Lopez I

Ryan Lopez

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

7 December 2017

Reflection

Over the course of this semester, my college level writing proficiency has risen

dramatically, due to the presentations in class and the one on one tutoring sessions at the LRC.

Should you compare my first Project Space essay to my most current work of writing the Project

Media essay, you will notice a vast improvement in my attentiveness to the MLA format, more

evidence supporting my thesis, and a full, coherent counterargument and refutation. When

looking at my Project Space essay, it is noticeable that my knowledge of providing my thesis

with substantial and relevant evidence was at a still very high school level. Now, if you look to

my Project Text and Project Media essays there is clear evidence of a proper and concise college

level writer.

The first point would be my now stellar attentiveness to the MLA format. In my first

essay Project Space, I was not entirely certain about what the demands for a standard MLA

format essay was. I would often find myself making errors such mis formatting the Works Cited

page. Examples of this error can be found in my Project Space essay, where I did not pay

attention to the proper citation on the Works Cited page, putting the authors first name first

rather than their last, and not properly italicising the name of the book Monsters. This was over

time fixed, and youll see in my Project Media essay is now virtually free of these citation errors.
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I believe that a major part of this is due to my meetings at the LRC and the presentation given in

class concerning the guidelines of the standard MLA format. These citation errors were still

prominent in my second essay, the Project Text essay. In Project Text, my citations were not in

alphabetical order, and they were not left aligned. These errors were pointed out in feedback

which lead me for my final essay, to go to the LRC to assure that these errors would not be in my

Project Media essay. It was at the LRC that I presented my final Works Cited page, where they

confirmed that there was no errors. This growth over the course of these three essays shows that I

have grown as a writer in the sense of being able to expertly accomplish the structural parts of a

college level MLA format essay.

In addition, the evidence which I lay for my thesis statements have drastically seen

improvement over the course of this semester, causing me to not stray from the topic at hand. In

my Project Space essay, my evidence for why exactly a Movie Set has such key monstrous

errors, came from first hand experience. This would suffice, however in addition I only had one

source from the Monsters book. Now, if you look to the Project Media essay, you will notice that

my sources were quite diverse, in hopes of providing the best evidence for my thesis. The

sources which I used in my Project Media essay were Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of

Desire written by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Monsters. pp 190-195), the film Star Wars: Episode

II: Attack of the Clones, the film Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and the article Why Modern

Monsters Have Become Alien to Us written by Patrick McCormick from the book Monsters (pp

266-273). As you can see, the amount of evidence which I have used in the more recent essay
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has drastically rose, in order to assure that the argument is presenting is above all clear and

concise with ample evidence to support it.

Lastly, the most crucial part of my growth as a writer this semester lies in my ability to

now write and present a full concise counterclaim to my argument. One part missing from each

of my essays, except for my final Project Media essay, this semester was a clear counterclaim

and refutation. In my Project Space essay for example, I found myself rambling on for major

portions of the original graded essay, where I hinted at a slight counter argument in the second

paragraph on the fourth page. I describe the views of someone who perhaps would not want to

work as hard on a Movie Set, however I feel as though it would have been beneficial to include a

specific sentence explaining that the views I expressed were the views of someone of this

mindset. If we look to my Project Text essay, you will notice that there is absolutely no sign of a

counter argument or refutation. This is something which I am not proud to have overlooked,

never the less I have changed it for my revised essay on the Weebly site. This revision only

occurred days ago, which shows that I am now much more knowledgeable about the needs for

these counter claims and refutations in argumentative essays.

As for this writing piece, if you were to look at my essays and attempt to make a case for

why you believe I have not made progress; I would have to refer you again back to the evidence

of my progression. This being the decrease in errors from the main structural standpoint of the

MLA format, my elevated use of evidence from the text provided and outside sources, and my

ability to express a full, clear, and coherent counterclaim and refutation to said counterclaim.

This course has without a doubt, prepared me for the writing courses which I will take in the
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future and has provided me with the knowledge of outside resources which I can use to fine tune

my writing skills in the future of my college career.