12 May 2017

Dear, Mrs. Pagani

A Year of Improvement

For my reflection letter I have chosen to write about my Narrative, Into the Wild, and

Juvenile Justice. I will also be explaining how the articles in the bullying essay helped me gather

evidence, work from the in class articles that we annotated to produce well developed ideas, and

the conversations from the lit circles that helped me create well developed commentary and

opinions to create powerful essays. From this work I will reflect on what I have learned about the

well thought-out evidence and quotes, and the developed commentary that I have formed, and

my use of good commentary and poorly found evidence. I will address my academic essay with

more developed claims and better evidence to back it up, and I will start to improve my grades

and my writing skills.

Process work is a huge part of writing and helps you prepare and develop an opinion with

a good argument. Before the Brave New World essay we wrote, the lit circles were a big part of

the prep work. They helped create a good opinion and argument when comparing our society.

The group gave multiple viewpoints to the argument and helped form a prepared essay. Many of

the activities done helped us to understand the story and the message, forming an opinion on the

comparison of the two societies. In the Bullying Research paper, the evidence we needed to look

up informed me more about the topic and made it easier to write on and create commentary.

Researching events and ideas online makes your knowledge of that subject expand and in

commentary when you need to talk about a quote it comes naturally. This also helped create

counter arguments and right against those. Before writing the Racial Profiling essay we were
given the school sources that we annotated and read. These gave many formal viewpoint and

ideas that were not brought up originally. Using these also made the production of a work cited

page easy and quick so we could learn how to make a correct page without the hassle of finding

the sources. All of these sources used logos, pathos, and ethos when supporting their claim

making it easy to quote and create a powerful argument on.

Over the duration of the year I have developed many skills like; drawing conclusions,

finding evidence to support my claim, writing good topic sentences and a well thought out thesis,

integrating quotes that support my claim, and creating well polished final drafts. Before writing

an essay you need to pick a side and draw a conclusion about that topic and opinion. Before the

juvenile justice essay we had to take a side and I came to the conclusion that adolescence

should not receive life in jail (1). Reading an article and finding evidence is half of the work

when writing and over this year I have improved at it. When writing about why we should not

use racial profiling I quoted racial profiling is an abusive practice that targets innocent citizens

solely because the way they look (1) directly from the reading. Topic sentences reveal how the

writer writes and tells what they will be talking about. I have improved in this area and it shows

in the Bullying essay at my first paragraph it started with Bullying in schools is a major

problem and many programs have been created to prevent that (1). After finding quotes from

the reading making them fit and integrating them into sentences and paragraphs make the essay

smooth. While quoting an article it is implemented into the sentence while saying that The

teachers say that the training gives student (1). All together if you make a well polished final

draft then that essay will get a good grade. On my Narrative it took me 2 drafts to get to my final

polished paper and i got an A in return.

 Over the course of this year I have learned and found my strengths and weaknesses when

writing and I can fix and improve on. My first strength is commentary, after I quote the reading I

can come up with what to write and make sense of it when needed to be while talking about a

specific topic. I have majorly improved my thesis sentence and introduction paragraph to start

the essay off strong and to grab the attention of the reader. When looking at my weaknesses I

rarely use ethos, logos, and pathos and can be using that more to make my paper more legitimate

and capture the feeling of the reader. This year my work cited pages have been little to none and

when they are done most of the time they are done incorrectly or poorly made. I can improve in

both of these areas by learning how to make a work cited page and using part of the articles

ethos, logos, or pathos when writing to improve the content.

After completing the research paper, I can now make a well made and thought out thesis

paper that starts my essay off strong. I know how to form different prongs and make the

introduction paragraph flow. I have generally good punctuation when it comes to writing a

paper.

I believe I still need to work on how fluid the sentence sounds and how much sense it

makes when writing an in class timed write. On my last two timed writes my sentences dont

make sense and has been commented on because of the limited time I have to write that paper.

The reading and specific details as well as the high level writing that I have learned in

ERWC have assisted me in my Saddleback course and Government because I can now express

my knowledge on a well thought out paper after listening or reading something and can read

things in detail so I can take tests and quizzes on that piece. Based on what I have heard while

talking to others about college level english and reading classes I will not be shocked by the
requirements and demands for writing and formatting in the future. Also I will be able to get a

promt the day of and write a well thought out paper if I have the evidence provided to do so.

From,

Austin Park