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Lily LeDuc

Mr. Smith

Junior English

1/18/23

Throughout semester one I have seen many improvements in my writing. My first

writing assignment my skills were in the foundational to proficient level. My most recent

assignment I had only one skill in the foundational level, one skill in the advanced level, and the

rest in proficient. I am not quite where I want to be yet but I have seen a lot of improvements so

far just within this semester.

In terms of the strengths in my writing during semester one, I best demonstrated them in

my “Great Gatsby Symbolism Paragraph”. The evidence I used in this paragraph was put under

the category “Exemplary” meaning that I included specific and meaningful evidence throughout

this paragraph. I was able to use my evidence to help prove my claim which was that “In the

novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the green light is used to illustrate Gatsby’s

desire to be with Daisy again”. I used specific examples from the book to prove this. Another

writing piece that demonstrates another one of my strengths this semester was the “American

Dream Essay”. In this essay for fluency and MLA format I was also put under the advanced

category.

“In the article “American Dream Faces Harsh New Reality”, Shapiro says “The story of the 20th

century is one of the American Dream gradually being extended to more of the

population”(Shapiro).” In this example I stated where the article was from and integrated it into

my essay so it didn’t read choppy, everything was placed well and I also did the in-text citation

correctly. I used to not integrate my quotes/evidence to fit into my essays. I would just simply
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put them in to fill space but now I feel myself using my evidence and quotes with a purpose and

making sure they fit in and read smoothly so that my writing makes sense.

One aspect of writing that I struggle with is my analysis and synthesizing my sources. For

example, in my “Great Gatsby Synthesis Essay”, I did not fully synthesize my sources at the end

of each paragraph “Trower explains how it wasn’t Gatsby’s wealth that made him successful, he

used his wealth to attract Daisy's love. Callahan adds that before Gatsby reunited with Daisy he

idolized himself and the idea that he could become anything. As soon as he reunited with Daisy

his focus changed and he now idolized her and their relationship. Despite all of the wealth and

luxury items Gatsby had acquired he wasn't truly happy and content with his life until he was

reunited with Daisy.” I compared the two sources and explained how they added on to each other

and did not contradict each other but in my other paragraphs I was very brief, for example,

“Sjöström demonstrated how Tom used his mansion in East Egg to be successful in terms of

social standings and how others viewed him. Fitzgerald adds that Tom also used his wealth to

take advantage of others by offering to buy them things.” This synthesis was very vague

compared to the one above. It talked about how the different ways Tom used his wealth but

didn’t show how this difference connects to my thesis. Another aspect of writing that I struggled

with was my thesis. For example, in my “Great Gatsby Symbolism Essay” my thesis was graded

in the proficient level meaning that it appeared in the first paragraph and establishes a topic and

claim, “In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the idea of success based on wealth

is questioned. The Great Gatsby displays a contradiction of wealth; for Tom, wealth is success,

while Gatsby views wealth as a means to success.” I explained what the contradiction was and

used that as the guide for the rest of my essay. In order to improve this I need to establish a more

complex claim.
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Next semester I really want to work on adding more complexity to my claims so that I

can broaden the topics I write about but doing so using specific examples. I also really want to

focus on my analysis and synthesis. Working on improving my analysis will help me connect my

evidence to my thesis making sure my ideas are clear and make sense. I also want to work on

synthesizing my sources. The Great Gatsby synthesis essay was the first time I had ever

synthesized sources. After looking at the rubric and seeing what I did wrong I now understand

more of what synthesis really is. As far as grading I want to continue to build off of my

improvements from the first semester, my goal is to get more of my skills in the advanced

category and none in the foundational.