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Frankeila Cuevas Dr. Lagos English 1430, Section 04 19 December 2018 Academic Reflection Final Draft

Reflection At the beginning of the semester, my writing was weak in many ways. The grammar, organization, and the development of my essays were some examples of it. There were moments when I thought that I would not be able to pass the class, or even worse, that I would not be able to improve what I was doing wrong in my essays. Nevertheless, throughout the semester this class taught me not to only develop strategies for critical thinking

and to write persuasive, but to

express myself through my writing. Writing a summary/response, rhetorical analysis, and an argumentative essay played an essential role in helping me to improve my writing and most importantly, to understand how relevant writing is. The first day of class , I had to write a diagnostic essay during class time. I read an article and wrote an argumentative essay about arguing for or against making plastic bags illegal for stores to give customers. In the beginning, I did not identify what the main purpose of the text was, therefore, I decided to read it one

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more time. After that I was able to write my thesis statement. “Each single day our planet is increasingly being contaminated for the use of diverse daily products made of plastic. Plastic pollution has a deadly effect not only on wildlife, but even more in oceans and humans.” When I established my thesis, I supported each argument with evidence and reasons. In this essay, even though I did not have the same time as my partners to write it, the content and the statement of my stance was clear. However, I should have paid more attention to my grammar and should have brought the counterarguments to make my claim stronger and more credible. In the summary/response essay, I learned how write an objective one-paragraph summary focusing on the main ideas of a text. Furthermore, I learned how to differentiate details from main ideas and how to persuade readers using my opinion. In order to convince my audience, I learned the importance of quotations and how to quote from the reading appropriately. I wrote a summary/response essay about “On Being Seventeen, Bright and Unable to Read” by David Raymond, an article published in 1976 in the New York Times. I think that writing this essay was very helpful and useful because I learned how to identify and summarize the important information of a text. In this essay I gave my opinion, which I supported with personal experiences. I consider this essay as one of my favorite among all the others I have ever written. The main reason

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is because “On Being Seventeen, Bright and Unable to Read” emphasizes shame for being different and throughout the essay, I could totally relate to the author’s emotions. It also had many points that made it easy to write about and very interesting to read. The rhetorical analysis essay was the most difficult to write for me. I wrote an analysis of the speech “The Ballot or the Bullet” by Malcolm X. I decided to write about this speech because it referred to racial inequality against black people. The author emphasized how unfairly black people were being treated during the mid-20th century and motivated them to go and vote. I analyzed this essay identifying the three appeals: ethos, pathos and logos. The use of pathos throughout the speech was fascinating, “he elevated his voice when he said, “I’m speaking as a victim of this American dream; I see an American nightmare.” The deliverance of these words was very passionate and convincing. This particular essay was very difficult to write for me because I found it hard to present my ideas specifically without providing too much information. After the first draft, I was able to organize my ideas more direct to the point without distorting their main emphasis, which I consider to be most writing issue I presented, but that I now have better control over. I also incorporated some of the advice from my peers and professor into my essay, such as to summarize some of the information provided about the rhetor because it made my essay to look like a

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autobiography. In addition, for my final draft I revised my grammar and mechanics, so I could write an excellent essay. The last assignment I had to write was an argumentative essay. Writing this type of essay helped me to develop arguments, research skills and critical thinking. I learned how to defend my position by using factual and personal evidence. For this assignment, I chose to write about plastic surgery with the main objective to convince my audience why it is bad for people. Throughout the essay, I explained why people should not be performing plastic surgeries on their bodies and the risks of it, which I supported with specific evidence and examples. For my final draft, I had to revise my grammar and add more factual support in order to make it more credible. I also provided two recommendations at the very end of my essay, as both alternatives of plastic surgery and to re-establish my thesis statement. “Exercise regularly and consuming natural foods will cost less than living by the price of surgeries, the real price, I mean, their own lives.” I personally consider this essay as the hardest one I had to write, mainly because I was not sure if I was using the format MLA 8 properly to cite in-text citations. During this semester I was able to identify problems in my writing with grammar and mechanics, punctuation, and organization of my essays, but more importantly I was able to learn about writing like I have never before and improve it. The three adjectives that best describes my efforts this semester are restless,

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confident and content. Each single assignments taught me something that I eventually applied in my writing. The greatest accomplishment that I consider that I have achieved for this class was learning to do not plagiarize information from others, but to use quotation marks in case of providing it. Throughout the semester, as a critical thinker I have learned to develop focused paragraphs that meet an audience’s needs, to synthesize ideas, to provide a clear and accurate explanation of a text’s main ideas, to support ideas logically, and how to persuade readers. At the end of the semester, when I re-read my papers I am very glad with the noticeable changes in my writing, for instance, my midterm and final test are evidences of it. I improved my score from four to a five in the final because I paid more attention to presenting my ideas clearly and being extremely careful to do not plagiarize. Some advices that I would give for next semester’s College Composition incoming freshmen are to re-read aloud their work, to revise and edit before presenting it to the professor because it will affect their grade, and to try to submit their papers on time....