily basis, this constantly ate into my time and caused me to be late multiple times.

Not only that but my weekends were taken up with babysitting. This left me with very little time to

dedicate to school work. This was the cause for the amount of small errors that littered my essay. The

first example can be seen with the title of my essay. I was in such a rush when completing the essay

that I did not even remember to title it, to make it worst, it also a wrong title. I also had several

spelling errors with tense. One example of a small error that i could have corrected easily is found in
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this sentence, Because of what occurred with my dad, there has been a shift in the way my family

approaches the web. Had I read my essay more and spent more time on it then I would have caught

that mistake. My second essay had fewer grammatical issues and this seen because in the category in

the grading rubric I received an eight unlike the first time in which I received a seven. This shows that

while it was not a major improvement I still did improve.

One of the most important part of an essay which creates the foundation for the rest of the

essay is a thesis. One the comments I received on the first essay was that my thesis did not respond to

the whole prompt, which is retrospect I agree. For the second prompt, Project Text, my thesis was

better written and addressed most part of the prompt. My thesis was, The significance of making the

primary focus to a political/government point of view in Shin Godzilla is because while the first

movie was a response to an event this movie is used to highlight the flaws in the way government

handles disasters and its inability to act, which is also seen in the matter that Godzilla threatens the

world, not just Japan in Shin Godzilla. This thesis addressed the prompt. It chose a side about

whether or not the movie changed, and then explained the significance of such changes. The

comments written by Professor Beadle also show that this thesis is better. The first one had comments

saying that it did not fully answer the prompt, while Project text said that it was an okay thesis. This

was also the reason why the rest of the essay was also better set up. A well written thesis is easier to

follow when writing an essay then a badly written one. While it was not the only reason I received a

C on the Project Space essay it was a very large part that contributed to my poor grade. It was

important for me to spend more time on Project Texts thesis.

Another way in which my essays became better were because my skills in citing and finding

reliable sources was improved after a few class lectures and a trip to the library. I learned about the

schools library and how the system worked. I was not aware of all the sources we had access we had
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for simply being CSUN students. My sources went from being random online articles to ones that had

been vetted through our school. One example of incorrect citing is found in my bibliography. I was in

such a rush that because I did not want to get in trouble for not citing my sources and because I did

not know how to cite online sources that I simply copied the URL. You can see this in Project Space,

.onetwork.org/octane-magazine/special-features/social-media-networks-facilitate-identity-theft-

fraud. This was wrongly done. Project Text and Media had better sources, and were cited correctly

with all corresponding information.

Lasty the major difference between my first essay and last has been simply staying on topic. I

had issues in not going on a tangent with information that was not part of the prompt. For example in

Project Space I ended up writing an essay that seemed to against social media, yet that was not what i

was suppose to be writing about. I was suppose to write how a space becomes a monster, not about

how agaisnt I was against social media. Project Text stayed more on topic and can be seen with the

comments written by Mr. Beadle. The comments say, the ideas are good, nut theres a tendency to

rush.. while it still had issues, it was a better comment then the first that stated that i was off topic. I

was able to pick apart the movie well and come up with better ideas.

This semester has without a doubt made me a better writer. I went from getting a C to a B. I

improved my grade with each passing essay and do believe that my final essay was better composed

then my first. While I know that I am still learning, I know that I gained valuable lessons not just

about writing but also about time management. This course has made me a better student.
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