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Andrew Valle
Professor Jon Beadle
English 113B
9 May 2016

Reflective Essay
During the time that Ive spent this semester in English 113B I have shown great
improvement in my writing for these 2 essays that I needed to complete which were the Project
Text, and Project Space. In my first essay I wrote about my bilingual culture for Project Space,
which would fulfill the requirement from the directions given to me in class, of it being needed
to be a personal essay where I am supposed to reflect on my own identity, and how it works out
for me in the places that I go to. The grade that I received for this essay was a 78/100, a C range.
I believe this is an improvement for me, because I would get a D in the essays that I wrote before
for English 113A. As I review the rubric for the requirements of this Project Space essay it shows
that my writing skills have improved by having an organized structure in my writing following
MLA format with few mistakes, and having paragraphs that connect to the thesis of my essay.
The way of how my work links to my thesis is shown, since for my thesis it states,
Being bilingual from an early age has helped me feel connected with who I amIt has helped
me to develop, and improve my skill at speaking different languages with individuals who relate
to my culture (1). In body paragraph one my writing links to the thesis by mentioning that I
learned Spanish from my grandparents, and later finding out in school that Spanish relates to
myself in being of Hispanic descent. Also that by learning from my grandparents I could
understand Spanish as clear as I understand English which connects me to my bilingual culture,
by me being able to now communicate in Spanish and in English. The examples are, When I
was in first grade the talk about ethnicity was taught in class of how for example a person who

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was black is called an African American, of African descent From this I soon came to
realize that I was of Hispanic descent Having been born in the United States I was exposed
to both English and Spanish ( 2). I also show organization for my essay since Ive followed the
double spaced format of MLA, and citations. And I made sure each paragraph had at least 5 or
more sentences in order for it to become a paragraph.
My grammar in writing has improved in that I have added commas to prevent run off
sentences, and write in an understandable tone for the reader to adequately understand, with only
having a few questions about some things from the reader. For example, as I mention, while I
was in South America, to hear the people speak in Spanish helped me improve my pronunciation
of words (4). The skills that I have developed from writing essays for English 113B are to know
that I have to indent before commencing a paragraph, because before I only thought that it was
for the first paragraph that has my thesis not from the body paragraph. Another skill that I have
developed is that I have been able to write a conclusion that is effective for the reader to
understand from my Project Space Essay since no comment was written by the professor in
regards to the conclusion of the essay. Another thing that I have improved in, is that I have
shown to always remember to include a work cited page, to include the amount of outside, and
inside sources that I needed in order to compensate for all the quotes that I included in my
Project Space essay with the analysis afterwards for the support of the quote.
My skill in writing a source for the work cited page has improved as well, since I have
few mistakes like the order of the citations needed to be in alphabetical order for Project Space,
but other than that I have formatted the citations well by making the second line hanging and
have followed the order of including the last name of author or N.P. for no publisher, first name,
Article title, including date or N.D for no date, and listing if its a source from the Web, or

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physical Print copy. For my 2nd essay, the Project Text Essay I scored a 75/100 a C range that
exceeds from my previous Grade of a D in essays from English 113A. In the Project Text my
skill of understanding what I needed to write about improved, and I no longer felt confused about
what was needed from me to, because I understood the instructions of what was needed. My
writing therefore specifically mentioned the topic and issues from the book of EveryDay by
David Levithan. For example, in my writing I argue about how the text shows that characters
deal with Gender Construction, because they are pressured by those with whom they interact, A
in Nathans body sees that Justin would prefer to hang out with his guy friends instead of being
with his girlfriend, and having a good time like dancing at the party (1). This shows how I am
focused with writing about what the prompt states, since my argument is about a social issue that
is taken from the text, and how it relates with the real world today as an issue, which shows my
improvement of understanding the prompt. I include specific examples from the text as support,
and it is an improvement, because before I had even more difficulty in understanding the prompt,
and being able to write it with specific examples so my analytical skills have improved to make
use of the text, and easily provide a quote from the story as a support followed by an analysis of
that quote.
I improved in my use of using the quote sandwich throughout my paragraphs which
consists of the topic sentence, a quote to use for evidence and an analysis of that quote of what I
was trying to explain for the reader to understand what I was writing about. The example in my
Project Text is shown at the beginning of the first paragraphs as well for example, There is also
an ideology that now starts to form, because of Gender Construction of whats right and wrong.
James brother is thought to be not manly enough if he reads books, and as a result this is the
pressure that he faces by James, Dude, he says, libraries are for girls (Levithan 113). James

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says this, since he believes it isnt masculine enough to do these things especially since hes a
jock, toughness is thought to be proven in sports only. There is pressure in this for the characters,
since others may ridicule those who do not follow the standards of Gender Construction, since
men dont quit or make an excuse to abandon something or else they are considered as cowards
and weak (3). From all of this it proves that I am now more aware of what is needed in order to
now write more proficiently, because I have improved thanks to the English 113B class.

Works Cited
Valle, Andrew. Project Space: My Bilingual Culture. 23 February. 2016. Print. 10 May. 2016.

Valle, Andrew. Project Text: Gender Construction. 29 March. 2016. Print. 10 May. 2016.