Washington 1

Cheyanne

Corri Ditch

ENGL 115

8 December 2020

Argumentative Reflection Essay

Today I’ll be discussing my time spent in your class but specifically my time spent on my

essays. Throughout my semester we wrote three essays which I feel like I improved on each in

special ways. I’ll be reflecting on my writing experience from what I did best to what I felt like I

could do better, and to what I actually improved on. This portfolio assignment was a great way

for me to pay attention to feedback and apply it in my writing.

In my project space essay, I needed a lot of improvements; the first improvement I

needed was to clarify my thesis and add more detail when doing so. I’ve been very used to

writing an open thesis no matter what kind of essay it was but clearly, I see now that it makes it

easier for readers to understand your writing. When I revised my essay I changed the wording of

my thesis to make it clear to my audience that the author used ethos, logos, and pathos in her

article in different ways by giving key examples. What I also changed was my chronological

order of the analysis of the three articles. I started with the author I chose to base my essay on

and then followed it by her colleagues that I was comparing her to. I took the feedback I was

given and applied it directly to the essay itself by changing how I write to make sure I fulfill all

requirements. I also got additional feedback from an outside reader and they helped me
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understand that my writing should be more clear for someone who doesn’t have the background

knowledge of the essay. Another thing I didn’t notice I was doing wrong was my citation format.

I fixed this in both essays, but I never was taught MLA format citations so this was something

new for me.

In my project text essay, I needed to fix most of my essay overall. The big thing that was

pointed out to me was properly answering the prompt. I decided to look over the prompt again

and make sure that I followed it throughout my whole essay so it would connect together. I made

sure my resources were aligned with what I was discussing in my essay. I also made a lot of

grammar corrections due to the feedback that was given to me. It seemed like I made a lot of

little mistakes throughout my entire essay but to revise it I thoroughly re-read my original essay

to make sure I fixed the slightest of things. I changed a lot of formatting in this essay to make

sure it correlated together and got to the point. The feedback that was given was kind of that my

essay was a little all over the place and I made sure I got straight to the point and putting things

chronologically in order instead. In my essay, I also added some different things and took out

certain things as well. There was a lot of information that I realized could’ve been taken out of

the essay. I felt like it was a little too much information in certain parts that I didn’t necessarily

need to make my point.

In conclusion, my writing has improved by taking constructive criticism and putting it

into my work. I also learned to not procrastinate on my assignments and take my time when I do

complete them. This class has given me a lot of insight into new techniques on how to better my

essays. I believe that my revised work shows that I am able to receive feedback from others and

actually take it into consideration. I’ve realized that feedback can really help your essays sound
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better. At the beginning of the course, my writing wasn’t as good as it could’ve been and I came

to that conclusion within doing this assignment. Overall, my writing has improved.