Reflective Letter
Reflective Letter
English 101/Section 19/Fall 2013
The University of Arizona
December 9, 2013
Dear Ms. O’Neill,
Before taking English 101A, I was not confident in my writing ability. I never was able to wrap my head around what I was supposed to do and often wrote off topic. I would spend too much time looking at the screen thinking of what to write. My essays often turned out to be a summary; this was reoccurring. I feel that this class strongly helped me develop some standard and basic skills for writing an essay. The amount of time we spent breaking down each of the three essays was very helpful for me. It helped me really realize that I need to get into deeper thought to correctly analyze the text and put it on paper. I have obtained the knowledge from learning in the classroom that acquiring the ability to thoroughly analyze, make points for my body paragraphs, create a thesis, etc., is much simpler than I made it for myself prior. I now realize that I overthought too much while writing essays. I used to try to perfect every sentence as I wrote or typed. I found myself using so much time doing this. I found that just writing my ideas and thoughts down first, while ignoring diction, punctuation, and the flow of the sentences, and revising after made for a much more efficient and successful process. My experience in this class has really opened my eyes to realize that essay writing is a much simpler process than I thought it to be.
Going back to revise my Essay 2 assignment, I noticed many of my sentences were dry and not very deep. I felt that my analysis part of my essay was very weak. I also failed to connect each of my body paragraphs to my thesis and idea of the author’s main point. Rather than revising my essay, I felt I would be better off re-writing the entire essay with a fresh start. First, I reread the poem and went into a deeper thought about my interpretation of the poem hoping that this procedure would improve my writing process; I
English 101/Section 19/Fall 2013
The University of Arizona
December 9, 2013
Dear Ms. O’Neill,
Before taking English 101A, I was not confident in my writing ability. I never was able to wrap my head around what I was supposed to do and often wrote off topic. I would spend too much time looking at the screen thinking of what to write. My essays often turned out to be a summary; this was reoccurring. I feel that this class strongly helped me develop some standard and basic skills for writing an essay. The amount of time we spent breaking down each of the three essays was very helpful for me. It helped me really realize that I need to get into deeper thought to correctly analyze the text and put it on paper. I have obtained the knowledge from learning in the classroom that acquiring the ability to thoroughly analyze, make points for my body paragraphs, create a thesis, etc., is much simpler than I made it for myself prior. I now realize that I overthought too much while writing essays. I used to try to perfect every sentence as I wrote or typed. I found myself using so much time doing this. I found that just writing my ideas and thoughts down first, while ignoring diction, punctuation, and the flow of the sentences, and revising after made for a much more efficient and successful process. My experience in this class has really opened my eyes to realize that essay writing is a much simpler process than I thought it to be.
Going back to revise my Essay 2 assignment, I noticed many of my sentences were dry and not very deep. I felt that my analysis part of my essay was very weak. I also failed to connect each of my body paragraphs to my thesis and idea of the author’s main point. Rather than revising my essay, I felt I would be better off re-writing the entire essay with a fresh start. First, I reread the poem and went into a deeper thought about my interpretation of the poem hoping that this procedure would improve my writing process; I