My Writing Struggles

A good writer is someone who knows how to write well, have ideas to put on paper and write a well-organized essay that answers the question that a professor gives to you. I identify my own writing by not being good because I have issues sometimes getting words on paper, organizing the essay and my grammar is not very well. The methods that are effective for improving my own writing is practice writing and have someone proof read my work. I am in COM100L because my grammar is not good and my writing on paper is all over the place. My expectation for this course is to improve my grammar when I write essays and fix my mistakes when I write.

When I was a small child, I didn't like writing unless I was writing something I wanted to. As a result, most of my school work was done half-heartedly, because they were all research projects that we had to do. I didn't have any issues with my writing, and my handwriting was pretty good at my age. My favorite books were the Harry Potter series. I thought I was pretty cool to be able to read such a long book, so I bragged some to my friends. The only topic I liked to write about was fantasy. In second grade, my mom made me start writing every day in a wide ruled journal, so I wrote a story about the Legend of Zelda, a video game I liked. I wrote about it every day for a long time, maybe a year, until I kinda gave up, and wrote the last page

English Composition I has developed my style of writing and my skills analyzing and researching topics to write a piece about a topic. Throughout the course, I got better at analyzing articles and pieces to get the meaning of the topic. With that improved skill I was more able to use the information given from the text and install it into my essays, with proper citation if needed. Before taking the English Composition course, I was not one to organize my essays in an ordeal order to clearly state the point of the work. Now with taking the course, I have learned to organize my essays, examine research for a topic, and develop an essay with proper mechanics, and revising skills. In writing my personal, review, analytical, and cultural

From the time I was in about fourth or fifth grade I began to dislike certain subjects in school. I loathed everything about writing assignments. I didn’t write at home before that the thought of writing for myself never really occurred to me. I hated the deadlines the length requirements and I just tried to get them done and had no intention of writing well because I told myself I was a bad writer. I have never really known whether or not I truly am a bad writer. I continued these habits of just writing something down to get a decent grade all throughout school. I usually got an okay grade because I followed the prompt closely and did the minimum amount of work for the paper. I didn’t start the assignments until either the night before it was due. As I got older I would type the paper on my phone in school that day then print it off in the library moments before class. I continued writing in that awful ritual of complacency until the end of 11th grade. We had to write a paper on The Great Gatsby a book that I never read. I read couple of notes on the internet and then wrote the paper and never reread it or edited it all. I did my usual routine and followed the prompt and turned my paper in. When I got my paper back I was shocked to find out I didn’t get even a half decent grade I was given a zero. I went to my teacher after class to speak with him about the grade and he told me I got the grade that I deserved. He said I was lazy and never tried to truly work in

Throughout the course of this semester in AP Lang, my eyes have been opened to many of the weaknesses I never knew I had in writing. Coming into this semester, I had heard about the difficulty of this class, but was not unduly worried about not receiving an A; I have always considered myself as a competent if not strong writer. However, after failing to attain desired grades on several important essays, I was devastated, and realized that although I had mastered the basics of grammar and writing, there was still much for me to work on. Also, I did not understand that much of my grade in AP Lang would be determined by speaking in front of others, which is not my strong suit. What I have come to find is that writing essays containing all of the new information we have learned throughout the semester, such as requirements for different types of essays and good writing strategies, takes a lot of work, time, and thinking. Unfortunately, my procrastination caused me to only get done what had to be done instead of putting in the extra work and truly understanding everything.

When I stop to think about the memory’s that I have made during my first semester of college; there are both good and bad pieces or times that present themselves. Often with many things there are gray areas, and writing would fall in there for me. I fortunately understand now that I have times where I can over look many of my writing flaws. Such as sentence structure! This by far was my biggest problem in this class, and I fully understand why. Personally I have times that will type up a paragraph and never notice the mistake. That is until someone points it out to me. It’s almost like my brain knows that something is wrong with it, but for some unknown reason it won’t register when I’m revising my paper. So as a writer I have realized that I need to take advantage of people around me and get their feedback on my essay’s; because

Author and professor of writing, Amy Joy stated “Anyone who says writing is easy isn 't doing it right” Learning what I have about the writing process over this past semester, I can now confidently say that Amy Joy is absolutely correct! Writing has never been my strong point but taking on the challenge to turn that around has been extremely rewarding. My lack of confidence in my writing skills would always come across in my assignments. It was clear that I needed guidance with grammar, sentence structure, and expanding my vocabulary. Fortunately, the coursework in English 101 along with the help and support of my professor, I have gained a much greater confidence in my ability to write quality college level papers. My writing has greatly improved taking the Introduction to College Writing course. I have learned how to integrate the words and ideas of others by quoting and paraphrasing, about expository writing, and most importantly, critical thinking.

