Portfolio

I have learned a lot on essay writing and grammar concern during the process of this semester Eng-0098. Actually, I have learned more than I thought I would, and I am very surprised on how hard actually working on essays and grammar to get this semester done, finally this course has helped me to overcome my fear of writing. It was unsure to me at first; I was unknown to all type essays such as, Process Analysis, Classification, Definition, Comparison and Contrast, and Argument. But I quickly became used to writing essays. It was very helpful to learn about them. At the end of the semester I think my main strength as a writer is the ability to vividly describe what I observed and have experienced. To me it is a big success.

What I liked about this course is easy learning method. The way professor teaches is so simple and understanding, and direct point of interest to the chapter/course. The most importantly what I liked when I work with writing is applying all that I learned such as, grammar rules and requirements of writing essay; Introduction: hook, background, and thesis, Body: main idea, support concluding sentence, and Conclusion: summarize, prediction, and emphasize. I learned quick learning techniques and understanding of the writing method.

I have just one thing to say that I liked least about work with writing is my struggling, when reading and summarizing of the topic. It is matter of understanding the whole reading of the chapter and then making a summarization. To me it is hard to understand and summarize. One time, I had to read four chapters and summarize each of them. I was not able to understand at first, it’s like totally blank out my mind. I could not get anything from the chapters, and it was so hard to write a summary as well. After paying attention and hardworking, finally, I became successful on reading and summarization concept.

My greatest strength in writing process is being able to gain abilities of writing different kind of essays, understanding of the grammar concerns, and requirement of essay structure. Now I have improved on critical thinking, planning, and composing in correct way. Also I have built concept of revising and editing that I always let others to revise and myself, and edit accordingly. Hopefully this would bring me a success in my next future classes.

            My greatest weakness includes procrastination, lack of imagination or too many ideas to start with, poor thought organization and bad grammar. I have been working hard to overcome my weakness. I strongly believe that this course has helped me tremendously, and improved towards making essential writing. I’m sure that it will be overcome in future.

            I strongly wanted to improve upon focusing on main ideas. I understand that to include main idea is very important in writing. It is always hard to identify my main idea to include in my writing. I know the main idea is a leading point, and a key to organize that guides to readers to interpret easily and identify the point of writing. I began to learn following steps to improve:

·         Identify the topic. All writing has a topic, and the topic is the most general idea in a piece of writing. The topic can usually be condensed into one word.

·         Pick a direction. The direction is how to talk about a topic. If I were writing about children, I might decide to write specifically about the stresses involved in parenting.

·         Make the two together; a topic, and direction, now I can have a topic sentence. An example: "Raising children requires financial stability to avoid undue stress on parents."

·         Umbrella like, once I write a topic sentence, decide whether I can expand it into a paragraph or essay without repeating or including extra details to fill space.

·         Now I can put my main idea sentence to use as I write my paragraph or essay. Now I can also use main idea at the end of my writing to bring a piece full-circle.

One of my biggest goals when I began Eng-0098 was to learn how to write better introductions and conclusions to make excellent essays. This course has helped me immensely, significantly gained confidents on real writing concept, and taught me lots of writing skills. It is definitely going to help me in my future courses, and corporate job.  I’m so happy to get this course in this semester.

Sincerely yours,

Mohan Maharjan

14 July 2011