Brockman 1

Michael Brockman
Prof. Christen Enos
ENGW 1111 - First Year Writing - Sec. 8
11 January 2016
Writing Assignment #1: Inches and Essays - Measures of Maturity
Just as my increasing height has helped me to follow my physical growth over
the years, the development of my writing over the years has allowed me to track my
maturity and to chart my growth as a person. Looking back to the time I started
learning how to read and write in kindergarten, then began learning about different
styles of writing in middle school, and continued to fine-tune my writing abilities in
high school, I have been able to see tremendous growth in my abilities as a writer.
This is largely due to the fact that, as I grew older, I was increasingly able to
incorporate experiences and insight from my life into my works of writing, and able to
refer to these experiences while reading for deeper comprehension. In my opinion,
my abilities as a writer reached a climax during my senior year of high school during
the college application process. The essays I composed served as a perfect
culmination of all the writing skills I had learned, and allowed me to sell something
very important: myself.
I have always considered myself to be a strong writer, and have been fortunate
to have great English teachers throughout my years in school so far. However, I do not
believe I would have experienced such significant growth in my writing if it were not
for three incredibly influential people: Ms. Kasia Arellano, Mrs. Stephanie Fujii, and

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Ms. Trude Hoffacker. Each of these influential people provided me with additional
skillsets that I could use to become a better reader and writer.
Ms. Kasia Arellano served as my sixth grade Reading/Writing teacher. She
pushed my peers and I to significantly expand our vocabularies and to use complex
sentence structures in order to further our abilities as writers. Accordingly, we were
then able to use these skill sets to read more challenging literary works and to
compose essays that pushed the envelopethat is, at a sixth grade level. After Ms.
Arellanos class, I felt smarter when I was writing, and was more confident in sharing
my work with peers and faculty. I used the skills I had learned from Ms. Arellano
throughout the rest of middle school and into high school.
During my junior year of high school, Mrs. Fujii was my Honors American
Literature & Writing teacher. Close Textual Analysis was a major focus in this
course, in which we were taught to analyze key passages from a text, breaking them
apart to decipher a deeper meaning than may have initially been perceived. After
practicing close textual analysis, or CTA, we were able to incorporate analytical
deductions into our essays to write about complex ideas and hidden meanings in the
literature we were reading. Probably the most important aspect of Mrs. Fujiis class
was the level of feedback she returned to us on our essays and CTA logs. Mrs. Fujii
spent hours reviewing and annotating our work and papers with suggestions and
comments to help us improve our future writing, as opposed to simply giving us a
grade and then a new assignment. In my opinion, feedback is the most valuable type
of help that a teacher can give their students, and because of Mrs. Fujiis dedication,
I saw my abilities as a writer improve yet again.

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Ms. Trude Hoffacker is my next-door neighbor back in California, and is also a
retired English professor and high school English teacher. Trude has helped me with
my writing since the beginning, and has helped to spark my interest in literature and
writing. We would frequently have conversations about the books I was reading in
school, as she was familiar with most of them having taught them at some point.
These conversations helped to relate the books to my daily life, and made them seem
more applicable and relevant. Most importantly, Trude helped me to polish my college
essays during my senior year. She helped me to realize how fitting college essays
really are: they force you to reflect on your life so far and to use the writing skills you
have developed over the years to share your realizations with others. Although Trude
never served as my formal teacher in school, her influence over the years has
undoubtedly aided me in becoming a stronger writer.
Although I had no intention of gaining writing abilities from this class, AP
United States History significantly helped me with my writing. We spent a substantial
amount of time learning how to craft accurate, coherent, detailed, well-organized
essays, all whilst under a 45-minute time constraint. On the AP exam itself and on
every exam throughout the course, it was a requirement to write these three-page,
non-fiction essays about the content in the unit we had covered. Throughout the year,
my ability to successfully write these essays increased, and I soon found that the
writing skills I had developed in APUSH were quite applicable to writing tasks in other
classes. Before APUSH, organizing my thoughts and writing a strong essay took a very
long time. After APUSH, I was able to brainstorm, organize, and write essays of higher
quality in less time than I had ever been able to before.

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Although reading has consistently been an activity I have been good at, I really
began to enjoy reading while in high school. Beginning in Kindergarden and all
throughout elementary and middle school, I was consistently above my grades
reading level, and was reading more challenging texts outside of class. In freshman
English, the third book we read was To Kill a Mockingbird; of all the books I had read
in school so far, this was one of my favorites. Upon reading this book, my fiery
excitement for reading had been ignited, and would continue to be fed throughout
the rest of high school. During my sophomore year of high school, we studied the
Holocaust extensively in my history and English classes. The crossover of the
curriculum between the classes sparked my interest, and caused me to really dive
into the reading and get a lot out of it. The two Holocaust books we read were Night,
by Ellie Wiesel, and In My Hands, by Jennifer Armstrong. Not only did these books
provide historical insight, but they added a barrage of words to my vocabulary as a
writer. My junior year, when Mrs. Fujii was my teacher, almost every book we read
was interesting and enjoyable to me. Some of my favorites were The Great Gatsby,
The Grapes of Wrath, and The Catcher in the Rye. Because of these novels, I would
have to say that Junior English was my favorite English class in school thus far.
Unfortunately, outside of school I do not tend to have time to read books for
pleasure. In high school I got super involved in a myriad of activities at my high school
and in my community; I barely had enough time to sleep and get my work done, let
alone have time to pleasure read. I had enough time to pleasure read through early
middle school, and hope that Ill soon find time to crack open a book outside of
school again.

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In conclusion, I am quite confident in my abilities as a reader and writer and
feel as though I am skilled as well. However, there is always room for improvement,
and in no way do I intend to sound pompous or appear as though I feel like I have
nothing else to learn. I am excited for this semester of ENGW1111, and would like to
continue to grow as a reader and writer, and to kick it up a notch to write and read
at an even more advanced college level.