During my time taking this course, I have had the ability to develop many of my writing strategies to strengthen my essays. I had already been using some of these strategies however, I did not really see how important they were to my essay writing. However, I have recently had the chance to zero in on my mistakes in my writing because of these strategies. I have made major improvement in my writing after the experience I gained with my many essays and assignments in this course. In these writings I have used more of these writing processes and practices and I saw progress. I realized that these writing processes have benefited my writing skills.  

One strategy that helped me to improve my writing skills was getting feedback. I was really able to see the flaws in my writing after getting feedback from others. This is probably one of the biggest factors that has allowed me to grow the most as a writer. When I get feedback on my work I am allowing myself to see my work in someone else’s perspective instead of my own, which I think is very important. I have gotten feedback from my peers in this course as well as from friends outside this course. Getting advice on my work from many different angles really helps me to get an idea of where I have to take my essay in the next draft. An assignment in this course where I got feedback was the exploratory essay. In my first draft I had a really vague thesis statement and did not go into detail within my paragraphs. I had personally thought my essay was fine and only a minimal amount of work was needed to make my essay better. However, my peers did not think the same about my work. After they read my essay, they told me many points I needed to fix, such as my thesis and my body paragraphs. It was only after getting this feedback that I realized how much I need to fix my essay. My essay ended up taking a whole new direction. I had a more narrow thesis statement and more detail in my body paragraphs. I do not think my essay would be even close to what it is in the final draft without getting feedback. This feedback from my peers helped me to realize problems in my writing that I am not even aware of. In the past I would revise my own work after I am done writing what I am working on. However, having someone else revise as well ensures that there are minimal flaws or mistakes in my work. I will definitely use this method in the future in my future essays as it will allow me to have someone else’s opinion on my work and will allow minimal mistakes in my work.  

Another method I have used in my essay writing is creating an outline before writing my drafts. This is another major factor that goes into my essay writing. With this method I am able to plan out exactly what I am going to write in my essay. It allows me to have a foundation for when I move on to my later drafts. After I have this foundation, I then build on it until I eventually have my final draft. This method really helped me to start off my essay and plan it out instead of going right into my draft. I used this method in both the creative nonfiction essay and the exploratory essay in this course. I first wrote my thesis statement and what my essay was going to be about. I then started to write my details for my introduction. This is where I would start getting into the topics I would be discussing later in my essay. The most amount of work was done for my body paragraphs. In this part of my outline, I separated these body paragraphs based on the different parts of my essay. I would then write about different points that I would be able to discuss within these different parts of my essay. There would be up to about 3 points for each topic in my essay. These paragraphs are where I had the most details in the essay. This is also where I spent the most amount of time in my outlining process. I then moved on to my conclusion to finish off my essay. This outline process really helps me to plan out my essay and make sure I am going in the right direction. I will use this method in the future to plan my essays better and to lay a good foundation for my essay.

Revising my work is another process I have been using to make my essays better. It is the final step I take in all my writing. In this process I am able to make sure I have eliminated all errors and mistakes in my final draft. When I revise my work I try to read it as if I am the reader or the audience I am writing to. This helps me to see if my work gets across smoothly and accurately to the reader. When revising my work, I end up editing my work to get rid of my mistakes. I am able to fix my mistakes such as in organization which was a big difficulty for me in my writing progress. However, by revising some of my work as well as hearing the advice of others I was able to notice this flaw in my writing. The essay that I realized the effectiveness of this method was the creative nonfiction essay. It taught me to focus on my topic without going off into different topics and ideas when organizing my work. In this essay I put parts of my writing in the right places so my ideas were not lost. This includes parts of my essay such as where I had focused on culture and sports in different paragraphs. I chose to talk about culture first in this essay so it would better introduce my identity and make more sense to the reader. Before revising this essay I was all over the place in terms of reaching my point with the reader. After I started to organize my work, it became much easier to understand my writing. I will use this lesson in future essays as it will help me to get my message across better to the readers. It allows my work to be more clear. 

In conclusion, the many new practices in my writing allowed me to grow as a writer and make significant progress. I plan to keep using all these new practices I have used in my writings as I have seen much improvement with them. I have become a tremendously better writer due to these processes. I also plan to try new practices in the future in hope that it will help me grow as a writer. These practices will definitely benefit me as I write more in the future. I have already grown so much as a writer because of these practices. These methods have allowed me to strengthen my essay writing. I would like to use these in the future to use them more frequently and try to be as flawless as I can with my essays.