Reflection Essay
When I first started taking English 101 I was skeptical that I would know everything that
was taught in the class because of my previous English classes in high school. On some levels I
was right but when it came to the grammar of English, the teachers at the high school level tend
to believe that the students already know all the grammar rules and that we don’t need to be
recapped. Some things that were a focus throughout the whole time in the class were
understanding audience and genre, experiencing a community setting in our writing process,
learning our strengths and weaknesses in writing, and analyze my own opinion of my essays
from this class.
I felt like the focus of knowing the audience and the genre that you are trying to reach
was the biggest focus in the class. Analyzing audiences affected my writing by showing me that
there are different styles, and not everyone likes the same thing. I see this in the different books
that I hear people talk about and how much they enjoy the book but personally I know that I
would not enjoy reading the book like for example Moby Dick, I am sure that the book is
fantastic of the certain reader but I would not enjoy it because I am not the right audience for that
book. I feel like some difficult genres for me to work with are biographies, personal narratives,
and historical fiction. I find this true because I am not very good at conveying other people’s
stories or my own story because I can’t find what is important to write, for historical fiction I
have not enough knowledge to make a story a true historical fiction. Learning about how certain
people like certain things and that I won’t always agree with another person in a reading or
writing choice makes me able to look at other peoples work more cryptically which makes me
help the writing community and the writing process for others specifically my writing partner.
Writing is all about someone enjoying and reading someone’s work. I feel like the peer
feedback didn’t help me because I feel like my partner was unable to see the style of writing I
was going for and how I actually write. I usually chose the spelling corrections and occasionally
the critics and how I should revise my work but I would look at what she said and then I decided
whether or not to use the corrections or not because over all it is my essay and not my writing
partners. I think that multiple drafts are helpful because sometimes when I write I miss when I
use strange word choices and some spelling mistakes. I usually didn’t make huge changes to my
essays because I was always happy with my original copy because when I write I tend to change
what I want to say and sometimes just scrap the whole copy and start from the beginning and I
will reinvent my whole essay. Personally did not feel like I benefitted from the peer evaluation in
this class because I feel like my writing partner didn’t understand my writing. Even though my
writing partner didn’t understand my writing I got to still figure out my strengths and
weaknesses.
All writers have strengths and weaknesses and the best thing to do with them is to know
your strengths and weaknesses because it will only better you as a writer. I have noticed that I
struggle with writing about myself and trying to explain what I am thinking because most of the
time I don’t even know what I am thinking and I don’t know how to put it into words. I feel like
I still have this problem because writing about myself feel selfish and very personal and it is hard
for me to make things personal and have people see who I really am. I feel like my strength as a
writer is using descriptions to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. I used this when writing the
narrative paper and in the commercial analysis paper because I had to describe what is going on
and it helped me get better grades. My strengths and weaknesses shape my writing style which is
important for me to know.
I chose not to revise any of my essays that I have written in this class. I chose this
because I am comfortable with my grade with all of the essays I wrote and I feel like I have little
room for improvement on my end. Although I did not get a perfect score on any of my essays I
feel that I am confident the work I handed in was the best that I could do and knowing the grade
that I got when I tried my hardest is something that I don’t want to change. I feel like that
because it was a final draft and I put my best foot forward in the essay I can’t improve and show
you better work for my style. My style is apparently not perfect but I don’t expect it to be
because it is perfect to me and I chose not to change something that I am proud of. In my
definition essay I got a near perfect score which shows me that I understand myself better and
that I know how to write my personal opinions and how other see me. In my narrative essay I
was extremely pleased with my work. My essay shows my creativity and I feel like I used what
we learned in class very well and I personally love how I had the essay flow and tell a story. This
was my favorite to write because I got to be creative and the essay I produced was the most
creative and fun essay that I could write. In the final essay we wrote about the commercial, I
admit that it wasn’t one of my best essays but I know that I tried my best and I am still happy
with my grade because it was a difficult writing prompt. Before taking this class I was familiar
with analyzing literature due to previous English classes but analyzing something from this
century is very different than what I was used to and that made it difficult. I don’t think that I
could improve any of my essays and I am extremely happy with all of my work and I chose not
to change it because of that fact. My grades on the essays that I wrote make me realize that even
if I tried to revise it to get a better grade there is a very little chance that I would get a better
grade. Personally I know that in the past I have revised an essay but because I have already had
the prompt in front of me I immediately think back to the previous essay and it is really hard to
start all over and be a better quality than the one I turned in.
Overall this class was not what I expected it to be. The emphasis in writing and how to
write is a refreshing feel to all of the literature that I read in high school and told to just write
about the things we read. This class taught me about knowing the audience and genre, using the
writing community to benefit myself, knowing my strengths and weaknesses, and knowing my
limitations when it comes to revising my previous essays. This class was an experience I will
always remember.