for prof samuel

Writing the Reflective Essay for Writing Proficiency

“Writing requires both talent and acquired skills and one learns that by doing, by making

mistakes and then seeing where they went wrong.” Many writers are born with the talent but a lot

of the others have to work hard to improve their skills and write from their heart. Even the

people with the inborn talent, writing does not come easily, but by practicing and going through

your mistakes, the expression of writing become more strong and faithful.

During the sessions in classroom, I received many assignments and out-of-class writing

exercises for example ‘The impact of outsourcing on U.S. economy and the economy of other

countries” and “The value of college education,” that helped in improving my writing skills. At

the start of the session, I had difficulty in writing good thesis statements that would further help

me to create the whole argument on it. However, my teacher helped me a lot and gave me

important essay writing assignments on several rhetorical genres. Apart from that, many different

assignments and exercises helped me to improve my vocabulary as I started using different and

unique words in place of general words. My grammar also improved and I started using good

expressions in my writing, which further polished and gave class to my writing skills and

sentence structure. My teacher also provided the class with several topics, which we discussed

during the session and came up with different aspects with which the topic could be written. I

also mentioned earlier that at the start I had many problems in structuring the thesis statements.

My teacher helped me a lot in this case and provided me with useful handouts, which helped me

to structure effective and strong introductions and thesis statements. My teacher also provided

me with useful feedbacks and by practicing and writing more drafts, there was serious

improvement in my writing skills. The 7th edition of “Keys For Writers” by Raimes, Ann and

Susan K. Miller-Cochran was advised by my teacher and it contains a lot of useful and helpful

elements of writing including re-writing techniques and editing the essay.

With continuous practice by writing several drafts and essays, my sentence structure,

comma splices, and run-ons also improved heavily. I have learned to edit the essays after

completion, which gives me a good idea about the mistakes that I have made, and if any changes

are required in the essay. To help me with that, I also read many books which have good use of

expressions like ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper

Lee. Both of these books have great use of English writing skills and I have learnt tried to use the

expressions in a more interesting way in my essays that I wrote for practice. Proofreading has

helped me a lot in learning about and recognizing my mistakes.

Writing is an ongoing process in a person’s life and one can only improve it by practicing

hard. A person constantly needs to improve herself or himself by practicing and learning from

other people. Writing does not end when you graduate from college even if you major in English.

Good writers need to strive continuously to produce good writing that would also benefit others

who are becoming good writers. A person needs to exercise regularly to keep the body fit and

healthy otherwise; the body becomes weak and does not have the strength to fight back.

Similarly, writing also needs a lot of practice to improve. Learning is also an ongoing process

and good professionals never think of themselves as experts on a certain field. Their aim is to

keep on exploring, practicing, and learning new skills, which would improve them in their field.