David Paonessa
English 802
2-28-12
Essay #3: Final Draft
The Way of Learning Throughout these past two semesters I have taught myself how to write better by learning from my mistakes. Coming to a realization that the more I write the more experience and knowledge I gain. By taking the time to analyze and look back on previous essays it showed me how I mature in my writing over this course. Developing stronger essays with the use of more formality, proofreading more carefully, great use of quotes, and many more attributes I find that showed my improvement. As I took time to look at two essay one being my most successful and the other the least successful I can see my strengths as well as weaknesses. The essay that is most successful is my persuasive essay “Staying Home”. This essay was assigned to me second quarter and I showed a tremendous amount of improvement. I had good use of quotes and evidence supporting my thesis. The most important part of the essay is the thesis; I had a strong thesis that showed my reader my purpose of the essay. “Having a stay at home parent allows their children to properly develop good morals, obtain safety, create good study habits, and allow parents to be a bigger part of their child’s life”. The tone I used throughout the essay was formal and I avoided a non-academic tone. Many times writers use quotes without explaining them however, I elaborated each of the quotes I used. This essay was well organized and kept the reader intrigued. I established facts to support my argument for example, “Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Institution offers a simple and straightforward answer: stay home with children. She has concluded that most of the problems of today’s youngsters—from biting toddlers to depressed middle-schoolers to out-of-control teenagers—can be blamed on out-of-the-house moms and absentee dads” (Blyth). In the essay I also learned how to counter my own argument which I feel enticed the reader to continue reading the essay. By having a counter argument and then a rebuttal my reader is aware that I know my facts and it only makes my argument stronger. All the claims I have made throughout my essay are supported by evidence of some kind presenting a well developed essay. Overall this essay was thoughtful and well-developed and is a good choice for my most successful essay. Looking back at previous essays I was able to see what I have learned and applied to my persuasive essay making it my most successful essay. In my previous essay my formality was not as strong in that at times I had use of “slang” words. I learned that my use of words in my essay contributes to how the strong the essay will be. In previous essays I tended to leave out quotes because, I did not realize they good be so powerful especially when writing a persuasive or informative essay. By using quotes it eliminates any type of doubt your reader might have. Earlier this school year I did not take outlining seriously, I felt that it would be easier for me to just write my essay from the top of my head. I came to find out that when I did not outline my essay had no organization and I kept falling short of words towards the end of my essay. I learned that by outlining prior to writing the essay, I allow myself to write a well-developed, organized, and thoughtful essay. The least successful essay would be my informative essay “Accept Different”. I consider this my least successful because I was not as sophisticated in my writing compared to my better essay. I used quotes however, there were not much. Repetition is a huge issue I have when I write; when I am trying to get a point across to my reader I tend to repeat it a lot. This drives the reader into boredom and eventually they will get tired of hearing the same thing over and over they will just stop reading. My essay was more generalized and could have been stronger if I focused on one topic and then elaborated on it. My topic for this essay was the psychological impact pop culture has on society today. Rather than focusing on one or two major topic my essay consisted of many topics which I feel was distracting and took away from the strength of the essay. It almost made it seem like I was just throwing topics out there and not taking the time to provide supporting evidence. When transitioning from one paragraph to another I could have used better transition sentences. Some areas that I could improve on are my use of quotes; quotes will allow me to have a stronger essay. Maintaining an academic tone is very important when writing. Rather than saying “don’t or won’t” I can be more formal and sophisticated by using “will not or do not”. My essay can use more careful proofreading and less repetition. I need to elaborate on my vocabulary so that I can avoid repetition. I need to avoid generalizations and be more specific in my writing. There are many areas which I can use improvement but by, taking the time to learn from this mistakes I am only making myself a better writer. Analyzing my essays has allowed me to learn what I need to change and improve on which allowed me to improve my writing and develop a stronger essay. Over the past two quarters my most successful essay was my persuasive essay “Staying Home” and my least successful essay was my informative “Accept Different”. I’ve learned from my informative essay and applied my knowledge to my persuasive essay then allowing me to create a well-developed, thoughtful, and successful essay. I learned that by reading more literature would expand my vocabulary and allow me to improve the sophistication in my writing. Taking constructive criticism and applying it creating a stronger paper. Overall, by observing and analyzing previous essays it has become clear to me that my writing continues to develop and mature over time.
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