Mendoza 1

Paul Mendoza
Professor Beadle
English 115
7 December 2016
Reflective Essay
This semester there have been a plethora of improvements in my skills as a writer.
The whole point of this course is to improve your skills as a writer and I feel as though I
have accomplished this goal; all of the writing assignments have required critical thinking
in order to answer the prompt. In order to do this one must give a well thought out
argument as to why you are correct. Personally, this semester I have been able to improve
upon my skills in the fields of grammar, arguments/refutations, and transitions. It was my
goal as a writer, coming in to college, to improve on my transitions and to avoid run on
sentences. These were my two biggest weaknesses in high school.
For an essay to be successful it must first have a well thought out thesis. In the
case of our first essay I did not develop my thesis enough however I was still able to
relate it back to the prompt. My first thesis being, The authors all agree that gender was
meant to entrap people in these roles in which there is no escape, within the social norm
that is the male and female genders because they have been subconsciously trained to do
so for centuries. This being my updated thesis I felt that it related more to the prompt
and was more intuitive and obvious about what I was going to be discussing in my essay.
I also struggled with introducing the authors and articles, which I would be citing, unless
the reader had previously read my source they would have no background on what it was.
In my second essay I introduced the author as follows, Jennifer Aubrey conducted a

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study to prove that women are sexually objectified in the media. In her study she
examined they amount of commercials where women were portrayed in a provocative
way. Previously I would just throw in the quotation without any other information about
who, what, or why the quotation had any relation to my essay. The areas I fell short in on
my first essay I fulfilled in my second essay. I did not use enough quotations to back up
my claims in the first progression; this drove me to use a plethora of sources in my
second progression.
In the second progression we were asked to write counter-argument and
refutation. I have not written either of these before and this created a bit of a challenge for
me. In the comments it said, Add evidence to your counter-argument and refutation. I
had not thought it necessary at first however I realized that this proved my side of the
argument was legitimate. I added in the quotation, which in turn backed up my claims
and enhanced this paragraph. I was able to connect my quotations to my thesis and points
made in the essay much better, this was lacking and sub-par in my first essay. I receieved
the comment good examples, but connect them togetherWhy?...How?. Previously
when making a point in an essay I never thought of answering these questions, however I
realized these left my essay open-ended. In my correction of the essay I wrote, his
father is forces this idea that he will never be superior in his fathers eyes in addition to
societys eyes. With this sentence I was able to connect a good example to my thesis and
arguments in the paragraph. This is an overall theme I have with my essays,
disorganization is the root cause of my essays being unclear. I will write out an argument
and not back it up until another paragraph sometimes or not at all. I corrected this
problem while answering the questions of why?... How?.

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I believe the rubric helped me improve my writing skills because I saw what areas
I fell short in and realized where I needed to improve. The grammar and flow of my
essays were below what I thought they should be. In an attempt to correct this, in my
second progression I read your comment, Separate your ideas into separate paragraphs.
Your claims become muddled here. I improved the clarity of this paragraph by taking
my view completely out and keeping the idea of the author, causing their quotation to be
the main focus. Then after all of this I added my commentary in an attempt to organize
my essay better and keep my ideas separate from that of the author of the quotation.
Another comment I received said, good visual analysis which was a direct result of the
activities we did on analyzing visual texts. Overall I feel like my organization of my
thoughts and how they related to the prompt as well my thesis was improved. While I was
re-reading my progressions I felt that there was a heavy presence of useless sentences,
after noticing this I deleted many sentences and replaced them. However since I deleted
the sentences there was no way to highlight these changes. I feel that these changes
benefitted my paper by making it more coherent and organized. You left a comment on
each paper about the purpose of the author so in my corrections I made sure to note why
the quotations were in my paper. Their purpose is to change the world into a more
accepting place, There is enough variability among us to let us construct a society in
which people of both sexes contribute to whatever activities (Hubbard 51). This was
a direct quote I found from one of the authors, which supported my claim as to why they
wrote their respective article.
I feel as though your comments were the biggest help to my writing being
improved upon. I managed to write more coherent essays that related to my thesis and did

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not have close to no meaning in my essay. I feel that my corrections to the progressions
gave everything in my essays meaning and left nothing unquestioned. Before this I never
really looked at the comments left by my teachers however I have learned how valuable it
is to take the advice of someone who has mastered the field of writing. I am proud of my
corrections to my essays and feel as though they reflect me as a writer much better than
before.