Nicole Basile Professor Lago College Writing December 14, 2013 Reflective Essay As we learn more through school

we are preparing to be better all around students. College Writing itself has taught me more about writing then I learned in all of my previous years of schooling combined. This could be because we never learned to write effectively at younger ages, we just learned how to get a point across. In college, the largest bulk of our assignments are essays so we have to know how to write at a college level not a high school level. We can only do this with a class like College Writing. This class is a great aspect to our core curriculum. Without this class College Freshman would have no idea what the expectations of a college professor are when it comes to essay writing. Throughout the semester I have learned what it takes to write in college. The essays have far more components than you would think without learning about it. This class has taught me to be a better writer and I needed a class that taught me this much about a specific area I would use often. I knew coming into this class that I wasnt anywhere near the strongest writer but I was willing to take in what I learned in class to improve my writing. Some of the areas I needed to improve in my first essay were not repeating the same ideas throughout my writing in different ways, not relying on general statements and giving more specific examples to help the reader understand my points. In order to do fix these I realized I needed to include more supporting details. In order to do this I have to create an effective pre

writing outline that supported my thesis statement. Statements I use in my essay are too broad. An example is Something that could make you happy one day might make you sad another day or have no emotional effect on you whatsoever another time. This statement has no point to it. It needs to include a real life situation of something that makes you happy. The statement should sound Something that could make you happy such as going to class might make you sad another day or have no emotional effect on you whatsoever another time These specific examples add so much to the essay. In my second essay I didnt improve as I should have been halfway through the school year. My essay didnt have much of a focus and didnt include enough evidence from the text. To help this I needed use our brainstorming techniques of asking and answering questions to figure out the direction I wanted my essay to go. I also didnt use any quotes from the text just used information from what I learned in the text. Rico in No Long Term have held multiple jobs just like the people who I interviewed. He was also completely different from his father who kept the same job his entire life. This is more of an elaboration on a quote and doesnt have enough evidence from the text to include in my essay without one. My third essay is along the lines of getting better. I have a set argument and am able to clearly support my claim. This issue I had was it being too general. I use the words people, you and someone too often so it almost makes it seem like I dont have an audience. Have you heard that Wayne dining hall puts laxatives in the food they serve? If you didnt know this was false, would you believe it to? This is before I added an actual audience. In the first sentence alone I was able to completely change the audience of my paper by adding a few words. It became Have you, a student at William Paterson University heard that Wayne dining hall puts laxatives in the food they serve? If you didnt know this was false, would you believe it to? Now it is

clear that the you who was previously anonymous is now a student at William Paterson University. My last essay really proves how much Ive improved over the semester. All of my essays have ranged from a B- to a C but this essay I actually got an A- on. I was able to organize all my material so it flowed nicely as well as adding in my person experience on the topic. I was very proud of this essay when I completed it because I knew it showed how much my writing had improved from the beginning of the semester to the end. I was able to keep each of my lessons from class in mind so I could show the information to the best of my ability.