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Ralph Frem

Professor Corri Ditch

English 115

6 December 2017

The Fantastic Evolution of my Writing

From the beginning of this class in August, I could not wait to start writing essays. Ive

always enjoyed writing essays and receiving comments and constructive criticism to improve my

writing. Project Space and Project Text were difficult essays to write. Despite taking two AP

English courses in high school, using and citing sources were still difficult and I was nervous

about writing in my sources incorrectly. Thankfully, I was able to go to the LRC, and my tutor

at the LRC taught me how to properly cite my sources.I learned a lot from this tutoring session

about sources. This one problem that was fixed, without this session, my score in the proper

MLA formatting would have been much lower.

One of the other biggest problems I have had since high school was that my introduction

paragraphs were not strong enough or did not fit properly. I was varying in my introduction

paragraphs from being either too broad or too specific for no reason, I would just write intro

paragraphs to fill in space. My improvement can be very easily seen in my essays. My first

essays introduction paragraph needed a lot of work, especially with the formatting. Some

sentences needed to be moved around to make a little more sense. I also had to become a little

more specific in some of my points. When I was writing the essay, I thought that I had to be

broad, because the essay itself would slowly become more specific. In Project Space, you can

see much more comments made by Professor Ditch, compared to the amount of comments on my
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Project Text. This improvement also is the work of some of the tutors at the LRC. I was taught

about going from broad down to specific in introduction paragraphs, and the need to introduce

specific examples that come into play later in the essay itself.

In many essays that I have written, I always have tried to sound formal and appropriate, it

helps me set the tone for the essay. This was a tactic that was very common during my college

applications. However, sometimes these words dont fit and I begin to second guess certain

words in sentences. Through these two essays, you can see that my word choices have improved

and have become much more apparent. In my second revisions of the essays, you can see that I

have decided to change a few words because it did not just sound right at all. Instead of sounding

professional and formal, in some cases my wording made me sound like I was trying way too

hard top fit in. In some of the revisions, I realized that sometimes being formal isnt always the

way to go and saying it that way I intended is much better then adding sophisticated words. This

simple revision allowed my sentences to flow much better and make more sense. For example, in

my Project Space essay, I used the word concocted in an incorrect way, it just made the

sentence sound awkward, so in my second revision I simply changed it to made-up because it

helped the sentence flow much better.

Another issue that is apparent in my essays was the problem about being way too broad.

In some sentences, I would just refer to an incident and then move on. However, I did not realize

that this was impacting the readers understanding of a few things, and rather assuming other

ideas that I did not refer to. An example would be in my Project Space essay. This essay

included many ideas about gender awareness, this is no place to be broad at all. In my

introduction paragraph, I used the phrase Socially construct norms. However, in our society

today, there are many social construct norms. So, in my second revision you can see that I
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changed the phrasing to Socially construct GENDER norms. I also added one more sentence to

this paragraph because I felt that there needed to be way more evidence and support into this

paragraph.

As far as structuring paragraphs, I believe I didnt have any issues in this area, however I

did not realize that my transitions into paragraphs were not adequate. This is seen as a bigger

issue in my Project Space essay. In some instances, I just began each paragraph beginning with

an article that I needed to introduce. As I read all these paragraphs for a second time, I realized

that my sentences just became abrupt and began to sound incorrect and choppy. This can be seen

in the seventh paragraph of my Project Space essay. The transitions added really improved the

flow to paragraphs.

One of the last things that have improved are my textual support and some evidence that I

included. I always did the minimum amount of sources that was required, I did not really go far

and beyond. However, in my second set of revisions, I added more evidence and textual support.

In the three instances that I have added textual support, which Is seen in the second paragraph of

project text and the fifth and third paragraphs of Project Space, it really did add much needed

evidence to my statements. They helped fulfill a much more concrete definition to arguable

ideas. This has helped to improve the paragraphs.

On my first essay, Project Space, I received an 82% which was grade I was not

completely satisfied with. But thanks to Professor Ditch and having peer reviews, mandatory

LRC visits, and advice in class I was able to improve greatly up to a 95% on Project Text, to me

this was an impressive improvement. In the Project Text, I really did take all the comments and

advice and truly applied it, If I did not have any of these comments, I would have written the

same type of essay for the same grade.