Andrews Daisha

Eng 101
12/14/15
E-Portfolio Reflective Essay
This semester is my first experience with college. College is known for the strenuous and
rigid course work. Im a current student attending CCBC of Catonsville and as a first year
student there are requirements that must be completed. One of the requirement classes that I have
completed this semester was course English 101. English 101 prepared me for the content of
making an essay and learning my strongest weakness of writing essays was the grammar.
English class assessed me with the content, rules and preparation that go into my
grammar terrible essays. This semester in English 101 I learned about the tedious and frustrating
rules that make a good essay. Also learning my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, my
strengths are the supporting details of my paragraphs while my weaknesses were coherence and
diction. I failed to realize that in fact I had various errors that were wrong with my essays. Then,
I learned the importance of a thesis in a paragraph being in this class because before I honestly
didnt care anything about a thesis and what the objective of a thesis is. Now, the coherence of
my essays work hand and hand with my amazing supporting details, the grammar has improved
in my essays but I still have a few more steps to take in order to receive an error free paper one
day.
I never knew that English class would challenge my writing and is much harder than I
thought. My first essay I honestly didnt take thought into the essay. The first step of preparing
for the essay was completing a topic/ thesis sentence outline. My problem was I didnt know
anything about a topic/thesis sentence outline. The first outline I completed I received a bad

grade on the outline and the essay. Both were revised, the grade for the essay and the outline
improved. After, the revision of receiving my first essay I realized my biggest problem was
grammar, diction and coherence. The problem with my grammar, diction and coherence followed
me during my evolution as a writer. Thats when I found out that the class wasnt going to be as
easy I thought.
People find it much easier to type their feelings out on a piece of paper then edit, organize
and think of the right possessive or singular pronouns. I was one of those people who didnt
think about the organization or proper usage of words. Every graded essay had the same
comments of my grammar. I realized that my ideas and thoughts I proposed were good, but its
useless to propose if someone cant make sense of the context. My college composition goal was
to create a paragraph with proper diction and coherence.
There are too many rules and errors to consider in English. The following errors were
very popular in my English essays: comma splice, subject/verb agreement, pronoun/antecedent
agreement and apostrophe abuse. Also, the rules of in text citations and work cited lists were
complicated but these error/grammar problems and rules taught me about problems I failed to
realize in any previous essays I completed in high school. There were various major topics that
we addressed during the course but the topics that I grasped to the most was essay organization/
development, revising and unity, coherence and clarity in written language. I saw growth within
my four essays that I wrote, the more practice I had with writing was limiting my grammar issues
and the errors. Overall, the rules and errors developed a better writer and in the future an even
better writer.