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Safwan Jackie

Professor Batty

English 28

31 May 2017

The Strongest Weakness

What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.Three things that I have always had a

struggle with throughout most of my life were reading, writing, and listening. I have

always been a hands-on experience kind of guy and would hardly seek advice on

academic skills. I would get through most of my high school English classes with just a

passing grade of at most a C average, until I came into this class. At the beginning of

this semester, I was not a very strong writer. I would not believe in getting advice for

writing, nor would I think that certain types of writing strategies or tutoring would make

such a dramatic difference in my writing skills. For example, prior to taking this class, I

never wrote a rough draft before submitting an essay. I would always believe that my

writing skills were good enough to develop a paragraph from my own general

knowledge. This class changed me in several ways that I did not expect.

When I first took the class, I would not pay much attention to the discussions, nor

would I take detailed notes on writing strategies. I would do basic exercises that were

assigned and thought that I would be ok. Just doing those few writing exercises and

listening in on a few segments of class discussions resulted me to receive an A on my

first essay that I turned in which was the narrative essay. I got so happy from seeing

that score on my essay that I was under the impression that I can do all of my essays

the same way. Unfortunately, I was very wrong in that case. After I got a low grade on
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my argumentative essay, I realized that I made such foolish mistakes and errors that I

should have caught if I were to proofread and revise my essay draft with more people.

Out of pride and shyness, I did not seek advice to improve my drafts. I was very grateful

that there was a mandatory assignment to turn in a rough draft about a week before the

final for peer revision which has really opened my eyes to make me a become a

stronger writer.

This semester overall made me a far stronger writer even though I had

reasons to believe that I was going to get a low grade on most of my

assignments.This class has really been helpful to me towards my writing and my

reading comprehensive skills from reading the book The Immortal Life of

Henrietta Lacks. I learned that I am not a weak writer but I need needed to

have layouts and strategies to bring out the creative side of my mind to put it on

paper. I discovered that as a writer I need to have the step-by-step visual to

have a full development in an essay. Even though I might have the whole

process in my head and sounds smooth, it is different when it is actually written

down.

One thing that was very helpful to me and made me a better writer was

making an essay outline. This made me jog down ideas and take out the bad

ones and implement the good ones to put them together and develop a solid

structure. Taking detailed notes on punctuation and reading They Say I Say,

gave me the ability to acquire more skills to have a good sentence flow within

paragraphs in an essay and to have a solid thesis with supporting points. I will
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continue to work on proofreading skills to have the best parts of an essay to take

out parts that arent important or repetitive. I also will look out for grammar errors

as I have seen in previous revised essays of mine that it was a big issue because

of failure to proofread or revise. In the future, I will use the layout method and the

proofreading method which were the most effective to me to continuously

improve my writing skills.