This year, I was able to write about things that I was passionate about it and wouldn't typically write an essay about. I was able to talk about some of my achievements in my personal essay, and I was able to give some insight on my life through my descriptive essay. I have never wrote a paper on a topic that matters to me or that I felt was useful up until this year. However, this year, I was able to transfer my feelings to paper which helped me further understand my feelings within. I was able to truly show who I was as a person in my papers, while still being formal, and that was truly eye opening to me, and a skill I’ll carry on in later english classes.
In the beginning of the year, there were many things I did not know. I came into English 11 not even knowing how to write in MLA format without using Google. I was unaware that passive voice and active voice mattered in my essays, and I most certainly did not know how to write a thesis statement, that properly outlined my whole argument. And a concession paragraph? Forget about it. Throughout the course of the year, I was able to work on my weaknesses and improve upon them which in turn made me a better writer. Previous to your class Ms. Crowell, I was never able to do this because I never got to adequate help. This year, however, I was able to improve my vocabulary and perfect my sentence structure. I was able to write a paper in a structured way that made sense, and clearly conveyed all of my thoughts and ideals. In my personal essay, I was able to construct a paper that had figurative language, proper sentence structure, and good vocabulary. Before I was not able to do this. I wrote papers in random order, without a clear thesis and supporting body paragraphs, and I did not express my thoughts well within papers..
Before this year began, I was confident in my ability to use the basics of english writing, I thought I knew all the elements that went into writing a proper essay. This year I learned what a concession paragraph is, I thought that an argumentative paper or compare contrast paper had to be all about your point of view. I never knew that you had to express the other person's opinion as well. It took some time but as I got better at this, I was able to improve my own argumentative writing style. I had never really wrote a compare and contrast paper before, but it really helped me with the ability to analyze varying points to fairly display both sides to paint a clear, bigger picture.
One of the biggest challenges I had this year was the night essay. I was unsure how to write about this topic due to the fact that it was so deep. I did not believe in my writing enough to create a full paper on the holocaust. Not to mention that the topic was extremely difficult to write about. I had a difficult time trying to express all of my thoughts onto paper. It was hard to show what I was thinking and make it make sense at the same time. I ended up getting a lower grade than I had anticipated but the review that I got helped me a lot with my recent essays. The main thing I struggled with in the essay was my topic sentences and my thesis statements. I was too vague with the beginning of my paragraphs which caused me to get points off on my paper. It was things like this that I struggled with consistently throughout my english literature career. However, I have improved on being more specific in my topic sentences and being more clear in my thesis statements.
This year in english has helped me a lot with writing papers, but most importantly it helped me in my ability to write within my own style – something I’d never done before. I can truthfully say that this is the first year that I have learned a lot in an english class. There are so many things that I learned throughout the year within this class that I had never learned before. I now try to eliminate as much passive voice as I can in my essays, I fully understand how to properly structure my papers to convey my points as clearly as possible, and I now know how to use figurative language effectively in my papers in order to give them readers a better image of what I’m trying to convey within them. I'm excited to see how much this newfound knowledge will help me in my future english classes. I would like to thank everyone who has helped me this year, but I especially want to thank you Ms. Crowell for truly making me a better writer.
Me and Julius Berger spray painting my first year at Galloway