Writing Wrap-Up for Freshman Year

       This year has thrown the more papers at me than ever before. As a result, I've tremendously grown as a writer. I started the year off strong when I wrote my literacy narrative on camp journaling. It was an experience fresh off my mind, since camp had only been one or two months back, and I received a perfect grade. I remember being actually excited when I got this assignment because I knew exactly what kind of literacy experience to talk about. My eagerness to write my paper on a topic that I cared about helped me achieve such a high grade. I also spent three days revising and reworking my sentences until they flowed together nicely and created a story-like effect. My parents proofread it for spelling errors until there was none left. I’ve noticed that writing comes naturally to me when it involves talking about the things that I love.

            My WRAP test paper, on the other hand, was one that had a topic that did not catch my interest. It was the worst writing I have done all year. I felt incompetent while I wrote and was unable to cover three pages on it. I stopped short, which really hurt my mechanics score. I think if I was able to research it, I could have turned my score of 24/36 into at least a 30. I did not find any spelling errors and I thought my order was reasonable, but I wish I used stronger vocabulary. This essay was weird because I am usually good at writing as I go along. I think my lack of preparedness and lack of interest on the topic definitely made me do so poorly.

            My second best paper of the year was my profile paper on my backhouse. I chose to write description about a place rather than a person and it worked out for me. I was delighted when I saw Dr. DeGravelles’s comment, “Your use of active verbs is really impressive. It actually reads like a piece from an interior design magazine. And you did a great job incorporating physical and psychological details.” My adjective choice included words such as cinnamon, azure, and caramel to describe the colors of certain features. It was fun to get to use such rich words to describe. One thing that I had to work more was the opening paragraph to introduce the space and explain how the space is used. Dr. D critiqued my closing paragraph and said that some things came too much of a surprise- like how I said that I was not too fond of the design. I liked this surprise, though, and didn't want to change the other paragraphs just because of this one quirk. The only error in my sentence fluency was the addition of the phrase “in particular” in the middle of a sentence. It sounded a bit trippy, but I thought it added to my voice. I am pleased with the way my paper turned out. It is a paper that I don't want to change anything about. 

            My Literary Analyisis was one of the most challenging papers for me because it was style of writing that I wasn't familiar with. Also, I had do analyze a short story and focus on literary element(s). I had to rework my thesis a bunch until it was fit to both my teacher and my own liking. I had to approach this like a psychologist. The only thing that I made mistakes on was conventions- I misused “sarcasm” for mockery, I put “more superior than” rather than “superior to." I also misused a semicolon to introduce a quote. Another thing that affected my grade was one incomplete peer review that I was supposed to carry out better. The whole paper ended up working out great though. My thesis turned out great and I found that I could expand really well on it. My word choice was great too; I used uncommon words such as epicene and inferior. I am also proud of is the way that I transitioned from one paragraph to the next. 

            My global issues research paper, like my WRAP paper, was not written with eagerness. I found that it took up a large amount of my time for the research part and I was stressed that it involved two classes. Not to mention the fact that it had a lot of point value. I ended up making a 92/100, with the majority of the missing points from my laziness in citations and MLA format.  I should have done an in-text citation to include who is speaking and I should have added a reference to the source in the works cited list. I carelessly left out a few citations.  I had everything else in tip top shape- word choice, sentence fluency, ideas, etc. I was the most proud of my transitions. The content and ideas of my paper was A+ material. This experience taught me to carry out the other requirements to my best ability.

            Compared to eighth grade papers, there was a lot more requirements that I needed to think about this year. I was challenged on a lot of new styles and techniques, though I’ve handled it well. Writing is one of my strengths at school.   My writing continues to show my natural talent for forming flowing paragraphs with fresh word choice and bright ideas. The teacher feedback to my final drafts has mostly been approval, with the occasional remark about how I did not do citations to my best extent, or how I did not do proper peer reviews. These things do, sadly, take off from the overall point value of your paper and I will be sure to remember to properly carry out every requirement next year, not just the part about writing an adequate paper. My classmate feedback, on the other hand, was not as helpful as I would have liked them to be. I do give my class peers credit for proofreading and complimenting, though. I learned from this that I should try to revise classmates' papers better because I know how it feels when my own don't return to me properly or fully revised.

            Overall, the meat my papers are very well written and earn A’s in all areas of writing. Next time, I will try to do better on conventions. I must watch out for misused phrases and need put a little more effort into using standard conventions to document research sources.I hope that by finding more peers to review my papers, I can make my conventions ten times better.  If I am unsure about any word, phrase, or punctuation mark, I can use the web or look it up in the grammar books we received this year. One thing I will be sure to remember is how to properly quote someone. We went over this many times this year and were tested on it; I have even saved the notes on my computer. I’m glad I’ve kept these notes because there are many essays in high school where we must quote a source. Ninth grade english has definitely better prepared me for the high school writing assignments that await me in the future.