Walls 1 Savannah Walls English 1102 Course Reflection Essay Enhanced Writing Throughout this class I have learned

new techniques and expanded my writing skills. I have become more open-minded yet more opinionated in my writings. The only way to become a better writer is to learn different techniques of writing. I have learned many new writing techniques as how to correctly use MLA format. This class has allowed me to expand and write about topics in different ways, and that has helped my writing skills grow. Being able to be in work in groups has helped my writing skills tremendously. Having another students perspective allows growth and reconsideration on ideas I may have thought of. It also helped me review my work in a different way. Other students provided ideas and approaches I could take on my own writing that I would not have thought of. Working in groups is beneficial to all and to the prosperity of improved writing. I have always been interested in criminal justice topics such as correlation between homicides and video game violence. I wanted to write about topics that can give me new information on criminal behaviors that can potentially help me with my degree in criminal justice. In high school I researched nature vs. nurtured about psychopaths. I interviewed prisoners in my local jail at the time for advanced research. I have always enjoyed learning about how behaviors are learned and developed. I believe I will always write about different learned behaviors throughout college. I carried many old writing methods that have worked for me in the past throughout this class. I start every paper with making a chart of things I want to incorporate. I try to have three broad

Walls 2 ideas that will cover the body paragraphs and smaller details off of those. When finding sources I typically use notecards. I have a first notecard that has the source in MLA format then a stack of notecards behind it with quotes. I make a new set of notecards for every source I find. I do this because it makes it easier to organize where sources should go in a paper. I tried to put as much information that I acquired in my research throughout every paper. Throughout this class I have noticed many of my personal writing patterns. I typically start with a good beginning paragraph then lead into average body paragraphs and end with a good conclusion. My biggest problem is making simple grammatical errors, for example, I often misspell words and miss commas. I typically do not read over my papers before I submit them (how terrible, I know), but I usually am so thankful for being finished with it I dont want to take the time to look over it. I make careless mistakes that could be easily fixed if I took the time to go over my papers. I believe I struggle with this the most in my writing. I plan to overcome this by being less lazy and taking the time to check my papers! I believe my best writing was in journal twelve. In this journal I analyzed an abstract piece of art to find the underlying message. This journal was the most important to my growth because it allowed me to use new skills from class. I was able to look at the detail of the art and find meaning underneath. Throughout this course I have learned that not everything is as it seems in politics, advertisements, and media. To be able to discover truth we must look closer to detail and read messages that are beneath the surface. For example colors are a key factor to any image. Colors express emotions for example blue is considered calming while green represents freshness. In this art there are many different colors that represent different things. The mise-en-

Walls 3 scene prop of a mirror delivered the underlying message in the image. I felt passionate about the message under the art, and was able to constructively write my journal. I have learned to read media in this class by paying attention to detail. Without that new skill I would not have been able to write this journal. I have developed new writing techniques throughout this class that will continue to help me through college. I have learned to write from different points of view as well as include my opinion more often in research papers. I have learned that not everything is as it seems in politics, advertisements, and media. People, can easily persuaded by large influences, such as the government, but we must always look for underlying messages. Being able to think critically about a topic is very important to any writing. One of the biggest things I will take from this class is to edit my paper for grammatical issues; grammatical issues can ruin any great paper. I have thoroughly enjoyed this class and every new skill I can take from it. Overall, I believe my portfolio was done very well. I have been working on it for weeks to develop the perfect cite. I have made mistakes while creating my website, such as uploading a file instead of uploading a Scribd, but I changed every mistake I made on the website. I have spent endless hours uploading every document and making sure they were all perfect. I have had to make online portfolios for previous classes, but I would say this is my best one yet. I believe I deserve an A for all the hard work I have put into this online portfolio.