Reflection Essay

As authors and writers progress throughout their careers, differences in their writing can

be spotted in their work. Multiple areas of authors’ writing can be altered such as their diction

and word choice, sentence structure, and content. Personally, in my writing this semester, I have

improved on a variety of things including my diction and sentence structure. In the past semester

while taking AP Language, my writing has improved greatly as my word choice is more

sophisticated and my sentence structure helps my work to flow better compared to the beginning

of the year.

Throughout this past semester, my writing has progressed from merely writing two

paragraphs that did not flow well, to writing at minimum three solid paragraphs that contain

proper flow and correct content. For example, at the beginning of the semester, I was not in close

range of achieving a high score on a writing assignment as I would consistently get a two or

three out of six on the AP English scoring rubric. After working on my content and elaboration

during the semester and talking with my teacher about how I can improve, I was able to bring the

scoring up to a minimum of three and sometimes four points out of six. Also, when writing

essays under time limits became a weekly occurrence, I was struggling at the beginning of the

semester with content and vocabulary, as my wordiness would injure me. Instead of using

concise words such as “implies”, I would need to fill the page and write “states the implication”

in place of the concise word. Doing measly things such as these were taking away from the

content of my writing, which impacted my score in a major way.

As always, there are ways to improve my writing to achieve that high score on exams

such as the AP exam in the spring. After talking to multiple peers and my teacher, the two things

that I need to emphasize more on in my writing is the accuracy of the content regarding the
prompt, and the amount of explanation and elaboration that I do. It has been said multiple times

that I “leave things for the reader to figure out”, which is only appropriate if I am writing a

suspenseful horror novel. I need to explain my thoughts and reasonings better and not leave

topics for the reader to continue thinking about. If I can improve on these two things, then

additional points can be achieved on scoring in the content category.

Throughout this fall semester in AP Language, I have improved my writing skills by

increasing my variety of diction and using better sentence structure, all while continuing to

improve on my elaboration and content detail. This course has impacted my writing in such a

way that when I write, I think about every word I say differently. Although I have progressed as

a writer, new topics and skills can always be learned.