Quarter Growth

Quarter 1: Summer Essay “The Road”

The strength of my summer essay would have to be my descriptions about a post apocalyptic era. I used my descriptions in order to captivate my audience and portray the book’s events. The essay was good in utilizing the symbolism of fire in the novel to express the theme.

The weakness lies of the essay would have to be my examples. I used great examples from within the text but narrowed it down to one example per paragraph. It was hard to be convincing to my audience with a scarce amount of examples.

If I were to write it today I would definitely include more examples to create a more convincing essay. This would help my audience understand where I am coming from when I try to explain a complex symbolic description

Quarter 2: Persuasive Essay

My persuasive essay as a whole was pretty weak. I did not necessarily develop the logic behind my arguments. I also did not include many facts or statistics that backed up my statements. Evidently it just was not convincing to my audience at all. I was pretty bummed when I received my score back (78%) as it was the lowest grade I ever got on an English essay. I realized though, that the persuasive topic was still necessarily new to me and I just have not figured it all out yet.

If I were to rewrite it today I am confident I could do a lot better. I realized the art of rhetoric is not rocket science. We use ethos, pathos, and logos in activities we do everyday. Whether it be when you try to persuade your parents into letting you our of the house or convincing your friend to do something they wouldn’t necessarily enjoy. I feel confident in my ability to persuade others and would love to tackle the assignment again.

Quarter 3: Outside Reading “Of Mice and Men”

I feel that I did a great job in describing the thought process of the characters and how they felt when certain incidents occurred, but evidently I felt as if I was summarizing what happened rather than analyzing. It did not help that I waited to do this essay until last minute and could not wait to get it over with. I don’t blame anyone for that other than myself obviously. If I would have took my time and done the essay at an earlier point I would scored a higher grade on it for sure. I also needed to develop my body paragraphs quite a bit more but that was because I tried to squeeze a bunch of information into a paragraph.

If I were to rewrite it I would definitely take my time and read over what I’m truly writing. I know now that if you don’t put 100% into everything you do your just going to give off mediocre work.

Quarter 4: Realistic Narrative

By far my best writing assignment. The best part is that I enjoyed doing it! With this assignment I was able to write about an alcoholic and describe his life as he deals with an addiction. I utilized all the narrative elements except for dialogue, which I forgot to include for some reason. Even though I left out an entire element of narration I still scored well as I was able to get my point across.

If I were to rewrite this assignment I would just include authentic dialogue as I feel the rest of my essay was perfect. I described his life, his routine, and surroundings.