Arciga 1

Stephanie Arciga
Professor Beadle
English 113 A
December 8, 2015

Reflexive Essay
Going in to college I had vague expectations about what to expect. What I expected English 113
A to be like before the semester began was very a lot of reading and writing essays every class.
What I like about writing is that is something productive to do. Every piece of writing helps me
improve. I also like that in writing I can express myself and my own beliefs. Although, what I do
not like about writing is that most often it is difficult for me to pull all my thoughts and express
what I am trying to say. I dislike that I tend to have a bad word choice because I think of some
many things and various ways to say what I am thinking. Word choice was one of the biggest
challenge I experienced in this course. The way that I overcame this challenge was by going to
the LRC and listening to the teachers advice on my work. What I learned by this was to keep it
simple, but also be specific. My strengths as a writer are having a lot to say. I always think of the
writing task and look into both or all positions to argue. From that I come up with the best thesis
I can think of.
Terms and concepts I have learned through this course were gender construction, ethos, pathos,
logos, and how to develop a good argument. Also, writing and reading effectively. The way I
learned to effectively read and write in this course was by mainly annotating and analyzing texts.
I feel like in understanding readings and texts I have improved. By learning new reading

Arciga 2

strategies like annotating, reading out loud or summarizing readings I learned to understand them
better. I also improved in writing in this course by receiving advice from multiple people.
Although my writing skills are now better I will do my best to continue to improve. I think
writing is a process that we never finish learning and we can all keep improving day by day. For
example every reading I did throughout this course changed my perspective on certain things.
They also taught me new things I didnt think about before. Furthermore, in the future English
classes I will learn different and new ideas where I can also apply what I now know.
One aspect of my writing that has really made me proud is developing a good thesis. For many
people it is difficult to develop a good thesis that will also develop a good essay. Throughout
most of my progressions and prospectus my professor compliment with good thesis, good ideas
and good points. Hearing positive feedback about this that not everyone received really made me
proud. Another thing that I felt proud of was having a counter argument and being able to refute
it with my supporting evidence. I hope to take all my new understandings from this course to
future classes. For example, I hope to be able to make myself clear and provide better word
choices in my writing. I will also continue to apply MLA format for my citations and work cited
page which I learned through this course. Another thing I will take to my future classes with me
is having a growth mindset. In addition, I will be able to identify commonly confused words and
the placing of commas in my future classes.