Year Reflection

  This year has been a huge learning experience for me.  Besides all the different academic lessons I’ve learned, I also learned a lot socially and physically.  But what I would like to focus on more is the academic things.  The very first day of school when Dr. D told us everything we would be doing throughout the year and all of the different assignments we would be having, I knew this would be a tough class and that I was going to have a lot to handle for the school year, academic wise.  Especially when we wrote a paper the first week of school!  After writing that first paper I knew that from then on, I really needed to buckle down and make sure I paid attention every day in class and made sure that everything I wrote was to the best of my ability. 

  Ever since I was pretty young, I’ve always shown as my mom says “pretty impressive talent” in writing, and I’ve loved it even more.  But, I have to say that once we started writing the real hardcore papers this year and I actually learned how to write properly such as being formal in my writing, using correct grammar, using proper sentence structure and fluency ect. my liking for writing sort of decreased.  Certain papers were really difficult and learning how to write them was even more difficult. 

  One particular paper, the literary analysis… I’m sure we all remember that one.  That was probably the hardest challenge I was faced with this year.  I remember when we were assigned to pick a short story and I remember not taking the assignment very seriously.  Well, I kind of just picked a book off the shelf and I read only 2 stories before I found the one I wanted to do my analysis on.  I didn’t pick wisely because I wasn’t aware we would be using the story for something more important later on.  Well, then we began to start working on the analysis and I had no idea what the heck I was doing, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again!  I even changed the viewpoint on my entire essay after I had already written the entire thing.  That was a big learning experience.  I learned how to manage my time and that I needed to take every assignment seriously and do it to the absolute best of my ability no matter how big or small.  I also learned that when writing, think of as many ideas as possible when brainstorming what topic to pick or what to write about so that you, as a writer can pick the best one and you can have a good paper.  I realized that I needed to not procrastinate my writing and that I needed to work on a little bit every day and that if I am ever confused, I need to go to a teacher.

Some things I noticed when going back and looking over my papers from the year was the amount of improvement I made this year.  On the first paper we wrote which was the Literacy Narrative, I got all 8.5’s and 9.5’s which was really good!  While looking through my other work, I noticed that on the literacy analysis I got a C in the organization but mostly A’s and a couple B’s in the other categories.  Then, in my Reaserch paper which was probably one of the best essays I have ever written by far I received an A in that category along with all the other categories except voice and conventions- citations/MLA format.  That didn’t really come as a surprise to me because I had a difficult time understanding that even after paying very close attention in class and going to see Dr. D outside of class!  Getting down the whole citation thing, weather it be a quote from the book (literary analysis) or a quote from a database (research paper), was really difficult for me this year and that was probably my lowest point.

  My grades were exceptionally good this year, which was not what I was expecting when the year began!  Every time I found out we were writing a new paper I got very nervous because even though I really enjoy writing, I always have a very difficult time beginning.  But once I get going, the ideas flow through me onto the computer naturally.  I wish it were that easy from the beginning.  It really shows if you look at all my work carefully because the opening paragraph for my every single one of my drafts is different from the final!  Something else I started realizing this year that I am having a hard time with is my vocabulary.  I am lacking voab skills big time…  And I was talking to one of my friend’s mom and she told me that I needed to read more and it would help me to bring up my reading level and it would help my vocabulary; so one of my goals for the end of this year and this summer is to read as much as I possibly can and bring my reading level up and learn a lot of new words.

  I have a lot of goals for the upcoming year considering the improvement I have made and the improvement I want to make.  Now that I realize the amount of improvement I can make in a year I know that I can make just as much improvement next year.  Next year, like I said before I want to bring my reading level up and increase my vocabulary.  I also would like to become a better writer, as most people probably aspire for also.  But when I say I want to become a better writer I mean that I want to be able to understand the assignment right away, or at least quicker than this year, and I want to be able to dive into some sort of writing process as soon as possible.  I noticed that in my work this year I would spend a lot of time figuring out what I was supposed to be doing and what kind of writing we were doing.  Another goal I have for next year is to maintain my ability to make an A because I’m pretty sure I held an A throughout the entire year!  Finally I would like to become a better reader and by that I mean I would like to improve in my reading comprehension because I find that I struggle with understanding what I am reading.  And sometimes even recognizing who is talking!  The final thing I wanted to talk about was my WRAP scores, which were fantastic! I got all 4.5's and 5's! I'm pretty sure that was an improvement from last year which is great.  That is just proof that if I sit down and focus on what I'm doing, I can do really good work.

  All in all, this has been a great year and I really did learn a lot inside and outside of English class!  I definitely think that my writing and reading skills improved a lot and that I became an even better writing that I was last year.  My reading has a little ways to go but I know that we are going to be doing a lot of work with that next year and I’m excited to become a better reader!  I’m hoping my teacher is good next year because Dr. D was great and she really knew her subject! 

Common Errors List:

*Use a hyphen in between a number and the word that the amount is being described.

-ex: 5-pages

*Missing comma.  Things can be misread.

-ex: You start off with someone holding on to you, but as you get more advanced and learn more and more, you no longer need the extra hand.

*Misspell Tis

-ex: Tis the season to be jolly!

*Italic the name of a company

-ex: “Securing Maternal Health through comprehensive Reproductive services”           

*Misspelling the word Research

-ex: We have a research paper due on next Monday.