Samantha Chew

December 3, 2019

Dr. Lacey

ENG 111

Reflection of English 111

After taking my first college-level english course, I was able to grow as a writer and

develop new techniques for my writing. After writing four different essays for a grade, I learned

more in-depth about different styles of writing and different types of essays. During my time in

English 111, I wrote a memoir, a bibliography, an argumentative paper, and a proposal. In each

of these three four papers I learned important ​techniques, ideas, and skills that I will take with

me as I further my education and continue to write for the many more classes. Most importantly

of these skills is writing in APA format. In high school, I was taught MLA format exclusively

and had never been exposed to what APA consisted of. Although we were never given an

explicit lesson on APA formatting, my instructor, Dr. Lacey made it easy for me to get

acquainted with the writing style very slowly. We were never assigned to do a project in APA

format, but throughout the whole semester each of our writings had to have APA citation. Doing

this allowed me to do the research on what made APA separate from MLA and have a basic

concept of what APA was. This skill will prove to be very valuable to me throughout my

education, as I know that many professors require it. Another technique I learned in this class is

to be very vigilant of my citations. In high school, I was always taught to interrupt the text as

little as I could while still giving appropriate credit to my sources. I went into college with this

same mindset, but after reading the many comments left on my papers I learned that I need to
cite after every piece of information. Unfortunately, I learned this lesson after points were

docked off of several of my papers, but at least I know this lesson moving forward. An idea I

gained while taking this course is to introduce a source by saying the title or author. Again, I had

never considered this because I was taught to interrupt my writing as little as possible, but now I

can see how including the title of a piece is crucial information to a reader. These three ideas,

techniques, and skills that I learned this semester will help me move forward in my writing and

submit less error-ridden papers.

For the first paper in this class, we were assigned a memoir. We were prompted to use

thick description, so I really focused on that when writing it. I really tried to paint a picture of the

setting of my memoir to interest the audience. Writing a memoir was new to me, so I did learn

from it. I really tried to grasp the idea of writing a flowing story and creating a piece that

someone would read for enjoyment. These are qualities that readers of a memoir expect, and I

think I did a pretty good job at meeting those expectations. Although my paper had some

technical issues, the grade I earned showed me that while there could be some improvements, I

was on the right track. For my revision, I focused mainly on these technical issues and expanded

on issues that my professor prompted me to expand on.

For the second paper, and my personal favorite, we wrote an annotated bibliography. I

liked this one the most out of all of our papers because of the very clear structure, and because I

did not necessarily need to write it all in one sitting, as I do with many papers. The strategies we

used for this paper focused on correct citations and summaries. We had ten sources, so we could

not go into extreme detail for obvious reasons, but our summaries also needed to contain an

accurate gist of our source without copying it. This taught me how to paraphrase better, and it
also got me in the habit of making correct citations and learning the ins and outs of them. For

annotated bibliographies, readers typically expect several different articles about one topic, and I

think I met this expectation exceptionally well. The ten different sources I used contained a

variety of different bits of knowledge about my topic of chocolate chip cookies. My revision for

this paper is similar to the one before it, as I will mostly only be correcting technical errors that

my professor pointed out to me. This paper was my highest grade (98%) and as far as content, I

think I met the expectations of the assignment.

Our third paper was an argumentative paper. Personally, this was my least favorite paper

and my grade definitely reflected that. The strategies I used to write this paper were pretty

straightforward. I used the paper template from our textbook and I wrote out specific points I

wanted to discuss and found supporting evidence for the points. Typically, this would be a good

move for me, but something about the subject matter or the template did not agree with my

typical writing style and I was not proud of what I turned in. However, I think I was so insecure

about my content that I brushed passed my citing errors. It was not what I wrote that gave me a

low grade, it was actually how much I did not cite and how wrongly I cited. This came as a

surprise to me, and as a writer it taught me to revise citations more. Again, I think the reason I

did not do this how I was supposed to is because I was so distracted by how unhappy I was with

my paper in general. Although it did not feel like I succeeded with this paper, I think I did meet

the reader’s expectations of what an argumentative paper is. I had a firm stance, and I really

stuck with it throughout my writing. For my revision, I definitely plan to fix all of my citation

errors, as well as add and retract information where it would make sense to.
 For the fourth paper, we wrote a proposal. As far as writing strategies, I really wanted

what I was writing to be extremely clear and precise. I wanted my motives and plan of action to

appear very well thought out and leave no room for confusion. I think I did a good job at this, as

this is what some of my peers’ comments were about my paper. Writing this subject really just

introduced me to writing a proposal. I had never written a proposal in high school or in other

classes before and I found it very valuable to learn something new. For this genre, readers

typically expect to read about a new idea that could result in the betterment of their environment.

I believe I met this expectation and presented it in a way that was convincing and easy to follow.

My plans for revision are to correct some small mistakes my professor commented on and

expand in some areas where I could use more evidence from sources.

After writing four papers for this class, I can confidently say I have learned more about

writing. Whereas many previous english classes taught me how to better my writing, I actually

learned more about writing different subject matters and different writing styles like APA. I will

certainly be using what I learned in this class with me into my higher learning as I take business

writing courses over the next few years. Knowing genres like proposals and styles like APA

allow me to move forward confidently in my academic and professional career and ultimately

enable me to succeed later in life.