Hernandez 1

Jocelyn Hernandez
Professor DerOhanessian
06 May 2015
Reflection
My portfolio symbolizes my improvement in writing and the skills that I have obtained
throughout the semester on combining this information into creating great essays. I have learned
how to strengthen my thesis and give a clear counter argument. I am able connect my work with
ethos and pathos, which I was not familiar with once beginning English 113B. I had difficulties
on connecting quotes to my essays but was able to understand it with the help of my SI leader
and my professor when they had discussions about it during class.
I was able to find ways in order to strengthen my essays during the semester which were to
reach out for help from my professor and SI leader, going to the Learning Resource Center,
constantly looking for words in the thesaurus site and working with the Pearson Writer and Owl
Purdue website. I was afraid to ask for help but had no good reason to this situation which was
difficult to turn in better essays than I wanted but once entering English 113B and had my first
conference with my professor on my first essay when she finished grading it, I was more
comfortable in asking questions. Professor DerOhanessian helped me tremendously with
understanding the steps on creating great essays and the ways of improving them by creating
slide shows on a certain topic and explaining it thoroughly. My SI leader was a great help as
well, he would use his class time to answer any questions my classmates and I were still had, go
into detail on topics he felt should be talked more on from the previous class session, and would
make to read our essays and give us his opinion on how to improve them. An example of his

Hernandez 2
help was when he asked the class what we difficulties we had and would have a slide show of
that topic for the next time we met with more detail, methods and examples to help us understand
it more. I was not fond with the idea of going to the learning resource center, also known as the
L.R.C, but had no choice since it was part of my grade. After attending my first appointment I
was amazed at how well it went and how much I enjoyed it. After that first experience I began
making more appointments once I finished my other rough drafts.
During my experience in 113B I was able to use websites I was not familiar with like Owl
Purdue and Pearson Writer which helped me understand more about how to rephrase my
sentences to make them stronger. While using Owl Purdue I was able to learn the proper way of
citing resources and quoting them as well. I began getting accustomed to using the thesaurus to
find other words that will sound better for my essay. Pearson writer was very helpful since it had
a writer review tab which I was able to copy and pastes my paragraphs and it will indicate the
mistakes and give an overall result on the word choice, sentence length/structure, etc. Another
useful gadget would be the find a resource tab which was a helpful source to finding credible
sources.
I am planning to use everything that I learned during the spring semester to help improve
my writing skills and will continue to purchase Pearson Writer as well. One struggle I am still
facing with writing essays is obtaining a strong opinion or argument to convince the readers that
they should side with my opinion. Another issue is the confusion I have on how many quotes I
should put on each paragraph so I wont overdo it. Another concern that relates to quotes would
be to understand the limits in including ethos and pathos. Though I have not overcome these
issues, I will soon be able to while I continue on my future essays.