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Cindy Ly
English 111
Reflective Essay
January 22, 2017
Metamorphosis
Until I took English 111, I used to hate writing. I typically avoided writing to because I
felt that my writing skills were poor and I did not have confidence in any of my writing pieces.
However, throughout this semester, writing gave me pride and motivation to improve my writing
and to fix my mistakes. Writing in English 111 has guided me to improve myself as a writer like
the developmental stages of a butterfly.
Starting off with the pre-assessment essay, I was in the stage of the Egg. Although I
clearly explained my view on the topic of technology, my writing skills were weak. A title was
missing, I did not know how to put the essay in MLA format, wrote very little, took a long time
to write, and I did not have subject-verb agreement. In my narrative essay, I have improved into
the Larvae stage. In the stage of a hungry caterpillar, I wrote my narration on my experience of
bullying over the word limit, like a caterpillar overeating leaves. Revising challenged me
because of the consideration of staying within the word limit, but additional words and examples
to support my thesis had to be edited out. Although my essay resulted in becoming a little
straight to the point, I feel that I have improved in increasing the word count of my essays and in
my writing process.
In my definition essay, I felt uninspired as I wrote about my definition of the slang word,
dab. As I hid myself away in the Pupa stage, my writing process developed slowly and I made
mistakes in word choice, subject-verb agreement, and pronoun antecedents such as with the use

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of their, is, and he or she. Although I made mistakes in grammar and in writing style, the
comparison with my definition essay with my two previous essays, show that I have improved in
my grammar and in my writing style. Writing my process essay, made me break out of the Pupa
stage and strengthen my writing skills. I limited my use of be verbs and improved in subjectverb agreement. At this stage, writing an instructional, informative essay on textinga topic I had
great experience on greatly improved my writing process and style goals. I no longer made
many grammar mistakes, and my writing became more clear and elaborative.
My most difficult writing piece made me blossom into a butterfly. From the previous
essays I have written, my conclusion was weak in finalizing my topic and referencing back to the
introduction. On the other hand, the conclusion of my research essay successfully finalized my
topic and referred back to my introduction. Despite a few mistakes in be verbs, pronoun
antecedents, and the lack of support in my point of Zoos want their visitors to believe that these
animals are in their natural state and are wild, I feel that my research essay on zoo animals and
wild animals have strengthened my writing skills overall. Researching boosted my confidence in
my writing process by the use of sources and evaluating the similarities and differences in zoo
and wild animal lifestyle, amount of freedom, and Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Although
I still make mistakes in my essays, I believe that I have improved as a writer.
From an egg, to a larva, to a pupa, and into a butterfly, I have developed into a more
confident, stronger writer. Writing essays in English 111 has improved my writing style,
grammatical conventions, and writing process. Looking back at my previous pieces made me see
how far I have improved in my writing from being a weak writer as an egg or a newborn
caterpillar, to a developed writer as a butterfly. In the future, I hope to improve my writing even
more as I start English 112 next semester.