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Danny Montoya
Professor Batty
English 113A
9 December 2015

First Semester Improvements

As an incoming freshman I have a lot to learn from the everyday college life experiences.
One of those experiences is learning how to write a well developed essay of choice. Im not so
much in favor of writing essays, especially college essays, but you can never run away from
them. My first college class was English, and me a little frightened about doing huge loads of
essays, was terrified. In my mind I was thinking that the professor might hand us an essay on our
first day of class, and as for myself not meeting the proper requirements in completing a college
paper was a bit nervous.
As soon as I saw Professor Batty walk into class, I knew my days of struggling to write
essays were soon to be over. As I reflect back through everything she taught us, as well as our SI
instructor, I have gained an enormous amount of knowledge on how to write essays, not
perfectly, but close to perfect. As for myself, I grasped one huge lesson that Professor Batty
taught us, and that was the major fact of plagiarizing in college. She taught us what plagiarizing
is and what we can do in order not to plagiarize on essays or other things that we write. I had a
small understanding of what plagiarizing was, but some things she taught us, I was totality clue
less about. I would have never thought something so simple can turn into a really big deal. The
simple fact of adding quotations to sentences you copy and paste from different sources that
could either be online or on paper on to your essay. Not adding these quotations will result in

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you plagiarizing, meaning copying another persons ideas and saying that you came up with
them. This really came in handy with mostly all the essays that we have done throughout the
semester.
I also liked the fact that we would work together in groups. I learned a lot from working
in the books New Voices, and They Say I Say. In the book New Voices, we would read
other peoples essays and figure out what they were missing or what they could do in order to
make their essay better for the reader. This helped me when I would write my essays, I would
think back to what those people were missing and things that needed to be improved in their
writing. In the book They Say I Say, I gained a lot of knowledge on transition words from one
sentence to another. Also on how not become a bios writer when writing about too arguments
and you opposing to talk about the other argument.
One of the things that was new to me and I have never done before was peer review. This
really helped a lot in getting feed back from your classmates/professors. The fact that you would
have a couple people read your rough draft and them having to write helpful comments on what
youre missing or grammar errors, etc. This gave me a perspective on how each person reading
my paper looks and sees different things from another person who read my paper. This really
helps in getting different peoples opinions on your paper.
Overall I am more than satisfied with the help and knowledge that my professors, and
classmates gave me throughout my first semester journey through a rigorous learning
environment. I have gained so much knowledge in learning how to right mostly any type of
essay and how to write proper emails to your professors. Im glad that for my first semester I got
the privilege to have such amazing professors that guided me through the right paths of essay
writing and other important utilitys that may be helpful to me in my writing future.

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