Brandon Harter
Ĺupčo
Reflective Letter
December 1, 2007
This semester in Ĺupčo Spasovski’s English 101 class I’ve learned many critical aspects of writing that I had previously overlooked. There have been great improvements in nearly all forms of writing in my papers. I’ve made great strides in my grammar, punctuation, flow, and sentence structure. My writing now as a whole is presented much more clearly and with far less errors. These improvements began while starting the first assigned essay.
An autobiographical narrative was simply a big word for a story about oneself. This is where my writing first began to start improving. By having the first writing assignment be a story about myself, Ĺupčo opened the door for me to begin to write with confidence. Knowing I wasn’t a very talented writer, I was relieved to have to do nothing more than tell a story about something significant to me. Not only was the paper simply storytelling, but it was also something that I was passionate about. My paper titled Refugee was the story about when I first attended the youth group the Refuge and the impact on my life. Unlike other essays I had written in the past, I actually cared about this topic so I was able to write it with ease. I found myself writing to the current deadline, but not wanting to stop just because I had the option. I had a desire to keep writing, my passion had been sparked and I was eager to finish the story. This paper had given me the confidence that I needed to believe that I had the capability of writing a good essay. The in class writing assignments helped me to narrow down my topics until I decided for sure what I wanted to write on. The next paper built upon the first by allowing us to pick something that we were passionate about to write a research paper on.
Never having been a fan of research papers or MLA format I feared that I would struggle more on this essay than I had on the first. Yet picking the topic gave me a confidence that I hadn’t expected. Euthanasia, it is a heavily debated topic, however that is only because the details are not widely known. This paper gave me a mission, to unveil those details. I now had confidence and drive fueling my writing. I wanted to write an essay that would persuade the readers to believe how I did, but I learned that sometimes that is impossible, also that wasn’t my assignment. My assignment in writing a exploratory research paper was to write an opinionated yet fact supported essay, not to convince anyone, merely to provide the correct information. While doing peer editing I was further ensured that people may not always fully agree with the side the writer takes. After each draft of the essay a fellow classmate would read my essay and critique it. I found all of these critiques helpful because they often pointed out grammatical and punctuation errors while giving helpful and encouraging comments. From the peer editing of the first two drafts of my euthana...
