Charlotte Wallace

Mid Year Reflection

Throughout semester one there has been ups and downs with my writing, I feel as though

my writing has shown improvement. Through this improvement I wanted to take the time to

reflect on what I have improved on and things that I can continue working towards in the second

semester. When it comes to the thesis I feel as though I have improved compared to the start of

the year. An example of this is when writing the argumentative essay. I had written “While many

schools claim to work to boost the mental health of students, in reality it causes negative effects

on students' mental health, such as increased stress and psychological disorders, they also

contribute to increased absences and difficulty attending classes”, this thesis shows proficiency

because it was clear and it got the point across to the reader, which is important. It directly

answered the prompt which was to write an argumentative essay arguing from your point of view

while also using concessions to use the other point of view. Overall, I thought my thesis met

these standards because it was effective for the writing. I think another one of my strengths now

compared to the start of the year is picking out strong evidence that connects to the claim of any

texts. Specifically talking about the American Dream essay. When writing the American Dream

essay, I specifically looked at how health care affected the economy in a negative light. The

evidence I chose was “Connectively, in recent studies it has shown that 1 in 11 persons reported

missing or postponing medical care due to financial concerns in the National Health Insurance

Scheme from 2021. According to the KFF survey from March 2022, 43% of adults said they or a

family member in their home delayed or postponed needed medical care because of the cost”, I

thought that this evidence had met the standards because it strengthened the claim of healthcare
being detrimental when it comes to the affordability of it. This supported my ideas and allowed

me to strengthen the claim that was stated. Which is an important aspect when it comes to

finding strong evidence. Although I found synthesis that was strong, overall I can work on

improving writing my synthesis and connecting on a deeper level. When going into semester two

I want to work on this skill so it can flow more and connect on a deeper level as well. In my Into

the Wild essay, I feel like I had a lot of room to improve, and throughout semester two I will

continue to reflect upon this to improve future writing. My overall goal for semester two is to

mainly improve on my synthesis writing but I also want to improve my reading skills as well. I

feel as though I'm always reading really slow and I want to become a better reader so I can

expand my writing even more. I can achieve these goals through reading more and practice

writing synthesis when given an assignment.