Amirah Arafat

ENG 101
M. McCampbell
Reflective Essay
Metamorphic. Transformative. Reformative. Three words I would use to describe this
semester in English 101. English 101 was a perfect transition from a high school class to a
college class. It showed me the invisible standards teachers set that students must decipher in
order to complete. As a writer I have definitely seen improvements in my writing as a whole;
however, I know there is a long way to go and I am not afraid to correct those mistakes
repeatedly until I master the skill.
I would say one thing that English 101 really helps students master is the writing process.
Ms. McCamplell especially spent a good quantity of time breaking down good and bad
examples. She emphasized brainstorming by requiring all of the students to create an outline for
our first essay. Prior to the outline she required a strong thesis, we discussed the guidelines and
requirements. In my opinion, my thesis was the most improved thing about my first essay.
Another helpful event that we did was meeting with the professor to discuss our outline before
we completed the essay then also meeting at the end of the essay. This allowed each of the
students to have an individual meeting with the professor while she stated strengths and
weaknesses of our essays. By creating an outline I was able to efficiently check objects off of the
rubric to ensure a good score on my essay.
Although I feel the course itself hit and focused on all of the course objectives, as I
evaluate myself I personally feel as if I have only mastered a few and others I am still struggling

with. This excites me because I feel as if I have made a lot of progress and I can only continue to
grow. One objective that I feel as if I had already knew but mastered in this semester is the third
objective, from now on when I create my thesis statements I always ensure to deliver in all of my
support paragraphs. The sixth objective was one that I recently implemented and I even received
comments from teachers in other classes saying that they noticed improvements in my writing.
Unfortunately, the last objective was one that I have not by any means mastered. The 12th
objective talks about grammar and punctuation, those are my weakest skills in writing. All four
of my essays have been filled with comma splices and other punctuation errors. I have tried to
eliminate comma splices from my writing but until now I havent succeeded. As far as grammar
goes maybe this comes with being a bilingual child but I still have a lot of trouble with grammar,
especially subject verb agreement.
In high school all of the students can pass based on effort; however, in college students
really have to apply themselves and show improvement to earn a good grade. The high standard
of college really pushed me to improve my writing skills. Overall topics that I improved on were:
audience awareness, clarity, revising, editing, and proofing. Audience awareness was something I
had never heard of but by the end of the semester I had eliminated I, you, and other
unnecessary pronouns from my essays. Clarity was my next milestone in writing, over the
semester I had worked on eliminating awkward transitions and sentences from my essays in
order to ensure a nice flow when reading my essay. Another major topic that I worked on
improving was revising, editing, and proofing my rough drafts until I have my final. On my last
essay I had about nine rough drafts until I had finished and felt happy with the final draft, I now
do that with all of my important major essays.

I feel as if the first step to moving forward in any situation is admitting what you are
doing wrong that is holding you back. In English 101 I was being held back by silly mistakes,
those silly mistakes were slightly overshadowing the content of my essay and making my essays
mediocre. I have worked on my writing immensely, I am extremely happy to say that in my
opinion I improved way more than I disapproved. I have learned to speak to my audience
without using I and You. I have implemented strong diction in all of my essays and always
use a new word for each essay. My syntax is improving and although it is not perfect, it is getting
there. A skill that I hope will be corrected in the future is punctuation, I definitely have not
mastered the use of commas and I just do not get what I was doing wrong. However, writing a
strong thesis has been the biggest accomplishment and now instead of just writing I can write
with a purpose.