This self assessment demonstrates my work through my first composition class in college (FIQWS 101). At the beginning of the class I had some goals to accomplish on improving my writing. In my opinion, I completed the main goals that I had for this course.
At the beginning of the course I would write a draft and submit that as my final paper. My goal at the beginning of the course was to improve the way I worked on my papers. As the course started I started dedicating more time to my writing. I changed my writing process and added more steps to be able to make my work more efficient. I would start off by writing down ideas and just simply brainstorm ideas. After I had written down some ideas, I would start a draft but a very simple one where I would just simply organize my ideas. This draft will help me to have all the information organized and in order. When the information is organized it makes it easier for the reader to keep track of the context. After a first draft is done, I would share that draft with a friend or a classmate for them to proofread it and also give me feedback.
After I received feedback from my friend or classmate, I would start a second draft and I would incorporate the information that I was given by the person that read the first draft. In my personal opinion I believe that while writing a paper it is very important that someone else reads it as well. When another person reads it you are able to receive feedback from them and see how others feel about your writing. A second opinion or feedback in a writing assignment can be considered as an important piece.
After changing my writing style it became really easy for me to notice the mistakes that I was making. I noticed that one of the biggest mistakes in my writing was that I was using constant repetition in my work. I would repeat the same thing over and over again and I wouldn’t notice. This mistake made my writing become very poor in quality instead of it adding quality. This also became something that would cause for readers to consider my work non entertaining.
I also enjoyed my FIQWS 101 class because it didn’t feel like a college course, it felt more like a workshop. We met once a week and we did a lot of peer review. After we had a draft of our writing done, we would bring it into class and share it with our classmates. Our classmates would then fill out sheets and this sheets included feedback of things to change in our paper. These peer reviews were very helpful all throughout the course because the review we received, we were able to use it towards our paper.
I also received a lot of feedback from my professor and that was something that class easier. These feedback helped me by improving my writing and learning new things.
One of the biggest challenges in this course was that we were doing constant writing. We would write papers every week and it became a little hard when I had other classes to do work for as well. Time management throughout the semester was something that I really improved on because I learned to schedule out the things that I had to do and I gave myself enough time to accomplish assignments and be able to review them before handing them in. At the beginning of the semester I would just write an assignment and hand it in because I wouldn’t review either because I had little time or just because I didn’t have the energy to go over it. These challenges made me learn that work can’t be done right if it’s done last minute.
In future writing classes I want to keep improving my style of writing and subtract the mistakes throughout the writing. Some mistakes that I want to improve are repetition and my uses of citation. I believe that I could improve my writing by doing more writing than just writing for class because than my mind would be more used to it for other assignments.
