Mallory Baldwin
Dr. deGravelles
April 30, 2012
Block 4
This Years Writing
As my
freshman year comes to a close, the last major writing assignment was to look
back at all of our essays and see what we have improved throughout the year,
and what we still need to work on. When
this assignment was assigned, I was looking forward to looking back at my
writing and see how much I have improved just over these eight months. When I went back to Turn It In and looked
back at the comments, I noticed that in every paper had an issue that was
repeated throughout the paper. I also
noticed that they were very small issues, and they were fixed in the papers
that came after. Overall, this year I
feel like my writing in general has majorly improved, with minor issues along
the way.
The first
major paper we wrote in this class this year was our Literacy Narrative. Mine was called “Pure Imagination,” and it
was about me experiencing my first time dealing with plagiarism, and how every
time I write a paper and we talk about plagiarism, I think of that
experience. Overall, the main reason I
got points off for this assignment was for grammatical errors, especially
commas. I had a few comma splices
throughout the paper, and I didn’t add commas when addressing people, like,
“Why can’t she, Momma?” The overall
comment that was given stated that I had vivid details, and clear significance,
but I needed to work on the grammatical errors.
The second
writing assignment of the year was the profile.
We had to write about a certain person or place, and the significance of
that person or place. I centered my
profile around my house in Orlando, and how it is great place to go when I need
to relax. I think this was one of my
best writing pieces of the year. The
only thing that I needed to add in this paper to make it better was more active
verbs, and I repeated some phrases multiple times that I needed to take
out. Not only do I think this was my
best writing piece of the year, but it was my favorite essay to write this
year.
Halfway
through the year, we did the WrAP essay.
Our topic was prices with buying music.
I said that lowering the prices and making websites to get songs for
free is wrong, because the artists that record the songs are not making as much
money as they should be. This was the
best score I have ever gotten on the WrAP.
My lowest point in the categories was support, and that was because my
essay was pretty short. I should have
developed my claims more. Overall, I
thought this was an okay writing assignment of mine.
Our next
paper was the Literary Narrative. My
paper dealt with the repetition of irony throughout the story, and how that
contributed to the theme of the story. A
lot of people in my class had difficulties writing this paper, including me. This was the hardest paper for me to write
because we dealt with our first thesis in a paper. That is where my problem fit in. I had a good thesis, but throughout the paper
I could have developed my claims more to link them back to my thesis. I do think though that this paper was a good
first attempt at a thesis paper.
The most
recent essay we did was the Global Issues Paper. I did my project on causes of lack of fresh
water in Africa, and ways we can prevent this issue. This was my first research paper that I have
ever done. We first gathered the
research, and then wrote the paper.
After finding the research and making the outline, I thought that this
was a fairly easy paper to write. The
largest problem that I had in the paper was that I would put quotes in the
paper, and not develop how those quotes contributed to the thesis.
After
reviewing my papers completely I would say my biggest problem that I still need
to work on is development. Developing my
claims would not only make my papers longer,
but make people understand my paper better. The thing that I think I have improved on the
most was my word choice. I have always
chosen words that were not as strong as I could make them to be, but this year
I have noticed that I have improved my world choice a lot of this year. Overall, I think that this was a good writing
year for me, and hope that my writing improves even more throughout the years
to come.
1. Comma Splice: adding a comma with no conjunctions between
to sentences to make it a run-on sentence
Example: This is not a good book, it is too long to read.
2. Adding commas when addressing someone:
Example: How are you today, Anna?
3. Adding a hyphen to a number:
Example: two-year old
4. Spelling out numbers one through 9:
Example: 2 years ago… needs to be two years ago…
5. Underlining book titles:
Example: The Summer I Turned Pretty
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