Reflective Essay

          I want to talk about how this year has opened new writing styles, habits, and ideas, and skills for me during the first quater of my freshman year. This year at ASTI having two writing classes (English and Wrting 1) has helped me a lot even though we have only gone through one quarter. In the following paragraphs, I will explain the different ways that I have progressed as a writer here at ASTI.  

I think that this years writing for me has been much different than any other year in the past. The major change for me has been the blogging process. I have found that the blogging process has opened up new ways of writing. I like blogging for a couple of different reasons. I like it because first, it keeps me interested because it is online. I like because I do everything on the computer and having all of my writing be centralized on the computer works really well for me. The other thing that makes the blogging process much easier than just regular writing, is the feedback we get. Since everyone in the class can see each others work, the feedback is not only from the teacher. To take that even further, being able to see every one's work triggers ideas for new writing. The response posts that we have to do every week makes us look at our classmates work and triggers the idea and writing process.

The open writing we do on our blogs has helped me as a writer, and simply as a person in a couple different ways. I feel like the blog is just a way for me to vent about what I need to talk about. Even though I have not really used the blog for anything personal, you can tell that even in my response post to Stan Andersons blog about missing assignments I used the blog to explain how strongly I felt about it. The other thing that I have found myself usung the blog for is simmply to write when I am bored and have nothing better to do. For example, the post I did about my Xbox. I was simply playing my Xbox all day and I felt like I should do soemthing and so I posted. That is just one more way that blogging has helped me as a writer.I think that open ended writing on the blogs are much different than structured writing assignments. With structured assignments, you are being forced to just write about a specific topic. From my personal experience being forced to write about a specific thing is the number one cause of writers block. When we are able to just write whenever and whatever we want on our blogs, I almost never find myself in writers block because I am ususally writing for plesure. When I write about what I want to, I actually find myself enjoying writing.

           

I think that ASTI’s writing and english program has done good things for me. English class has taught me how to do many things other than just reading and comprehending things we read. I have learned to read between the lines and pput th puzzle together of what we are reading at the time. The last thing that I have learned in english class is how to catch and fix redundancy in my writing. Even though I probably have some redundancy in this essay, I am working on it. Writing one has helped me a lot as well. The writing class here has been different than any onther writing class that I have had before. In her class we have explored different types of writing, and how to write it. We have gone through grammer, descriptive writing,and now we are in the narrative section. Too be ohnest, I did not do to well in the decripive essay unit. All this shows is that I need to work on it, and because of the unit I know what exactly I need too do. Now we are on the narrative unit, and I am actually enjoying it. I have always been fairly good at writing stories, so this unit seems exciting too me. I think I will do much better on this essay than the last descriptive essay simply because I actually get to tell astory. The problem with the descriptive essay is that we had to decrobe something that happened with out telling a story. That was really hard for me, and I received a pretty low grade on it.

Overall I feel like this school, aswell as the english and writing teachers I have are helping me become the best writer that I can be. I am definatley thankful, because I know that as I go onto college classes, the expectations for my writing will go up. I am planing to take a college class nest semester freshman year, so these writing skills that I am in the process of learning will help me tremendously. I definatley feel like coming to ASTI was a good decision, and I look forward to becoming a better writer.