Robert Held

I have notice an improvement in my work since the beginning of the spring semester. I can definitely see growth as both a student and as a writer where my work has more organization with a consistent flow. What separates this semester from previous is the amount of time I find myself working on assignments. In prior courses, I would attempt to complete essays as quickly and painlessly as possible, only yielding satisfactory grades. English 102 seems to work with students in overcoming writers block and generating ideas. It's much easier to write papers when the writer is establishing a foundation with a clean flow of consciousness. Outside of English, this helps me with taking notes and writing papers for other classes where I find my work to have much more organization.
One particular struggle I come face to face with on every assignment is attempting not to use past-tense verbs. This has been a problem of my writing for as long as I can remember yet I have never made any attempt to correct it. When shying away from over-usage of past-tense verbs, my work is much easier to read and it presents itself in a better way. I definitely need to keep working with this aspect and learn when to, and when not to, use past-tense verbs. Other corrections that I need to work on is sentence structure and vocabulary. I'm somewhat satisfied with some of my work so far this semester but I feel that there is room for improvement. I can get my position across to the audience better if I work on sentence structure and take advantage of words that have a flow. Some specific things I need to do to achieve better writings are as follows:
1. Read more often; broaden vocabulary and overall sentence structure
2. Work more with fluent, instead of complicated, words
3. Ramble on and on before the first draft of an essay to establish train of thought
4. Keep on topic and 'to the point' with essays
5. Continue to avoid past-tense verbs/ learn when appropriate