Sarah Prohens 

Ms.Boyle 

ENG 160

12/3/21

 

 

Dear English Department,

My name is Sarah Prohens and although English is not my best subject, I enjoy creative writing and persuasive writing throughout my career as a student. I have never been the best at writing essays and many times my essays will get scrambled and not make much sense, however being in a college setting and learning what academic writing really is, makes me feel obligated to write well written and exemplary essays. Before coming into college I thought of writing as a way of expression because I am used to creative and narrative writing rather than research papers and finding scholarly articles. 

In the past I normally brainstormed how I wanted to write my paper and then would start the writing process however in college I found that I did not have as much time as I used to have in high school. I have never had clean cut essays, however workshopping with my peers, and helping me further edit parts that had been missed was helpful and worth coming to class for. Learning about how to write academic papers made me see that writing well is a key part of the academic process as a whole and not just in an English class. Writing professionally and being able to write with confidence is an important skill to have in all colleges courses and important adult life situations.

Throughout this course I felt that I did my strongest work providing strong rhetoric and development of a paragraph. I enjoy putting deep thinking and thought provoking content and this class did provide the chances to write essays that show deep thinking and persuasion for your argument. Persuasive writing is one of my favorite genres and writing argumentative style papers are enjoyable and give the chance to voice your opinion. Being able to take the time to develop the paragraphs is one thing that I struggled with, however I learned to get to the point as soon as possible to start the discussion and prove the point of the essay. If I had time to go back and revise my essays to improve my grade, I would try to get more involved with the topics and find creative ways to discuss a bigger topic. Another thing I would fix would be improving my language and expanding on the words used in my essays. Every year it is a goal of mine to learn and gain better vocabulary and writing skills in order to keep improving with my writing. 

Making this digital portfolio has made me realize how less stressful it sounds. Writing the essays takes time and work but making the whole portfolio with the essays we wrote from this class helped keep the writing on track. It was not as bad as I imagined and sometimes enjoyable. Writing from the view of the medium through the topic of media was a very large spectrum to look at and helped create a more open topic to discuss any argument. When going into English 170 I feel like I have a clearer view of what the class dynamic will be like. English 160 has taught me more than I expected because it showed me how a real college course will be run seeing that I am a first semester freshman. I feel more prepared going into that class because now I know the basic requirement to do well in the class. 

My writing has developed in a backwards way through this course. I do not think that I showed my best writing abilities through the semester and did not have the correct attitude towards the work by showing disinterest in out of class research and getting easily distracted. College writing is intimidating, however I regret not using my resources to improve my writing. I am not the best writer and am not the most english oriented however I can be successful in college writing if I paid more attention to the sources that I used. Reading and learning from in class presentations showing us the proper way of writing and staying organized. In the future i need to plan out how i’m going to write my essay and develop on my argument in a chart or diagram in order to fully understand and write the proper paragraph that I want to write.