At the beginning of the semester in this English 101 course, I expected that I will be able to develop and improve different aspects of the English language such as reading, writing, speaking, pronunciation and grammar (Nunan and Lockwood 2). I am particularly hoping to enhance my writing skills and grammar. At the end of the semester, I also aimed to develop other skills such as understanding the details of conversations, pronunciation and deeper analysis from reading for gist and how to use the English language more fluently. One of the strengths I have learned is the proper sentence construction, including the subject-verb agreement, proper use of tenses, using articles, adjectives and how to express myself using the correct vocabulary. One of my weakest points is sentence construction. Prior to enrolling in this course, I usually have a hard time constructing sentences because I find it difficult to use the correct words or terms to make a good sentence. I am proud to say that I was able to express myself better and was able to enhance my reading comprehension.
Some of the comments that my classmates made about my essays encouraged me to continue learning how to write even better. One of the positive comments that I received is that I wrote a good essay that was simple that was able to easily convey my thought and ideas to the readers. However, I also received some negative feedback such as incorrect spelling and wrong use of words. Some of the specific comments on the essay that I wrote are: “Good introduction and conclusion” and “some sentences are confusing”. With these positive and constructive criticisms, I am able to become a more productive writer. Although some of the writing styles that I used made sense to me, there is one classmate of mine who found it confusing. This comment is an advantage for me because it motivated me to write even better.
Before I was able to produce the final version of the paper, it had to go through several revisions due to misspelled words, wrong use of words, pronoun use, faulty subject-verb agreement, punctuations, comma misuse, sentence structure, misplaced words, wordy sentences and vocabulary use. Having learned all of these in this English course, I was able to have a clearer grasp on how to present ideas and to form them into sentences. The ideas became more fluid as I was more confident on my writing style. In the beginning, I had to make several revisions on the paper which resulted in multiple drafts. The initial paper was used for brainstorming before getting the ideas right on the target. Before getting it right, the initial paper had to be revised in order to present clearer thoughts and ideas. The second draft and third drafts were made due to wordy sentences that had to be shortened to produce a single thought and complement the other paragraphs. One specific example in my essay is the sentence “There are several poisonous snakes in Africa than anywhere else in the world”, which was written in my third draft. In the final draft, I wrote the sentence “There are many kinds of poisonous snakes that can be found in Africa”. The second sentence is clearer and was able to convey the idea that I want to impart to the readers (Mahony 4).
The weakest essay that I wrote was about the student population in the world. I feel that this is my weakest essay because I was not able to conduct a good research to support my claims. At the same time, the paper did not sound as interesting as I wanted it to be. I was not too confident with the final paper since some of the sentences were wordy and sounded confusing. One of the errors committed on this paper is the sentence: “Most of the high school students from California go to private schools because they believe that this is where they get the best education”. This sentence is wordy and does not really talk about the topic student population in the world.
For me, the strongest essay that I have written is the one which talks about my family. In this essay, I was able to express myself more clearly because I wrote about the people close to my heart, which are my parents and siblings. Writing details about your family is an easy task because I am familiar about the subject matter. I know every member of my family very well and it is easier to express my feelings in words.
One of the exercises we did on class in the reading discussion which allowed us students to know the reactions of other students to the articles we have written. For me, this was a good opportunity to exchange ideas and to help each other improve our reading comprehension and writing skills based on comments and suggestions of other students.
Works Cited:
Mahony, David. Excel Senior High School Fundamentals of English. NSW: Pascal Press, 2004. Print.
Nunan, David and Jane Lockwood. The Australian English Course 1 Student’s Book. London: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print.
