English I Portfolio

This year I have greatly improved my writing from last year. If I remember correctly, I do no believe I made a single A on any major writing assignments last year. But after referring back to my gradebook, I have found that I have made several A's on writing assignments. Another reflection of my writing this year is that I have gotten better with writing techniques; especially citations. I know I have mentioned my distaste for citations many times, but I have to admit that I have become better at citing my sources. I noticed this after I looked at my research paper. Because I had to use so many in-text citations, I eventually got the hang of it and knew how to do them and where to put them. This is a reflection of my writing this year.

To start things off, one of my goals is to get better at citing. I have struggled with citations for years, due to my lack of enthusiasm towards citations. The things that has made citing worse for me this year is in-text citations. I just don't understand why I can't have all my citations on the works cited list only. I feel like these in-text citations also ruin writings because it ruins the flow of the paper. Another goal I have is to not get any grades lower than an 80%. I just think that it would be great if I could get at least a B on every major piece of writing I complete next year. My last goal is to focus more on the length of my paper. I have noticed that my English papers seem to be getting smaller and smaller in terms of length, and I don't know why. These are my goals for writing next year.

For my weaknesses, I'd have to start with citations. I have always hated doing citations because I just don't think that they only need to be written down once at the end of a paper. And with all these in-text citations being introduced this year, I have found myself annoyed because I don't know why I need to repeatedly cite the same sources repeatedly. This is evident in my research paper. I could have easily gotten an A on the paper if I had paid more attention to my citations. My other weakness is finding a good topic. This is a bit specific, but there have been multiple situations where I've had to change my writing topic after starting my rough draft because I have trouble finding solid topics I can write papers on. A great example of this is my poetry writing assignment. I had completed my rough draft, printed it out, and read it. But after I read it, I realized that the poem was weak, so I had to change my topic when I was almost finished with the assignment...

After reading the instructions for this assignment, I immediately thought of voice/tone as a strength of mine. I feel like when I read my own writing it sounds like me, not just some random writer. I have been reading my blog posts and noticed this. I even got my friends to read a couple of my blog posts and they agreed that they all showed tone and voice. Another strength of mine is audience. I think that I can change my writing styles depending on who my audience or target audience is. A splendid example of this is my research project. I read the comments on my paper and saw that I did well with audience. My final strength is staying with my genre. I think this is probably everyone's strength because it's just staying on topic.