Abby Grossmeyer

ENGL 111
Dr. Kim Lacey
12 December 2019
Reflection on Writing in English 111
This semester has challenged me to write with a different mindset, use new techniques,
and develop my writing skills. All the different types of papers forced me to evaluate where my
strengths and weaknesses in writing are. I entered the course with decent vocabulary and
grammar skills that help me write. Where I was lacking was in the flow of my words and in
connecting my research to my topic. Throughout the semester, it became easier to pull thoughts
from my head and write them down in an articulate and powerful way. Because of this, I was
better able to find research that worked with my ideas. Progress with developing these skills has
been evident as I worked through each paper. I have expanded my abilities as a writer through
the process of writing a memoir, an annotated bibliography, an argument, and a proposal.
In the first paper, a memoir of family food traditions, I struggled to figure out the
content in the writing. Pulling from memory to tell a story was difficult, and I found my biggest
problem was deciding how much to share and where to put the information. However, I believe
the progress from rough draft to submitted draft then finally to my final revision showed where I
placed sentences that I wanted to include. For this writing, I focused heavily on what my peer
review letters said to fix the holes in my story that I hadn’t recognized. At the very start of
writing this memoir, I struggled to find a topic interesting enough to write about. There were so
many choices that either didn’t seem worthy or were too complicated to describe. The peer
reviews helped me to see that my topic was fit, and the suggestions both the letters gave me were
extremely beneficial to the quality of my memoir about traditions. Because I knew that none of
my audience was familiar with my family or history, I took the time to explain how the tradition
came to be. Instead of a casual story I tell a familiar friend, I had to start with the basics and
work my way up. As I revised my paper more, I added more detail to fill in spaces where the
reader needs connections to relate to the sentiment of the memories I recalled. Reading my
revised draft allowed me to identify my strengths and weaknesses. My biggest strength was
getting the reader to feel how happy these moments made me and to relate it with their own
lives, which I believe others would agree with upon reading the memoir. An aspect of the paper I
struggled with was using precise language. My weakness was being too wordy, which I
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recognize distracted slightly from my piece. This paper may have been wordy with a little
confusion in information gaps, but the sentiment was there and was received by my readers.
The annotated bibliography was a type of paper I had never written or even seen before.
Paper two definitely required new technique because it requires a whole different mindset. I
realized while writing this that I struggle to find content when I haven’t defined exactly what I’m
searching for. Therefore, just reading to obtain information without guidelines of the facts I
wanted was my biggest problem in the process of writing the annotated bibliography. The
solution was to build off of the information from the sources I read. When I picked this topic, I
didn’t realize how difficult it would be to find information on various articles related to pasta.
However, when I found what I was looking for, I learned more than I ever needed to know.
Additionally, I learned that different types of sources go into different depths of the necessary
information. Ultimately, my goal in writing my annotated bibliography about pasta was to make
the reader realize that pasta isn’t harmful with any use, just in excess. As I revised this writing
step by step, I found sometimes I went into much depth and other times I could barely find
enough information to fulfill the word requirement. My biggest strength in this writing was being
able to provide a clear connection between my articles, while still providing variety. Although
the annotated bibliography was the most different out of all the papers, it was the paper I had the
clearest understanding of in the end.
The argument paper was the most familiar to me out of the four papers. I have written an
argument paper before, and it seems to be the most natural in its process of forming reasons to
support an argument and finding facts and sources to support those reasons. I relied on my
previous knowledge for writing this paper, as I already had established skills. Despite these
skills, I still had trouble with finding what content I wanted to include to strengthen my
argument. I was surprised when the comments I heard back were that I needed a stronger
counterargument because I felt my one was strong, and I also included an alternative route to
wasteful killing. Therefore, I didn’t add more counterarguments because I felt it would mess with
the flow of the writing and not help the argument. My major content problem was not having
enough research in my argument that transborder transportation needing to be stricter in regard to
trophy kills. To fix this, I added in additional sources to support and developed my argument
more to connect it with my main goal of getting trophy hunting restricted. As a person who
didn’t know much about the details of hunting, I was better able to define unknown terms and
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explain concepts that my intended audience might not know. The voice I used in this work was
just persuading enough to get people to support my argument, but not too demanding as to turn
the reader away. I believe this is a strength present in this writing, along with supporting my
reasons with credible and understandable information that helps the reader to see trophy hunting
as a problem. A weakness of this writing is that wordiness and not fully connecting my evidence
to my reason and wrapping it around to the main point. I feel this was a strong paper that
included little aspects that distracted slightly from the purpose.
In the fourth paper, the proposal, I felt confident more confident to explore a new type of
writing. The argument nicely led into the proposal, as they are a similar concept with different
formats of writing. My biggest problem with this writing was defining what I wanted my
solution to be and how to go about creating steps to accomplish the goal. Another struggle of
mine was figuring out where to place supporting information from other sources. With all this
tension between what I want and where I put it, it took me a significant amount of time to plan
my writing. Once that plan was established, it was difficult to be contained to the format of the
paper. The information felt blocked to me in the beginning. However, the final revision is where
I feel the sections finally flow the way they should. I solved the flow issue by making sure I had
sentences connecting the different sections and presenting slightly overlapping information in
different areas. Essentially, my goal was to convince the reader to take action to help make
Saginaw Valley State University’s campus healthier and more oriented around students’ needs. I
succeeded in this by using a professional voice and presenting valid arguments for why our
campus needs change. My voice in this paper was a strength, along with the use of sources and
reasoning. A weakness of this writing, which is universal for all my papers, was wording
statements oddly and little formatting errors that distract from the point. All in all, this paper
taught me how to better organize my thoughts through stricter formatting.
The four types of papers I wrote for this course helped me expand my abilities and skills
as a writer. The variety of structure and expectation of quality will help me to be a better writer
in my future classes and career. As a political science major, I will be writing papers for the rest
of my schooling career. The numerous writing intensive classes I have planned will be easier to
succeed in due to the skills I have developed in this course. As I establish myself as an attorney,
will require adequate writing skills and good articulation, so the focus I put on writing in a clear
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manner will help me in the future. Overall, I found the writing we did in English 111 to be
beneficial for both my schooling and my future career.