To:
Mr. Thune
From:
Greg VanNostrand
Date:
January 16, 2009
Re:
Assignment 1: Writing Skills Self-Assessment
In this assignment I discuss what I believe to be my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I
also outline the goals I have for myself this semester in terms of my writing. In addition to this
material, I have included a photograph from the Library of Congress and have given a brief
explanation of why I choose it.
Strengths
Pinpointing my own strengths as a writer is difficult. I have very little experience and
education regarding writing in general. Therefore, I don’t feel qualified to accurately critique
anyone’s writing ability, including my own. Keeping that in mind, the confidence I have in
certain areas of my own writing may or may not be warranted.
I believe my biggest strength as a writer to be my avoidance of redundancy. With every
English class I’ve taken throughout my education, it has been stressed to avoid using
repetitive words, phrases, and sentence structures. I feel that I do well in that aspect of
writing.
Another strength that I have when I write is sentence structure. I believe that my sentences
are generally coherent and that they don’t violate any fundamental rules of structure or
grammar.
This brings me to my third, and final, strength: grammar. I admit that I’m still unfamiliar with
many of the subtle rules of our language and I will occasionally use the wrong form a word.
However, I feel that in the majority of my writing I do a good job with using correct grammar.
Weaknesses
One very large weakness that I have is spelling. It isn’t very noticeable in typed documents
like this one, but is apparent in my hand-written documents. The “spell check” function of
most word processors catches many of my spelling errors and my proofreading catches the
rest.
Another weakness of mine is in different document formats. I am not familiar with many
general formats for things like memos or resumes. I often have to do quite a bit of research
into the format of a document I need to write before I can begin, and this adds a decent
amount of time to the time it takes to write it.
The last weakness that I will list here has to do with my transitions between different sections
of my writings. I don’t feel I am very good at using effective connective phrases to smoothly
transition from one idea to another.
Writing Goals
1
My goals for writing this semester are not very ambitious. My biggest hope is to learn what
my real strengths and weaknesses are in writing as determined by my instructor and my
peers. If this happens, my next goal would be to work on my weaknesses and improve them.
In addition to learning my true strengths as a writer, I would like to learn to use those
strengths to get the most out of them when I write.
Photograph
I chose to include this photograph because I have always liked squirrels. I also really enjoy
working outdoors. In addition, I feel that this image represents many of the romantic
relationships out there. One of them is always seems to be a nut, and the other loves them
for some reason and pursues that nut.
Conclusion
My strengths and weaknesses as I see them may not match what others feel them to be. I
imagine that this is one of the main points of this assignment; I learn what I believe I can and
can’t do well, and then I hopefully learn to better identify those things future. I hope to learn
the correct ways to structure some specific documents this semester, and commit that
knowledge to memory. As I stated in the strengths section of this assignment, I am not very
confident in my abilities as a writer or in my abilities to correcting identify my strengths.
However, I think this is true for most people. It is always easier to find our faults in our work
than our strengths.
References
Photograph Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LOT 11453-1,
no. 187
http://wsthune.public.iastate.edu/images/lcphotos/w01742u.png
Page 2