The college textbooks always suggest in order to write a good article there are several stages and several points that you should take and consider. For example before you start writing, first you have to brainstorm ideas, take notes, and make outlines. After getting everything in order, you have to decide what kind of article you are writing: a comparison and contrast writing, a cause and effect writing, or etc. Then you have to think of a good thesis statement, subtopic statements, introduction and conclusions, central paragraphs, and many more. Finally you have to worry about having sentence variety, not to use passive voice, not to have run on sentences, not to use too much ‘is’ and ‘and’. I do not know about

John Edgar Wideman’s “Our Time” a chapter from Brother and Keepers is a very interesting essay explaining the hardships of living in a place like Homeland back in the 50’s. Wideman tells his story through his mother, his brother Robby, and himself bringing up throughout the story the troubles he faces as a writer. Wideman faces the issue of keeping out his own bias as he listens to the stories of his family. Wideman life turned out better than was most likely expected during that time, so it was very hard for Wideman to hear and interpret his family’s stories for truly what they meant. Wideman raises these issues within the

Throughout this semester there are many skills that I have noticed have improved through the constant writing of essays for this class. The one that I find most noticeable is a habit I had long struggled with which was essentially my tendency to be over necessarily wordy when writing my essays. I believe that I was able to somewhat fix this subconsciously, just by knowing that I was no longer in high school, and could no longer get by with just attempting to fill up my word count. I also believe I have greatly improved in my topic selection. In high school I would throw caution to the wind and just pick whatever topic came to mind just in an effort to get it done. I have been much more calculated in college, and I believe that it has helped me write better essays. While these were the

During this semester, I have strengthened my writing by trying new writing techniques, learning about purpose, and finding new ways of combating writers block. My first essay in this class was less focused then the essays I wrote later in

Romulus, I agree, when I enter this class, I had obstacles facing me in writing. Nevertheless, I have learned to grow in writing also speaking properly. Building strong paragraphs assist you with an essay (Chambers, 2015). The essay ordinarily, has three paragraphs which contain an introduction, body, and a conclusion. I too read about the literary problem in college graduates. This class has covered the fundamental tools and resources to assist with breaking the literary chains. Consequently, you have an understanding of the importance of "good writing skills". However, stay focus on striving to meet your goal, to become the best writer.

When being asked to write a paper I have to start by typing. I start with the introduction, the body and then the conclusion. I find it difficult to write papers with pen and paper. It is like I do not know where to start. I’m really not sure why I like typing it. It might be because I love hearing the keys or if I’m stuck on one part of my paper I can write a note to myself to go back to it later. But with pen and paper leaving notes and going out of order not only gets confusing but I do not like my paper getting unorganized. Also, I type faster than I write. My brain is going a million miles per hour and I cannot catch up fast enough when I’m writing with pen and paper.

Daniel was sitting in his dorm when he heard the two voices arguing behind his door. He tried not to eavesdropped, because it was far to common for people to just be arguing in the hall, but Daniel could hear his name and Lucinda’s being mentioned in their heated argument.

When it came to the essays writing became a little trickier because I had to understand what it was I needed to write about and the style in which I need to write it in. There are nine essay writing methods which I learned while attending this course: exemplification, compare/contrast, cause and effect, proposal, narration, process, division/classification, definition, and argument. The only problems I encountered when trying to write the essays that were assigned to me by the instructor was finding suitable subject matter to write about. Once I found my topics for my essay, everything else became easier. I would first produce a rough draft and then the students, the instructor, and myself would go over them in class and decided if what I was writing was in its best form. Most of my rough drafts needed improvement, but if it didn’t it wouldn’t be a rough draft, so it was understood. My final drafts were very satisfying for me as well as the grades I received on them.