Reading Ourselves: Writing Portfolio Review

Overall this course has taught me that writing is not as scary and hard as I think it is. The biggest thing that I learned about writing in this class was the importance of drafts. The biggest change in my writing is definitely the ease of getting my ideas onto paper. I used to have a lot of trouble getting the thoughts in my head onto paper. I think that having to do lots of in-class writing reflections has helped me improve this skill. Prior to this class, I would write short sentences that did not really connect with each other. I think that over the course of this class I have really improved the flow of my writing. This is evident if you look at my first and final draft of the first formal essay. Something that I want to improve on in my writing is word choice. Oftentimes I use very simple and repetitive language in my writing. This is a small thing to change but could have a big impact on my writing. One way that I could go about making this improvement is when I think my piece is done I would reread it and highlight repetitive or simple words. Then I would go through and look at everything that I highlighted and decide if there was a way I could enhance the phrase or sentence. After I finished doing this I would step away from the piece and then return to it and read it through again. This would allow me to read the piece as a reader and see what I might be missing. If there were any improvements I would make them and then read through it one more time. After this, I would step away from the piece and turn it in. All of these steps would allow me to make my piece the best it could possibly be. I was very proud of my first formal essay, “The Unspoken Hero”. I put a lot of time and effort between the draft and the final. I am especially proud of the sentences leading up to my thesis and my thesis which was, “Despite the stereotypes that we think of when we think about Arab women, the character Sharazad acts as an independent woman who stands up for what she believes. This poses the question of why there was a strong female role in this story. What was it trying to teach the future generations? The story teaches that the existing stereotypes are untrue, and Shaharazd is the true heroine in the story”. I thought long and hard about how I wanted this part of the paper to sound and I am proud of what I came up with. The other piece that I am proud of is my creative piece called  “The Happily Ever After”. This piece was the creative ending of Aladdin. I really had a lot of fun writing this piece. I think that I do a good job tying in the actual movie with my own ideas. I am also very happy with how my Allentown fair piece came out. I was proud of how descriptive my writing was. I also think that this piece compared to some of my more recent pieces shows my writing growth. The flow of my writing is choppy and does not flow very nicely whereas “The Happily Ever After” is written in a smooth easy-to-read way. I would definitely say that the biggest change to my writing is how I write first drafts. I used to write first drafts as if they were the final. During this class, I have shifted and started writing drafts that are less polished and complete. This allows me to look at what I want to change and then make that change in the final draft. This saves me time and makes my writing better. I think it could be interesting to go back and look at some of my in-class writings and see how I could rewrite/expand them. While not all of these free writes are developed enough to rewrite there are definitely some such as, “My reflection on Disney’s Aladdin” and “In class writing 11/29”. In this writing, I have a lot of ideas and think that they could make some interesting pieces if I took the time to write them. I do recognize that there were some weeks in which my writing was not the best, overall I would say that my writing has improved.