Mohamed  Elashry 

Self Assessment

12/18/2020

Professor: Joseph Boisvere

ENG 21003

How I got better at writing 

For any student who wants to do their best in a class, I think it is necessary to take a moment to examine their results to determine the position of achievement in their writing and how they should continue to progress their writing. I remember that in my home country I had no problem with my writings but when I came to the US in high school I realized that I have many grammar mistakes in my essays and writing So one of my main goals was to avoid grammar mistakes as much as possible. Still, I am not perfect at it but I am trying. In my English 21003 class with professor Joseph during my semester I learned a lot of new things in every essay you learn new things. I remember when I use to read the professor’s comment on my paper and keep in mind the mistakes I did so I do not do it again. Which overall was a new experience because you got to learn how to write a proper scientific paper. So some of the stuff I learned is how to come up with a Topic which is the most important thing about your paper, in-text citation was also one of the new things I learned I use to do footnotes, not intext citation. One more thing I learned how to do proper MLA citation.  

    My First paper which was Technical Description My topic was spearguns. I remember that the comment I got was that I needed more explanation,  that my paper needed better organization and many grammatical mistakes. I remember that was the easiest paper. I keep in mind the comments I got to avoid it one the second essay but I remember the parts that I did well that I did a nice job on contextualizing the speargun and explaining its various application. It doesn’t take much digging, and with some testing, everything depends on your own experience. I felt that was the easiest because I had a background in spearguns I have been using it since I was 10 so knew pretty much about it.

     In my second paper which was the scientific controversy which I found at the end, it was a practice to do the last paper. As I said I always keep in mind the comment I got in a previous paper so that in mind I took an appointment in the writing center to avoid grammar mistakes. My second paper was about gene therapy and how it was used on humans and animals. But I started my paper without a topic which I mention I learned from this class that is is an important part of the paper. The other thing I missed was the MLA citation and that I did footnotes instead of intext citation. So that was great so I avoided all the mistakes I did in my first paper.  Also, I got a comment which was that the paper showed a lot of promise with plenty of great explanations and effective use of outside sources in supporting what I was saying. But I remember at the end I lost direction in the conclusion and it was not technical as the rest of the paper. Well, this was not that hard. After all, I knew what I was writing about because I use to read articles on gene therapy and how it will be used in the future on humans so I had a background that made it al t easier to write it.

  The third essay was a research paper. Which most people said it was the hardest and complicated. I feel it was not complicated but it was hard. I would say it was hard because in my first two papers I did not need a lot of research because I knew a lot about what I wrote about. We needed to work in groups for this paper I did it with Fatima elashry and Fatima Perez. They were very helpful we split how we are going to research after we voted on a topic that was The adverse effects of Pesticides on humans and the environment. I still had the feeling that the best should be the last paper and I should finish this course with a high grade when writing this essay in my head. With all the mistakes I did before I kept it in my mind and now I got two more people who knew more mistakes to avoid which made this paper a lot of fun. We get to communicate and discuss which topic to use. We did a lot of research on our part to come up with a perfect paper where we all want to avoid our previous mistakes. Which we did it and we got 19 out of 20 on our research paper. The comment we got that our paper was well researched and argued very clear and easy to read. Our only issue that in the citation we included the year instead of the page number but overall our paper was perfect.

   Overall I started with many grammar mistakes in my paper then when I started to keep it in mind I started to avoid them. then the organization of the paper when I kept it in mind I avoided it. Which made the last paper near to perfect. Yes, your writing will not get better by doing just 3 papers and getting the comments and keeping it in mind. We use to read a paper every week and we had to answer the question on it. So during the semester, we did a lot of reading and we saw a lot of different types of writing which helped me a lot in writing my papers and doing well in this class. The comments from the professor were very helpful in getting my next paper better than the first. Overall this was the best English class I took in my life so far although it was the hardest.

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