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Brianna Cueva
Professor Vana Derohanessian
English 114B
8 April 2014
College Writing Progression
When entering college I thought I was at a college writing level but I was awoken in my first
English college course. I was able to get good grades in all my essays in high school and got
good SAT scores when it came to the essay portions. Here at CSUN I have learned that I am not
invincible in essays. During my time here at CSUN I have learned I have more than a lot of
things to learn about when writing essays. A lot of the things I have to work on has to do with the
basics of English writing involving MLA formatting. I was confident when I had turned in my
first college written essay to my English 114A professor but when I got my essay back I was
taken back when I received a C-. I thought that was a well written essay till I received my score
and the comments that came along with it. My writing confidence level was shut down but since
then I have been able to use the constructive criticism in order to improve my writing throughout
these last two semesters of college writing introduction courses. In this English 114b course I
have been able to gain full credit in all essays that I have turned in and what helped me improve
my essay writing skills were all the assignments we were enforced to do all throughout the three
projects we progressed through.
Through our first project, project web, we started off by establishing and focusing on the
basic platforms of writing. During this project we did a lot of source gathering. This helped get
us informed on which cites are credible and which cites are not. Throughout this time we were
taught to make a blog cite in order to submit most of our assigned work. This was extremely
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helpful because of the fact that your peers were able to go onto your website at any time in order
to gain an understanding of an assignment just in case they had hit a wall and were not fully
acknowledged on what the professor is asking of them. We were also able to leave comments in
order to help our peers where they were weak. This helped us give them a better chance of
success with their writing as they would do the same to ours. This to me, was a very successful
thought out strategy.
When we were given back our first turned in essay assignment and were transitioning into our
second project, project space, our professor (Vana Derohanessian) brought to our attention the
common mistakes that she encountered throughout our whole papers. Our theses were weak, in
some circumstances unclear, and we all needed to touch up on our MLA formatting. All the
comments were constructively criticized and we were able to use the professors comments in
order to better our writing for our next assignment. This project was named project space. During
this progression we were forced to analyze the spaces surrounding us and spaces within the book
of 1984 by George Orwell. This soon became very helpful. We were able to capture the message
behind the project. It was to get us to bring specific details into our essays. This was to give the
reader a better understanding of the arguments in your writing. These exercises gave us a better
understanding of a higher caliber essay where the reader feels an emotional pull from within the
words attached to the paper. When we were assigned our second writing assignment the
professor was able to show us a well written essay from the Wings copy that was published by
CSUN. This gave us a better understanding of what our professor was looking for when our
second essays were to be turned in. This was another helpful tool in order to write a well written
essay with the minimum amount of errors.
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After project web and project space came project text. This was our last project but was also
the most crucial. In this progression we were to read The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.
This was not a traditional college assigned novel, it was a graphic novel. It had minimal wording
with a lot of pictures. Although the wording was not as traditional reading assignments are it was
just as difficult to get through. We were not only to analyze the words written by Frank Miller
but were to analyze the pictures from within the graphic novel as well. The essay that was to be
turned in for this project was held to a high expectation especially with the basic formatting of
correct writing. There should have been minimal to no errors when it came to basic writing and
MLA formatting. This is because our professor was very good of pointing out basic errors we
had. She did not only point them out but gave comments in order to fix them that is why this
essay was held to a higher standard. This was helpful because it pushed us to be better.
Before turning in my first college written essay I had full confidence in my writing but after
receiving my grade I was taken back. Throughout the course of English 114A my writing
improved an excruciating amount but it wasnt till I took this English 114B course that I realized
I still have a lot of work to do in order to create well written essays but it is when I realized that I
am not far from where one wants to be when writing college essays. My thesis arguments
became stronger and I was able to gather evidence in order to back up my argument. I was also
able to use credible sources in order for my paper to have true meaning because the evidence I
had brought in was trustworthy. Here as I am closing my first collegiate year I have realized all
the assignments I have done in this course were there to help us sophisticate our writing. I am
ecstatic at the point that I am improving and now am only looking forward to become an even
better writer with the help of my peers and professors.