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Safwan Jackie
Professor Batty
English 28
31 May 2017
What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.Three things that I have always had a
struggle with throughout most of my life were reading, writing, and listening. I have
always been a hands-on experience kind of guy and would hardly seek advice on
academic skills. I would get through most of my high school English classes with just a
passing grade of at most a C average, until I came into this class. At the beginning of
this semester, I was not a very strong writer. I would not believe in getting advice for
writing, nor would I think that certain types of writing strategies or tutoring would make
such a dramatic difference in my writing skills. For example, prior to taking this class, I
never wrote a rough draft before submitting an essay. I would always believe that my
writing skills were good enough to develop a paragraph from my own general
knowledge. This class changed me in several ways that I did not expect.
When I first took the class, I would not pay much attention to the discussions, nor
would I take detailed notes on writing strategies. I would do basic exercises that were
assigned and thought that I would be ok. Just doing those few writing exercises and
first essay that I turned in which was the narrative essay. I got so happy from seeing
that score on my essay that I was under the impression that I can do all of my essays
the same way. Unfortunately, I was very wrong in that case. After I got a low grade on
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my argumentative essay, I realized that I made such foolish mistakes and errors that I
should have caught if I were to proofread and revise my essay draft with more people.
Out of pride and shyness, I did not seek advice to improve my drafts. I was very grateful
that there was a mandatory assignment to turn in a rough draft about a week before the
final for peer revision which has really opened my eyes to make me a become a
stronger writer.
This semester overall made me a far stronger writer even though I had
reading comprehensive skills from reading the book The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks. I learned that I am not a weak writer but I need needed to
have layouts and strategies to bring out the creative side of my mind to put it on
have a full development in an essay. Even though I might have the whole
down.
One thing that was very helpful to me and made me a better writer was
making an essay outline. This made me jog down ideas and take out the bad
ones and implement the good ones to put them together and develop a solid
structure. Taking detailed notes on punctuation and reading They Say I Say,
gave me the ability to acquire more skills to have a good sentence flow within
paragraphs in an essay and to have a solid thesis with supporting points. I will
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continue to work on proofreading skills to have the best parts of an essay to take
out parts that arent important or repetitive. I also will look out for grammar errors
as I have seen in previous revised essays of mine that it was a big issue because
of failure to proofread or revise. In the future, I will use the layout method and the