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Marisol Leyva

Professor Beadle

English 114A

10 May 2017

Improved Writing

As a first year college student I can admit that my writing is not the best in the world and

my papers are of error free, but one thing I can say is that so far my writing has improved over

this course material. This English 114A course has helped me to realize that the way I was using

some words was not the correct way of using them. Over this class I had to make some changes

to my essays a few times and still they were never perfect papers. As I continued the course I

also found out that having a nice professor or at least a professor that is willing to listen to you

and arrange some hours besides their office hours to help you, makes you a better writer. I have

learned that there is no need of a perfect paper when in reality all you need is a professor to help

you or classmates to help as well.

While I was in this course, my writing improved by realizing that I was having some

common spelling errors such as not using the words the way it should had been used. For

instance, in my first essay of this course in my introduction I had the sentence There is many

ways that those other people who do something, try to make changes such as writing an article

on what society has to realize and try to change . In this sentence the is I used at the

beginning of the sentence, was not supposed to be there and instead I had to add are to make it

sound there are many ways... and end up sounding better. Also in my second essay even just in

my first two sentences I noticed that I already had three errors. In short terms, I confused my
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present tense words with my past tense words. I would use some words in one tense and the

other on the other and was just confusing the reader.

My experience in this course helped me to know that every quote that is included in an

essay, has to be explained to the reader of what your analysis of that quote specifically is. As an

example, in my Progression 1 essay for the first quote I add in my first body paragraph, I do not

have a further explanation of the quote I only say people are not used to seeing people who are

not the way they are, and now that i know that some further explanation has to be done I

actually explain my quote to be able to let the reader know my understanding of the quote and

how it related to what I am trying to argue. I also have made some changes in this same essay but

on my thesis. As first I was confusing the reader by explaining each article used independently,

but what I should have know from the start is that I had to relate the articles and talk about their

relationship.

In my second essay I also had to make many changes but one of the most important

changes I made was the thesis as well as I did in my first essay. In my second essay I made my

thesis shorter than how it originally was, this made my thesis more clear and straightforward and

easier to identify. Another major change I had to do to my second essay was the use of my

outside sources. In this case I only needed one outside source and I did not use it well enough

and that is because it did not relate much to my argument. In this situation I just had to

completely get rid of that paragraph where I mention it and look for another one that worked

better.

During this course I was going through some personal issues but I had the courage to talk

to my professor and ask him for help in my essay. I had not done this before because I do not
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really like talking to teachers or professors, but this time I had to go because I actually failed the

same course the previous semester and I was struggling with this one too so I knew that I had to

seek for help. My best option was my professor since he was the one who would be grading my

papers. This was a correct choice since it really helped me to improve my writing. My

professors comments on my papers have made me know that there are still many things that I

have to learn about having a better written paper. For example in my first essay he commented

Is acceptance Devors only purpose this helped my to improve my writing because I know

now that I do not have to focus on one of the authors purpose only even if it is what relates more

to my topic but also I have to inform the reader about the authors complete purpose. Also in my

second essay I got feedback from my professor saying next to one of my paragraphs when I

quote a sentence from an article that quotes another article, in which my professor says Does

Devor agree with this view of femininity? this questions what I wrote because I was just saying

that the author (in this case Devor) mentions that other article but I clearly never clarify if

Devor was agreeing with this quote or what is to prove something else.

During my time in this course I had many ups and many downs which have actually

helped me a lot during my knowledge of a better written paper. I learned how to use my words in

the correct way. I also was able to realize the error I had by not explaining further my quotes.

Another thing that this course of English 114A helped me with was to realize that talking with

your professors is not actually a bad idea and will always help you to be a better student and a

better writer and realize your grammar errors even if they are such small ones.

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