Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay

English was a subject that I do not pretty much give attention to back when I was still in high school. I can say that I do not love it that much, and I do not hate it either. It seems like a pretty easy subject for me and is effortless to pass. Read and write, read and write. It was a subject that seems very boring to me back then. But reading was something I really love, while writing, not that much, and in particular, writing essays. Whenever our teacher asks us to write something, it felt like a burden to me. Maybe it is because of the fact that I’m always having a hard time finishing an essay. It usually takes me an eternity to finish just one paragraph.  And in high school before, I can say that writing is something usually taken for granted. Our high school teachers were not that strict when it comes to editing our works, and as what I have observed plagiarism is something frequently done. 

Being part of our school’s official student publication before, I thought that I already knew the basic mechanics of writing because we were given a lot of seminars about writing different kinds of articles. But I was wrong. I came to know that I still have a lot to learn and a lot to improve. This realization came when we took up ENGLCOM as part of our list of subjects for this term. ENGLCOM was a really great help for me in the aspects of academic reading and writing. With just three months that have passed, I can say that I have improved a lot, especially when it comes to writing essays. ENGLCOM was hard for the part that we need to write a countless number of essays. But because of that, I came to finish an essay faster than before because I was getting used to writing as the days passed. One thing I’m thankful for is the fact that our professors in this subject really never ceased when it comes to helping us. They edit and critique our essays over and over again and give us comments when it comes to revising it. It was a great help for me, especially because I don’t usually see my own errors in the papers that I wrote.  The errors that I usually commit were regarding observing parallelism in an outline, using of contractions in an essay, and adding in text citations within my essay. 

Over the past three months, we have written a handful of different types of essays including an extended definition essay and an argumentative essay. I experienced a lot of difficulties on the process of writing these particular types of essay, firstly because I do not have a background of writing such types of essay. Essays back in high school were simpler and less complicated to write. As I have said earlier, teachers back then were not that strict. But things have changed, because now, we are always asked to construct an outline before doing such essays to make sure that we have good organization of ideas. We’re also asked to pass series of drafts before coming up with the final output. This process involves lots of time, but in turn, this provided us the opportunity to be able to come up with an essay that is good enough and worth to read. It was also a good thing that we have peer editing in class. This gave our classmates the chance to read and edit our own work. It was really helpful because they notice mistakes I would have not noticed. Whether it is in the grammar, the use of punctuation marks, lack of transitional devices, the need to revise and paraphrase sentences, we become critical of each other’s works because we know that with every mistake we notice and every comment we make on their paper, can help our peer in developing and gaining progress with his/her work.

From the entry essays that I have written for the first month up to the essays that I have written for the concluding months of the term, I can say that I have improved a lot in many ways. In the aspects of using in text citation and citing resources, we were told every time by our professors to avoid plagiarism as much as possible. They always remind us to paraphrase the information we obtain from other individuals and cite the sources of this information at the end part of the paper. We were used to follow the APA format. I have not usually done this before in high school but now I always observe the instructions given to me by my professors to avoid committing the crime which is plagiarism. Another improvement in my writing skills also was that of using transitional devices to observe connection and fluidity in the ideas I wish to portray in my essay. On the other hand, writing the thesis statements for our essays was practically one of the most challenging for me. It was challenging because the thesis statement is the one that is going to set the tone for our paper. Writing the thesis statement was usually the part where most of us are having a hard and long time constructing.  But with the help of our professors, in the end we come up with the best thesis statements. A fun part for me was writing the title as well as the introduction and conclusion for my essays. I typically have a fond on doing these parts because it is in these parts where my creativity mostly works. I always find time not to create such boring titles, beginnings and endings in my essays because these are usually the parts where the reader looks forward the most.

Now that the term is gradually coming to an end, I can really perceive that all the hardships we have undergone through are paying off. We are close to accomplishing our requirements in ENGLCOM, and I can say that I have reached far enough from where I was before. It is mainly because of our ENGLCOM professors who served as our mentors all throughout the term. They contributed a lot to whatever we have achieved in this course. They practically taught us the values of hard work, patience, perseverance and passion for what we are doing, and they have helped us in reaching our full potentials as writers and readers in English.

I am pleased to have known that I have improved my writing skills. I have become a better writer but still I know that I have a lot more to improve, because as cliché as it may sounds, there is always room for improvement. Making mistakes from time to time is inevitable, but I will try to make less. Knowing the do’s and don’ts of writing is simply not enough, you have to apply it.