English Writing, Essay Example

The portfolio consists of a research essay as well as a respond essay. This reflective essay provides me an opportunity to critically reflect upon experiences in the class and identify personal strengths and weaknesses in writing. This reflective essay also enables me to measure my progress and provide hints that would help me further improve my writing skills in the future.

One of the things I have noticed is that I take a random approach to topic selection as well as generating ideas instead of taking a systematic approach. When I am brainstorming, I do not pay attention to whether ideas are relevant to the topic or not. This approach has both benefits and shortcomings. It is an expensive process in terms of time spent and could be called the reversal of a traditional process in which a topic is selected first and then ideas are generated. Often time, I have chosen topics on the basis of ideas I found most compelling and I have found many innovative topics through this approach. But I believe this process is only feasible when time in not an issue otherwise a better approach is to choose a topic first and then brainstorm about relevant ideas.

I am confident of my ability to generate ideas but I am not equally good at translating ideas into words. Choosing right words help us explain our ideas better otherwise we may be the only one who know what we really wanted to say. I have been improving over time and I believe the solution to this shortcoming is to increase my vocabulary by reading more. I have read some really well-written essays and they have made me realized the power of the right words. I often take mental notes of their style and strengths and look up the meaning of difficult and uncommon words to improve my vocabulary. In addition to vocabulary, I also need to work on improving conclusions. Well-crafted conclusions can summarize the main points of the entire essay as well as author’s position in as few words as possible. I believe the key to improve conclusions is to be able to separate the most important points in the essay from the less important ones as well as a good vocabulary.

Two of the most important things I have discovered in the course are the benefits of outline and peer feedback. Writing the outline has not only helped me take a more focused approach towards generating ideas but has also improved my organization skills in writing. Similarly, feedback from peers and instructors have helped my discover common mistakes and weaknesses that I would not have discovered otherwise. I have also received valuable suggestions to improve myself in weak areas.

My research paper was on the struggle of Chicanos and the potential similarities with the recent events in the Middle East. I started the paper by doing internet research to get some ideas. I then brainstormed to generate points to be argued in the essay and created outline before writing the paper. Similarly, my respond essay was on racist attitudes towards Asian American sport celebrities by the media, especially towards, Jeremy Lin.