Final Essay of the Junior Year

Bun Tsukamoto

5/3/17

English C Block

Throughout the Junior year, I have written total of 6 essays and learned

a lot of new writing skills. In each essay, I had improved my writing by

gaining knowledge about the new skills and paying deep attention to those

new skills. Especially, thesis and transition words are my two biggest

progress of the year.

Firstly, a thesis was improved a lot in my current essays comparing to

previous essays. In the SEE Essay, which was a first essay of the junior year,

my thesis even was not answering the prompt. The given prompt was Have

you ever traveled to a place that you found very meaningful and rewarding?

Write an essay that persuades others to visit this important place. However,

my thesis explained about why the earthquake in Fukushima was such a

scared experience for people in Japan. I realized the fact that it was

completely nothing to do with the prompt given after I received the essay

back. Furthermore, I have also improved in Parallel thesis structure as well.

The parallel thesis structure is a grammatical system of writing an essay that

writer should not repeat the same pattern of the word. For example, I have
stated, They are both mentally strong, and they both have something more

important to them than family. (Bun, 2016) On the other hand, I correctly

used the skill in The Things They Carry Essay, which Id mentioned, In the

chapter, he took his daughter to the battle field because he wants his

daughter to see the field and feel the war. (Bun, 2017) Overall, I have

improved a lot in the thesis as a better writer who could answer the prompt

and use the skill of parallel thesis structure.

Secondly, the transition word is the another most improved area

throughout the junior year. In the SEE essay, I start off the paragraph with

The first reason why, In contrast, I use Firstly to begin a paragraph in

current few essays. Moreover, I am able to begin the conclusion with In

conclusion, in stead of As a conclusion, which I used to use in the SEE

Essay. Furthermore, the number of transition word has increased as well as

the basic knowledge about the transition word. In the Great Gatsby Essay,

there was only five transition word found in the whole essay. However, there

was a total of eleven transition words found in the Things They Carry

Essay. Overall, I have increased my knowledge in transition word as well as

the number of them used in per essays.

However, using strong sentences is my weakness that I still need to

work on. In order to strength the sentences, it is important to avoid

overusing weak verbs such as to be and to have, make every word

necessary, and conclude a paragraph by clearly restating the main idea. In

the Slavery Essay, it appeals to be a big issue that I overuse weak verbs like
to go or to do. Comprehensively, stronger sentences definitely be an

area of improvement that I need to work on fixing.

In conclusion, I have learned a lot of new writing skills to overcome my

vulnerabilities and become a better writer such as thesis and transition word.

However, there is still a variety of weakness that I need to work on fixing in

order to be an even better writer.