Communication Reflection

Any writing done in an English class must have one thing: communication. Similar to writing, soccer players have to be able to communicate with their teammates in order to succeed. Communication has always been a struggle for me in English 1A this year. After constant revisions of previous essays, I created a pattern where I needed to improve on my transitions and blending.

I struggled with transitions in my Of Mice and Men second draft essay because I struggled with word choice. In my introduction paragraph of that essay, I was giving prior knowledge on what the “American Dream” is. I started with “To describe briefly...” After Ms.Parrish’s notes, she crossed out those words. Another part I struggled with word choice was in the paragraph. When I was trying to start up the paragraph, I used, “...for a couple of reasons. In the book...” Ms.Parish crossed that out and she also wrote “a bit choppy” by it. I have seen the word “choppy” used in revisions, but I do not think I ever got the full understanding of what it meant.

In my midterm essay, I struggled again with transitions because I tried to oversell my writing. In my conclusion paragraph, I started with,”In conclusion, I analyzed the thoughts of characters...of the text to show that they...” Ms.Parrish crossed those words out and simplified my writing to start with “Characters from the three pieces had dreams...” In elementary, I learned transitional words such as “next”,”then”,”after”,”in conclusion”, etc. My fault in this piece is that I tried to oversell my writing. Transitions words can be helpful, but I have to know when to use them instead of stating the obvious.

In my first essay of the year,“Summer Reading Assignment,” I struggled with blending my quote of focus. I gave a summary of the book in my introduction, and I followed with my quote. The issue is I did not give context or a follow up with background knowledge as I only cut straight to the quote. If I was a reader, I would have been confused about the introduction, too. I struggled with blending because I had poor revision skills. When I submitted my first “final” to Ms.Parrish, she gave me a C+ and comments to reference to. It was the start to my year, so I was focussing only on the grade and changed small things to raise it. My poor revision skills reflected to getting a B- for that essay.

Recently, I struggled in my second thematic response of The Odyssey. I had a minor error of not blending my quote in the second paragraph. The return paper was accompanied with the word “blend” in black pen of Ms.Parrish’s writing. I risked the minor error because it was a one-page limit on this assignment, and I had already used all of the lines I could. Although it is not a big deal on this assignment, it is a habit to fix for better writing.