Challenge Makes the Writer I have faced many struggles at the Naval Academy Preparatory School, but writing several drafts and editing the same piece of work multiple times has to be one of the biggest. In high school, I was able to sit down a couple days before a paper was due, and spend no more than an hour a night, writing what I thought to be a “well thought out paper”. As heartbreaking as this may sound to English teachers alike, I did not extensively proof-read my papers before turning them in. I would quickly glace for obvious grammar mistakes and format errors, but I never took the time to revise, or even edit my work. This year however, my writing has improved immensely; not because I have necessary become a better writer, but I have …show more content…
The very first major writing assignment I accomplished was the Audience paper. Though the Audience paper did not have as strict a prompt as the other papers I wrote, I still ran into a fair amount of challenges. Firstly, my organization and presentation of information was a tad sloppy. I would begin to develop certain points, then awkwardly start a new idea without properly wrapping up my previous statement. Another issue with my paper, was near the end I started to go a little off topic, by adding irrelevant information which unintentionally turned into filler. On top of that, I had a few awkwardly put sentences, poor grammar, and some repetitive word choice. I cleaned up the basic revisions and sentence structure, by ironing out the choppy transitions, and further strengthen my previous points. However, the biggest revision I made to this paper, was I took on the challenge of scrapping my entire analysis section, and rewriting it. This time, I made sure to include rhetorical language, by properly analyzing each decision I made, and why I made it. With the improved overall flow, and re-thought out analysis section, I believe I met the challenge of properly revising my Audience paper. Though I had a fair amount of struggles revising the Audience paper, it does not even come close to the hardship I ran into with the Synthesis …show more content…
Even though this paper had to be part of my portfolio, I would have included it anyway. This assignment required me to overcome all of my previous weaknesses, and utilize all of my writing abilities, to create a concise thesis driven paper. That being said, I did run into some problems that definitely needed addressing. This was a challenging paper to write. The book we used to write the paper, Northanger Abbey, was written in old English, and based in a time period I was not familiar with. On top of that, finding an appropriate theme that Jane Austen conveyed within her writing, was no easy task. My paper started off strong, but towards the end it became weaker and weaker. Again, a reoccurring theme in my papers, is I start to develop interesting points, but I fail to fully flush them out, leaving the reader somewhat confused and wondering where the rest of my point is. I spent the bulk of my effort reworking my concluding paragraphs, and wrapping up my points in a concise matter. I also did a better job of finding exact instances in the book to support my claims, instead of using overall themes, which at times seemed a little too broad and bland. By making my concluding paragraphs as strong as my opening ones, I believe that I made my literary analysis the best it could