Zaragoza 1

Dianna Zaragoza
Professor Ditch
English 113B
5 May 2015
Look Back At It
Looking back at this semester Ive seem improvement in my writing from when I started
here at CSUN. My writing from the beginning of this semester needed improvement. Despite
having writers block during my first essay in my English 113B class, I learned to overcome
writers block by noting down ideas that contribute to the effectiveness of my essay. This helped
because brainstorming was a way for me to be creative and connect my ideas for my overarching
point. Since doing this, I have learned that with writing an effective paper comes patience with
research, time, and most of all a wild tongue.
Although essays can be difficult o write at times, finding similar ideas to the topic of your
essay is instrumental because extra research is needed to make your paper look great. In my
essay, titled, Reaching Success I discuss how coming from a family with a low income has
influenced the importance of my education. In my body paragraphs I made sure my topic
sentences related back to my thesis. I state, Because of my demanding lifestyle, I can strive for
success as a student knowing I can take on the responsibilities as an adult. Here I explain that
because I have grown up with a demanding lifestyle, I know I can balance my everyday life, with
my academic life. At this point in my essay, I provided a perfect quote sandwich for the research
I needed to back up my argument.

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Along with requiring extra research, providing a topic sentence as a guide to my essay
was necessary. In my project text essay, I made sure every topic sentence was written clearly and
made sure it related back to my thesis statement. I state, With overcoming a traumatic
experience comes resilience.(Lickerman) This here is one of my topic sentences that relates
back to my thesis statement. In order to overcome trauma, you need to work on yourself as a
person and grow. In my essay Project Text my thesis says, The members of this small literary
society created a bond, a culture, with each other that helped them cope and over-come the
trauma; thus illustrating to the reader that something as simple as a book club can be
instrumental in the process of overcoming trauma. My topic sentence states that with
overcoming a traumatic experience comes time, well the members of this literary society became
so close and ultimately created bonds which helped them overcome the trauma of the occupation.
They took time to heal of the tragedy, which was needed to achieve resilience.
While writing my first essay I couldnt put in words what I was trying to say, and also
had troubles trying to write a thesis statement. In my English 113B SI lab, Yair one of my
professors helped me create a web of all the ideas I wanted to incorporate into my essay; this
helped me narrow down the ideas I had for the thesis statement. This is my thesis statement
before the revisions and help of Yair and Professor Ditch, The GLPPPS created a bond, a
culture, with the individuals in this small book society and helped them cope and overcome the
trauma, showing the reader that something as simple as a book club can be instrumental in the
process of overcoming trauma. In this thesis statement I provided the abbreviation of the novel
we read in class, which Professor Ditch said was not needed. Here is the thesis statement after
the revisions, The members of this small literary society create a bond, a culture, with each
other which helps them cope and overcome the trauma; thus illustrating that something as simple

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as a book club can be instrumental in the process of overcoming trauma. The removal of the
abbreviation helped in the effectiveness of the paper because it made it more detailed. I also
added wording in the thesis statement to help with clarity.
In my project text essay I needed help knowing when to properly use a transition word.
So I added transition words to help with transitioning a topic. In the final draft of the project text
essay, I forgot to site my source in my concluding paragraph so I added that in there, it now says,
Overall, trauma is defined as an experience that produces emotional and psychological strain.
(Lickerman) By doing this, I helped gain clarity and also avoided plagiarism.
By extension, the writing in my first essay has a great difference than my writing in the
second essay. My writing in my project text essay was better than the writing in my project space
essay and it showed in the grade. Going from a low C to a high B was an improvement. I gained
more knowledge of writing a college paper by expanding my research skills as a result to
providing credible sources to back up my argument. Along with that, I also learned how to
properly use and insert a topic sentence and a transition word when needed. Nevertheless, I
learned to maintain the flow of my essay with the proper formatting and by inserting topic
sentences.