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Alexis Avila

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

December 1, 2020

My Reflection

Through out this course I have reflected my performance in my essays considering how I

can become a better writer. I observed through out my writing my weakest performance on these

essays was my structure and it influenced how I dissected the prompt. Thinking too much about

the evidence and how good it was effected how I answered the prompt because there were parts

of my essay that did not focus on answering the prompt and only focused on the meaning behind

the evidence. My flaws in my essays made me reach out for help which led me to learn strategies

that made it easier to tackle the prompt while also focusing on the structure and being less broad

to make it easier for the audience to understand. Throughout the essays I have grown to take

feedback and apply it to each one them; it has made it easier to structure my essays.

Leaning in for help was an improvement that helped me out to structure my essay out.

Using the LRC greatly benefitted me to see the flaws and if I did not ask for the help I needed, I

would struggle to answer prompts and tie in my evidence and analysis to it. A good strategy I

learned was to work backwards, write about the key points that relate to the prompt and answer

the prompt and then write the thesis. To me this made it far easier for me to write my thesis. I
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struggle to write my thesis because I write too much or too little. This made it easier to structure

my essay the way I want it to because I did not have to worry about whether my body paragraphs

aligned with my thesis and change my body paragraphs even though they were well written. It

saves me from stressing out too much because I do not like to change me thesis and restart but I

learned it is okay to change your thesis without rewriting the rest of the body paragraphs if

reversing the process. It also helped me strategize and structure my thesis the way I wanted by

being less broad and answer the prompt directly.

After receiving help, in both essays I have realized that my topic sentences and analysis

were always too broad for the audience to not understand because I only wrote what I saw in my

eyes. In my analysis in Project Space, I was not explaining why I thought Pangilinan’s essay was

more efficient compared to the others with the use of rhetorical strategies as I explained to little

on how he uses the rhetorical strategies he used in his essay that made it so effective and focused

on the what he was really saying in his essay but I was trying to show how he hot his argument

across but focused little on the way he really used the strategies. As for Project Space I struggled

much more to explain to the audience which essay was more monstrous and was trying to find

the right words to explain but it was too broad as I would not explain the aspects to why the

essay was more monstrous and that affected how my thesis was written. Being too broad affected

my thesis and I struggled a lot more to come up with my topic sentences so it can transition

nicely tie into my analysis. I see that my essay as a whole is much clearer for the audience to

understand the main points and I can apply what I’ve learned to future essays I will write.

Overall, I have improved as a writer because I looked for help on how I can improve my essay

and now I can catch my mistakes easily compared to before. I also have developed skills that

helped me structure my essay so it can flow much kore easier as it uses to be all over the place.
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