Mahanian 1

Ariela Mahanian

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

11 December 2020

Reflection Essay

My fall 2020 semester in the course of English 115 with Jon Beadle, has taught me

many important writing skills. I can definitely say that I’ve grown and developed as a

writer over the course of the semester by a tremendous amount. During the semester

we were assigned to write three main essays on three different types of topics. The

three essays were project space, project text, and project media. I started off the

semester with a good amount of knowledge on how to write an essay from what I’ve

learned in high school but it wasn’t as detailed and well explained as what was taught in

this course. My writing techniques have definitely improved in such great ways. What

really helped my writing to stand out to help me improve as a writer was mainly by

learning how to write a more effective thesis statement because it is the essence of the

essay. A thesis is the claim you are making and the point you are trying to prove. All the

other paragraphs in your essay will revolve around this one central idea. The thesis

statement consists of the one or two sentences of your introduction that explain what

your position on the topic is. Writing a more effective thesis statement was not the only

factor of my writing where it improved, it was also by learning how to find only the useful

sources; primary and secondary sources. Finding useful sources can lead to more

evidence to your claim.

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During the zoom meeting I would take notes while the professor was teaching, I

would make appointments at the LRC writing lab and meet with an English major tutor

to get more of the detailed feedback that I needed to hear to make those fixtures in

each essay. What also helped me a lot was writing and revising my rough drafts.

Revising rough drafts make you find what to replace to make your essay sound better.

When writing a clearer thesis statement, I’ve realized that it helps to include the who,

what, where, and when, and why questions to not make it sound so vague. Adding

some rhetorical strategies to the statement was also a technique I was taught to do. My

favorite skill that has helped me to improve in my writing was finding outside sources to

help cite the evidence needed to back up the thesis statement. With the three essays;

project space, project text, and project media, it was needed to have a strong thesis

statement if you wanted to have a well written essay. Without a strong thesis statement,

there wouldn’t really be anything to relate back too.

With project space, project text, and project media my style in writing improved

after visiting the LRC. Adding more style to these two essays made me ask myself if my

sentences created an impact on the reader. It made me realize to use various types of

sentences, whether they were compounded or complex sentences. The project space

essay was more of an opinionated essay where you personally analyze readings and

find which one was used the most effectively. Everyone could choose the one they best

believed was the most effective, it wasn’t certainly needed to be the same. The project

text and the project space prompt were a compare and contrast essay where the project

media essay was more of a find your own visual text and learn how to use logical
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support, including informed opinion and facts about the certain media, which in my case

was the movie “The Blind Side.”

In conclusion, yes, I have improved by learning how to write a more effective

thesis statement. I’d have to say that the most enjoyable essay out of the three essays

that were assigned in the course was the project media essay. The project media essay

was the last paper, so I got to use all of my knowledge that was taught throughout the

whole semester to make it an effective essay.