Munoz-Gallegos 1

Brian Munoz-Gallegos

Corri Ditch

English 115

9 December 2020

Freshmen Year: My Writing Improvement

This semester I was given several essay prompts which tested my writing skills from

basic analysis to counterarguments. Throughout the semester our class predominantly worked on

writing essays that made up most of the class. The three essays that we were assigned to work on

were Project Space, Project Text, and Project Media. Now at the end of the semester, I was

allowed to revise my Project Space and Project Text essay assignments. We were taught how to

perfect our writing for these different prompts and given help in different elements of the writing

process such as the thesis and counterarguments. I believe that after being given these writings

tips and essay prompts my writing skills have improved over the semester, and it is shown in the

revision of my past Project Space and Project Text essays with upgraded thesis statements and

analysis.

My first revision is my Project Space Essay, which is an argumentative essay that gives

three articles and you must argue which author uses rhetorical devices the best to be the most

effective. I think my grade on my Project Space essay was reflective of the work that I presented,

but I believe that because of what I’ve learned in this class I can improve the essay with revision.

First off I was given feedback to make my thesis more specific and detailed. To do so I re-read

my thesis and added a bit of information that made it more specific to the prompt and the

connection between the author. The second piece of feedback that I had gotten was to develop a

more thoughtful and specific title for my essay. Thinking back my first title was vague, I thought
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about the main idea of the prompt and the different author’s perspectives that I spoke about and

came up with a meaningful title. My third piece of feedback was to add transitions in each of the

paragraphs. Transitions were something that I had struggled with in writing essays but now I

know how to correctly transition topics and articles. I went back and added transitions at the

beginning of each paragraph and throughout the analysis. Finally, I didn’t have any more

feedback to work on so I mainly focused on cleaning up the vocab and grammar that was used

throughout the essay. Overall I believe since I did the Project Space Essay my writing has

improved by working on other assignments, and this is contributing to the revision of my essay.

On the other hand, my second essay to revise is the Project Text essay. This essay is a

different story, I struggled with this prompt more than I did with Project Space, but I believe

with my improved skills I successfully made the essay stronger. The first piece of feedback that I

worked on was to talk about the qualities that John Lewis had and gained and implement them

into each paragraph. So what I did was re-read my essay and added in the qualities he gained into

the thesis and the analysis throughout the essay. I made sure to make the analysis more of a

debatable argument instead of just stating things I included argumentative tones. Another piece

of feedback that I put the focus on was to connect the 3rd body paragraph better to my new

argument, so I fixed the main points and analysis of that paragraph to work better with my new

thesis. Finally for the last piece of feedback which was that a section in my 4th paragraph

became a biography instead of an argumentative paper, so I had to work on the main points and

analysis of that section. I went through the analysis of the paragraph and made it an argument

instead of just stating facts, and I cleaned up the parts of the paragraph that did not make sense.

Overall there was a lot that I needed to work on in this essay from the thesis to analysis, but my

main issue was that this essay was not much of an argumentative paper. I re-read my Project
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Text essay and reevaluated the parts where I lacked argument and relevant points and revised it

to a better version.

In conclusion, throughout the semester from working on three essays and several

assignments, I believe that my writing has improved and it is shown in my revised essays. I was

allowed to revise my Project Space and Project Text essays, which weren’t the best the first time

around. I re-read the essays and revised accordingly to the feedback that I was given. I improved

many factors of my essays from the title, analysis, thesis, and the main points made. I have

improved my writing throughout the challenges given to me this semester and it is presented in

my revised Project Space and Project Text essays.