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Darya Hariri
Professor Batty
English 113A
13 December 2015
Reflective Essay
Reflecting back on my time in English 113A, I realized how much I benefitted from this
course. This class helped me broaden my horizons and expose me to new forms of writing,
reading, and critical thinking. With writing, came a lot of sentence structure tools that I will
continue to use throughout my college experience and lifetime. I learned about grammar
mistakes and how to identify the rules and examples of each one. This lead to becoming aware of
the rules and examples that were held in the Error Log.
I never realized how tricky grammar mistakes were until we did the Error Log activity
in class. We identified run-on sentences, comma splices, homonyms, sentence fragments, and
many more. Something else that I learned that I feel I really improved on, was how to make my
own outline for essays and how to structure them. Before this course, I always had outlines of
outlines given to me, so I never needed to create my own with my own knowledge. The very first
time I had to create my own outline, I felt as if I was being challenged and it felt pretty good to
come up with my very own outline. We also focused a lot on the process of writing. Starting with
brainstorming, then creating an outline, followed by completing a rough draft, and finally a final
draft. I caught myself in the beginning of the year never exactly brainstorming, which would hurt
my essay as a final product. I realized that in order to become successful in my writing, I really
need to put thought and effort prior to writing an outline. I would say that I really improved on
this. The activity that I enjoyed the most in this class, was the peer reviews each time we had an

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essay due. I believe that peer reviews are extremely valuable because my classmates would catch
errors in my writing that I was not even aware about. When a person is reading their own paper,
their view on their work may be a little biased because they already know what they are writing
about so it automatically makes sense to them. When someone else reads that paper for them, it
helps them catch mistakes that they would not have ever thought they made in the first place.
Along with peer reviews, I made three trips to the Learning Resource Center in the Oviatt
Library this semester, and the tutors there really helped me improve my writing techniques in
ways that I did not believe I could improve on. One thing that stuck with me was they taught me
how to support my claims with reasons in argumentative essays. The tutor helped me create a
web chart which ties back to brainstorming that I was not necessarily the best at in the beginning
of the year. This can help me for future references, because all writing assignments, no matter the
category, need to be thought out before written on a piece of paper.
In the course, we had two books that we always referred back to. One was titled New
Voices, and the other They Say, I Say. New Voices was a book filled with essays from
former English students that we always referred back to as helpful examples in what we were
writing about. The book contained essays that were good and not so good so we knew the
difference between how we should write and how we should not write. They Say I Say was a
book filled with outline sentences to better ones writing when mentioning naysayers. I learned
how and when to incorporate naysayers and counterarguments to prove what I am trying to argue
for in my writing. I learned how to mention why the topic I am discussing matters so that way
the reader does not think the essay is a waste of time. When learning about this, I realized this
was a major weakness of mine. The activities we did in class that involved approaching

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naysayers and explaining why it matters really helped me improve my writing skills in
argumentative essays.
The list can go on and on about how much I learned in this class, but these few topics
really stuck with me throughout the time I was in the course. I improved on many writing
techniques in this class, but I know I can improve on so much more in the future. I hope to
improve on becoming more knowledgeable in the topics that I choose to write about. I can apply
this to my future in many ways because I am a Broadcast Journalism major, and with that means
knowing the story before having to explain it to the audience. Thank you for educating and
providing me with the tools and resources that I will take on to become a more advanced writer
in the future.