Farag 1

Donia Farag

Professor Ditch

English 115

9 December 2019

Argumentative Reflection Essay

At the beginning of this semester, I thought that my writing skills could never improve.

As a student whose primary language is not English and has only practicing English for five

years I thought that my writing skills will only develop to a certain level and then stop. I will

admit that I had that belief especially because I worked on my writing a lot in the previous two

years in my AP English Language and my English Literature classes in high school and my

writing skills have improved so much. Ending this semester, I realized that the belief I had was

completely wrong and every piece of writing, especially when it is not written by a professional

or an expert, needs to be revised a couple of times and worked on to improve for a good polished

final piece of work. That is exactly what happened in this class. I wrote my proposals thinking it

could not be improved in any way. Later, when I read my professor’s feedback on my proposals

I realized that I can work on some minor errors. Then, I wrote my rough drafts and I thought that

they were the best versions of the essay that I can write. Then, I received feedback on my rough

drafts from two of my colleagues each time I wrote on. The feedback made me realize again that

I can still work on that draft and improve it.

Furthermore, the LRC was a game changer for me and my writing. I received a lot of

help and some very useful feedback on my work that did not just improve the piece of writing

that I worked on with the tutor but it also improved my writing in general. For example, I used to
 Farag 2

make mistakes like writing: “[according to [author’s first and last name]” then writing the

author’s name again in my in-text citations. I have been making this mistake for years and I was

never corrected by any of my teachers until I was corrected by one of the LRC tutors this year.

Also, sometimes I would focus a lot on my evidence and ideas and forget to answer the prompt

and create a complete clear thesis statement. One of the tutors taught me to copy the prompt and

put it on top of my document and keep looking at it so that I stay focused on it and the main idea

of the essay. Also, I found the grammar lab to be very helpful as well because I had a couple of

errors that a college student should not be making.

For my portfolio, I fixed some punctuation errors as well as some greater grammar issues.

For example, in my “Project Space Essay,” I introduced the authors’ names and essays’ titles

then I wrote “all four authors argue…” which is basically two subjects before the verb. Another

grammar error that I fixed was the placement of the commas. For example, I wrote “Graham Hill

in the essay, ‘Living with Less. A Lot Less.’ argues…” and the grammar tutor then corrected my

comma placement because it’s supposed to come right after the author’s name so I fixed it to

“Graham Hill, in the essay “Living with Less. A Lot Less” argues…” That was a common

mistake in my writing that I repeated every time I introduced an author or a work title. The tutor

also taught me that the reason why the comma should come after the author’s name is because

when there is a phrase/word between two commas that means that the sentence should still be

complete and makes sense if that phrase/word is removed.

After all the knowledge that I have gained this year, I am now a lot more confident in my

writing. The improvement is very obvious between the first two versions of my essay and the
 Farag 3

second two revised versions. I feel that I have improved a lot throughout the year, and indeed

will continue to work on my writing skills and improve it because it can always be improved.