This year I have developed a lot as a writer. The most significant development I have made is how I write my thesis for essays. In the past, I was taught to make my thesis as a list, but now I know how to do a strong thesis. This thesis is from an essay that I wrote last year “Before Kaushik and Hema’s relationship, Kaushik was not willing to settle down, he was distant with his family, and he was unwilling to make any long-lasting relationships.” This thesis is a very boring list that does not captivate the reader. A strong thesis from an essay that I wrote this year is “Although the Galloway School tries to enforce its Academic Integrity Statement from the 2018-2019 Upper Learning Handbook, I believe that students are easily taking advantage of the policy because none of the consequences are enforced. As a result, there should be many changes for instructing teachers on how to enforce these consequences, and giving them a better understanding of those consequences”. I was able to create a two sentence thesis that relates to the rest of my essay. It also is interesting to the reader and organizes my whole essay. Another important thing that I learned how to do this year is how to spot passive voice. Before this year I never even knew what passive voice was and how to fix it. I am now a lot more aware of when I am using it and how to fix it. This sentence is from one of my earlier essays: “As we were walking through the park, a young group of kids started chasing us with water guns, completely drenching us with water.” This sentence is an excellent example of how unaware I was of passive voice. The sentence should be “As we walked through the park, a young group of kids started chasing us with water guns, completely drenching us with water.” Using active voice instead of passive voice makes me a stronger and more direct writer. This year I have also learned how to describe and show my feelings or might point rather than telling the audience. In the past, I have not been able to convey my emotions or the emotions of the character that I am writing about. I am also now able to reflect on certain situations and relationships that occurred in my life, and I can realize how that influenced me today. One of the most exciting projects that we did is when we had to interview someone in our class and write a descriptive essay about them. This made me be able to find something about a person and convey that to the reader without stating your point explicitly. I struggled with this, but after discussions and peer review, I was able to do this. An example from this essay is “Even though Claudia states that she is lazy, she also says that she feels alive when she is being productive and creating new experiences.” I was able to examine the different things that I learned about Claudia and make a strong point. I was pushed out of my comfort zone on a couple of essays because we did not have a specific outline that we had to follow. I can make a point, an example, and an explanation in my argumentative essays. Although this was challenging, I have gotten better at organizing my essays on my own and making sure that it all flows together. My freshmen and Sophomore year my English teachers have always given me feedback on my essays saying that it is not cohesive and has inconsistent tenses. My growth in organization and grammar has significantly helped me throughout this year and will help me in the future. Now I am a lot less stressed about writing essays and about having people peer review my essays. Another moment of growth that I had as a writer is when I went over the limit of words needed and had to shorten my essay. This was the first time I have ever had to do this because I usually struggle to make the minimum word count. Once I started to organize my thoughts I was able to write a lot more and notice which parts were fluff and not needed. I used to be afraid for people to read essays where I describe my personal feelings, but now I am comfortable being vulnerable with others. |
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