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Noel Lopez

Professor Beadle

English 115

9 December 2019

Revising Myself

Writing can be difficult, and it does not always go the way you want it to. Writing has

always been something I struggled with, so this class was a big help for me. It showed me how to

use counterarguments and explain my quotes more thoroughly since I always was so vague in

my descriptions and never connected it back my claim. In my portfolio you will see how my

writing skills have improved throughout the course of this class and how Professor Beadle has

been a great help.

When I first started this class, I had minimal writing experience my essays were never

longer than two pages and lacked any depth. At first when we had to write more than two pages,

I thought it would be harder but as I got help, I realized it is not hard. During our essay first

essay Professor Beadle shows us what we should do in our essays. He showed us how pathos,

ethos, and logos work and how they are used in the pieces we analyzed. Analyzing the passages

helped me on my essay because I had a better idea on what I had to write in my essay since I

looked for examples of where pathos, ethos and logos were used in order to further their own

claims. These examples helped me get enough material to create my own claim in order to write

four pages. Everything that was left was connecting the examples with my claim however I still

struggled because I did not know what words to use in order to make the essay flow. Professor
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Beadle then told us that we must go to the Learning Resource Center on campus and that is

where I got help with connecting my examples and explanations back to my claim. Him making

this a requirement helped me a lot more and made me see just how to connect ideas together

making my writing stronger.

Feed back from others is also an important part of becoming a good writer because you

might think it is a very good essay, but you give to someone and they tell you what you did right

and what you need to fix. In both Project Space and Text Essays we exchanged papers with other

people in our classroom in order to get feedback from other people also writing about the same

subject. Doing that really helped a lot because they let me know what they thought about my

main claims and my points supporting it. Also, Professor Beadle’s feedback was very helpful

because it shows me what I had to fix for the next essay. When I was done with my first essay, I

had thought I It was a good essay, but once I got it graded and he handed it back to me I saw that

it is was the exact opposite. I had incomplete thoughts and no depth, this made me go over my

next essay even more.

Counterarguments is a concept I learned about in high school, but I never quite got how

to utilize them in an essay. I knew I had to use it in order to better get my claim across, but I did

not know how to explain my point through another point that I believe was wrong. Once I

figured out, I did use a concept that opposed mine then furthered my own claim telling how it is

incorrect. However, what I did not know is that I had to use something from the main source to

explain, rather I used a point from the secondary source to further my claim and I was told that I

had to use something from the main source. Therefore, in the newly revised “Project Text Essay”
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I switched my paragraphs and switched my evidence to better suit my counter argument while

keeping the secondary source incorporated into my essay.

In this portfolio it is seen that I have come a long way with my writing since I had this

class to guide me. In Project Space I learned how to expand my ideas to get to the page count.

This made me be able to get more point across clearer. In Project Text I learned how to use

counterarguments and use them effectively in order to make my claim stronger. Thanks to what I

have learned from this class I will be able to have stronger essays in other classes.