Refelection Essay

An essay reflecting on my writing skills throughout this course and how they improved.

Rubi Olguin

Professor Hammet

English II

01 December 2023

Word Count: 444

Reflection essay

` Writing various essays for this English class helped me grow confident in my writing skills. Previously, I had mainly written in one format and was comfortable with it. I have written in multiple formats in this class, which was challenging. Upon reflection, I realized my previous essays needed more substantial evidence to support the points made in the body paragraphs. But now, having written using the PEE format, I am confident in how to defend any claims made. I learned the most from the essay from our first project.

For my argumentative essay, I chose the topic of a zombie epidemic. I had to do extensive research to fully support my main argument, which was discussing the best solution to a zombie apocalypse. By reading multiple articles, I had to discern and identify reliable and relevant sources for my thesis. This essay has helped me identify trustworthy articles that provide new insight and ideas needed to strengthen an argumentative essay. Now, I can efficiently organize my thoughts and give credit when I quote a statement from a source.

This project has helped me improve my writing skills by learning to cite my sources. I knew how to format any source from my earlier essays correctly. But with this project, I am now much more confident about how sources are supposed to be, both on a work cited page and in-text citations. Looking back on my old English papers, I see that my sources have only sometimes had hanging indents. Not only have I learned something new, but I have also fully understood an area I had yet to grasp.

The method in which we could turn in our essay more than once allowed me to fully grasp where I went wrong, giving me a chance to correct any mistakes I made. One of the things I had yet to notice was how my paragraphs were too long. When I received my essay with the feedback and suggestions on how to improve, I saw that I hadn't caught that long paragraphs made my argumentative essay hard to follow, and my points didn’t flow well together. After revising it and rewriting my paragraphs to make them more compact and straight to the point, I resubmitted it.

Overall, this class and the essay projects have made me a better and more confident writer. I know how to analyze any source critically. I can get my arguments and points across while supporting them with evidence. The material in our project folders gave me many good examples and extra help to look back on and consult. I am leaving this class with more familiarity and confidence in college-level writing.