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Keila Rosado
English 113B
Professor Ditch
May 8 2015
The Journey to Improvement
Becoming a writer is a process in which takes a many tries to master. My writing skills
are still in the process of becoming perfect. But throughout this semester my writing skills
have improved in numerous ways, such as how I can reduce my introduction paragraph so I do
not put more than what is needed, and learning the format in how to write an essay in MLA
format. My writing has always been good, but I feel it has got much better because of how hard
my professor pushed us. Writing in general is hard for me, but I have learned as long as you try
and put in long hours and dedicate your paper will not come out bad.
I could say my writing did not improve because I still tend to mumble about things I do
not need to talk about, therefore my sentences or paragraphs become off topic. My writing still
has many areas of improvement because of the way I use commas I tend to use what I now know
is called a comma splice, which is the wrong way of using a comma. For example in both of my
essays, Project Space and Project Text, there were comments on adding a comma in a certain
area. I also did not improve till there very last revision was my heading for where my name and
heading go. My writing could have improved better than how I think it did.
One example on how my writing improved is my introduction paragraphs have got better
in length. In my first essay, Project Space, my introduction paragraph was one whole page long
and it could have been shortened which I did in my revisions. In my Project Text essay I did
much better at stating my thesis and explaining a little into the book we read. Also within my

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introduction paragraphs I tend to not inform the reader who I am talking about such as this
sentence here that I wrote in project text Although, World War II has brought many tragedies
and challenges they I said they which should have been the people I was talking about so in
my revisions that is something and changed to improve my writing. My introductions have got
stronger and inform you of my thesis and some background information and that will help for
future essays.
Within both of my essays I struggled a lot to get the formatting and spacing down for
MLA formatting. What I should have done more is going online and research how MLA
formatting looks, but I was thinking I was correct which is great, but I should always double
check. Some of my errors were the spacing between my title and my introduction paragraph. I
was able to fix those spacing errors in my revisions and I hope I do not forget. Another error is
my works cited page where I tend to do too much spacing and I could not get the indenting
figured out to the second line of the citation. My professor gave me feedback with both essays
saying to change the spacing and move over the second line to my citation and luckily I was able
to change it for my revised essay and for my portfolio.
Another error I was tending to make was adding more than what I needed and not getting
to the point. It happened more in my Project Text than it did in my project space, but a paragraph
in project text my Professor gives me feedback saying Lots of summary and lacking analysis
and connections to your argument and so her feedback got me thinking on how can I make this
paragraph better and what I did was reread it and I took it out in total because it just did not need
to be there. My professors feedback really helped me because I could go back and understand
why she said that for that paragraph or even in other comments. I have shortened and cut down
on writing on more than I need to and have got much better at shortening my point. When

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writing I also had a problem with keeping my tone in one point of view such as either third
person or first person. My Professor in both papers made many comments and even corrections
either to change the I or try not to use it. Also I had trouble staying in either past tense pr
present tense like in project Text this sentence had a comment to change a word the
characters portray the image of how awful the war had gotten and how their lives stayed after the
war was over. In this sentence I changed had gotten to has got so that the writing was not in past
tense and was changed to present tense. My errors did not destroy my essay, but they made me
get a lower grade than I should have, but I believe with the corrections I have made I should have
improved a lot and get a grade higher than before.
My writing was not as horrible as I thought because I look at others writing and it is
worse than mine. In all of my errors I know that grammar is a big factor in my errors, but
unfortunately my professor and the people at the learning center do not help with grammar so I
had to fix those mistakes on my own. Which I thought was helpful because I feel it helped me
grow as a writer to correct my own work. As I mention the learning center they helped out with
my essay as well as my professor did and I am glad I have somewhere to go when I need
assistance on writing like how I did. My writing as certainly improved because of this English
course. I am glad I got to know more students, faculty, staff and I got new friends throughout the
semester. Improving on our writing is very important especially because we have to write an
essay when we want to graduate for our Junior/Senior year in college. Overall I would say I am
thankful to have taken this English course because I know I have improved in my writing
sufficiently and effectively. With the feedback that I got from my professor I believe really
helped me out into creating my writing better than how it was. I appreciate everything my
professor has done by giving us website to look back on and notes on how to do things when we

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are confused; I am confident in my work now because before I thought low of myself, but now I
believe I can write very superior and high-quality papers.