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Benjamin Booker
Professor Dorhout
English 2089
3 August 3, 2015

Reflection Essay

Throughout the course, I have noticed significant improvement in several of my skills as

a writer as well as several skills that are consistently lacking. In English 2089 Intermediate
Composition, we completed three essay assignments, eight discussion boards, several blogs
(which we called SADs), and a reflection essay in the middle of the course. In the reflection
essay, I highlighted several skills that I felt that I improved on, and I am again asked to write
another essay doing the same after several more weeks spent in class.
In the previous reflective essay, I wrote that my critical thinking skills improved
significantly as a writer and as a reader, as well as my ability to provide ample evidence to
support my thesis statement. I also stated that my grammar and spelling ability suffers; I mainly
concentrate on content instead of grammaticism and often write too quickly, overlooking simple
grammar errors. I feel that my grammatical skills did not improve as significantly as I would
have liked them to in the class. However, I see significant improvement in my ability to read
rhetoric and think critically about what I am reading and writing, which I think is more important
than grammatical issues (although they cannot be ignored). Additionally, I made an enormous
change in my writing style by learning to paraphrase instead of bombarding my reader with
endless quotes.

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First and foremost, I have always had trouble with my grammar skills and my spelling
skills. I like to contribute this lack of skill to my deprivation of phonics training when I was in
elementary school, but that is not an excuse. I would have enjoyed seeing an improvement on
these skills throughout this course, however, I did not see a significant improvement, although I
did rush on the last assignment and did not get a chance to thoroughly edit the last four
paragraphs of essay three. Because of this rush, I believe that I missed the opportunity to further
develop the ability to critically read my own works and scrutinize them for mistakes as this skill
continues to lack.
Although my grammar skills lack and they do not show sign of momentous improvement,
the discussion boards and the SAD blogs did improve my ability to read other individuals works
and examine them critically. Participating in the discussion boards and the SAD assignments
gave me the opportunity to express my opinion about what the reader was claiming and allowed
me to hear what others thought, as well as hear the opinion of a professional (Mr. Dorhout). This
exposure to news articles in an academic setting contributed to my capability to depict the
rhetoric from the actual information; most notably, my first SAD, when several other classmates
and I were convinced that this article was against the Democratic Party and favored the
Republican Party, but after Professor Dorhout examined the article and explained it to us, it was
clear that we were fooled and that actually, the reverse was true.
Along with being able to read critically, I find myself more conscious of the word choice
and organization that I use in my writing. I have always been concise with some of the words and
phrases that I use in my writing; for example when I used the word psychrophilic to exaggerate
my enjoyment of the colder temperatures. However, I have become more increasingly aware of
the word choices that I use for other, smaller purposes instead of focusing on a few words for the

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larger ideas, such as my use of scrutinizing, versus the use of analyzing, in essay three, as well as
the use of emotional words, such as prey, unethical, or vulnerable.
Besides being more aware of word choices and developing my skills as a critical reader, I
discovered a new skillparaphrasing. In previous papers, I would bombard my reader with a
plethora of information and I would do so with an abundant amount of quotes; the entire paper
was a series of quotes with very few lines of my actual words and I would often have very little
space for a conclusion. I continue to bombard my reader with several sources of information,
however, I discovered that paraphrasing allows me to include more information while still citing
my sources and it also enables me to interpret the information for my reader when before I would
place that responsibility on the reader. I had more than double the amount of direct quotes in
essays one and two, where I had twelve sources in seven pages, than in essay three, where I had
nineteen sources and eleven pages.
My reading and writing skills have improved tremendously. I have developed further as a
writer and more so as a critical reader. My new found paraphrasing capability will continue to
influence my writing style; I will no longer bombard my readers with endless quotations.
Although I have improved in these aspects, they are far from perfect. I will continue to develop
these essential skills throughout my career as well as improve upon my grammatical skills. This
class has been very beneficial and I will carry what I have learned with me as I progress through
my education.

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