Portfolio – Introduction

What did you usually think when a whole year passed already? My sophomore year nearly ends. By looking back to the works for the whole year in my writing class, I found that I did get lots of improving. I did lots of works over the year, and I could see many big assignments and projects throughout the year. Fortunately, it was clear that I became to a writer, who is much stronger than the one I has been at the start of my sophomore year. The improvement and success I could see supported that I didn’t waste my money and time on taking the writing class. In the writing class this year, I became a better writer by improving the writing efficiency, having less grammar mistakes, especially for comma splices, and having a better organization of my essays.

I would like to start to tell my improvements of my writing efficiency for the first. It seemed to be impossible if anybody told me that I should write a 500 words blog post three times each week. In the start of this year, I would say it’s even hard to write 500 words a week. That’s the amount I wrote in the English final exam last year. However, it became possible now. Even thought it was still hard to find topics to write, especially in the 30-day challenge blog posts, I could always finish the works that I have to do. And to say that proudly, I could always finish them really well. Thus, I understood that the most useful for me to write better was to have more practice. By the way, the experience this year gave me a great example to show me how could I improve.

On the other hand, the better using of grammar helped me a lot to be a stronger writer. Comma splice was a common mistake that I would made nearly in all the essays I have written at the start of the year. For example, in “The letter to Patrick”, I wrote, “Many couples left each other because of tons of reasons, sometimes they still love each other, but they left because of really small problems” (The Letter to Patrick). There weren’t any of the FANBOYs, the conjugations, between “reasons” and “sometimes”, so it was a comma splice. Since I liked to write long sentences so much, this sentence showed a common condition of all my works last year and the start of this year. However, because of the grammar lessons in writing class, the structure of sentences became much more clear than before. The lessons helped me not just on simple comma splices, but also clarified all the correct grammar using in writing a sentence. Even though I’m still not perfect, I would continue working on it.

After that, I have worked on the structure of each work I have to write a lot. Having a logical and clear organization might make students a neat essay to see. It was kind of hard for me to have a well-structured essay, but I tried a lot to improve this year. From my works in the vary beginning of the year, I could usually have a clear introduction and well organized body paragraphs. However, I never know what to write in a good conclusion. For instance, in “My writing life”, I just ended the whole blog post by a one-sentence conclusion: “So, that’s my writing life and I wish I would be improved when time passes this year” (my writing life). Maybe sometimes I might just repeat my thesis to conclude. Throughout the year, I new that people could write the conclusion with some thoughtful ideas or some expectation about the future that related to the thesis. Thus, for now, when the year ended, my conclusion has become more colorful and better structured. By the way, the well-organized essays have graced all my works.

Admittedly, I have been working so hard this year, and I can see my advance by reading all my blog posts from last September till now. The writing class seemed truly worthy for me to be a more reliable writer. Furthermore, I still have problems that needed to be fixed. I have to accumulate more vocabularies to eliminate the repeating of words; and I have to read more books to learn some more interesting ways to describe details. Even though I could never be perfect, I will always try my best to make me stronger and stronger. Believe me that people will see a better me even just after the summer break!

Citation:

"The Letter to Patrick." Cherrie's Blog. N.p., 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 May 2015.

"My Writing Life." Cherrie's Blog. N.p., 14 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 May 2015.