John Breitenbach 1

John Breitenbach
Professor Blackie
ENG 1010 CRN# 11656
28 April 2014
WP #6 Reflection
Word Count: 832

Self-Reflection
I have to say that taking English 1010 has been an awakening to the wide range of what
writing really is. When I started this class I thought I was a decent writer, but over the course of
this semester I found that I was not. Writing is more difficult and has so many rules in which I
never understood or maybe just had taken for granted. When you have a conversation with
someone you never realize how what youre saying flows but if it were on paper it would not
sound right. I did not understand the mechanics of the English language fluently enough to
produce a great essay. Over the course of this class I have been taught to demonstrate fluent
and educated writing in my essays. I firmly believe that this class has allowed me to see my
flaws and has given me the tools to become a more successful writer so I can transition
confidently to the next level in English.
When writing you have to have the ability to read and write first and foremost. My first
assignment was writing project 1: Literacy Narrative, while this essay explains my lack of
understanding the writing process prior to this class, it also shows my ability read and write. This
essays main point was to explain how I learned to read and write. My supporting details for this
assignment were my mother, sister, friends, family, and educators have been very helpful in my
process of learning while my father and personal issues were nothing but a road block in my
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education. This assignment also helped me to understand how to develop a thesis as the
original was weak at best. The organization and development of the contents were off as well
and I learned how to correct that and become more organized and create a more developed
essay.
Writing project 2: Ad Critique, allowed me to understand on a deeper level to identify
themes and motifs. The theme of this ad was American Pride and the motif is how you should
be proud of your country and buy an American made car. Writing project 3: Academic Summery
and Response has given me the opportunity to demonstrate the tools used for writing
compositions using appropriate rhetorical strategies like summery, analysis, response, editing
and revision. In this essay, I had to choose 3 articles to read. Then summarize the articles and
analyze their relation to one another and how it pertained to the rest of the world. After that,
write a response with the listed information and post a rough draft. Once that was done I was
required to revise to make sure that everything flowed and edit to ensure no mistakes or
mechanical errors were present for my draft for final submission. These two essays have given
me the ability to understand the writing process better while using key parts of the structure that
is the written English language.
My final assignment prior to my portfolio was writing project 5: Trance Review. This
assignment has taught me to how use other rhetorical strategies like argumentation to explain
my point of what was good about the movie and why I think that it is one of the best films that I
have seen in my life. By watching the movie and picking up on the plot and understanding the
development of the movie, I was able to summarize its content and give a detailed explanation
explaining how I felt about the movie. When I originally wrote my rough draft for the review on
Trance I hadnt noticed that I used three words exactly as they were written in a few articles that
I had read about the movie. When this was pointed out by Smart Thinking, (The external source
used for feedback on changes that need to be made to an essay) I made sure to get rid of them
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and come up with my own words to avoid plagiarism. I have learned through this essay exactly
how to sum up something that I am reading and taking it to a smaller scale for a reader.
This class was by far harder than I had expected it to be. Through the assigned writing
assignments I have learned many things to help improve my process when writing for
educational purposes and also in my personal life as well. Many of my thesis statement were
very weak because I did not understand how to lump the brunt of everything I wanted to say into
one sentence. As the semester progressed I continued to understand how to use commas,
semicolons, and quotations. These were things that I should have learned prior to being in a
college level class. At this point I feel that I have learned how to demonstrate writing at a college
level and feel confident in transitioning to a higher level of English.