Metacognitive Reflection

     Over the course of this semester, I have seen growth in different areas of my writing due to all of the practice we have done. I have seen a large amount of improvement with my writing style and the techniques I have used. This is mainly from the blog posts we have done, which allows me to write in a different style for each post. Through my quickwrites, I am able to practice the language devices we have learned about and practice embedding my quotes smoothly into my writing. I have seen myself grow in my range of vocabulary and voice to a more sophisticated and formal one. I have also seen improvements in my use of examples and focusing on connecting my points back to thesis. Through the writing process, I have increased the amount of revision and editing I do, along with peer editing. I find peer revision to help me the most because it gives my writing a new set of eyes to look over it and find mistakes that I may have missed. Also, since it is from a different perspective, there are always new ideas and thoughts that can be added to my writing. By taking more time on my writing and thinking deeper into the meaning of the texts, I have seen improvements in my analysis, compared to how it was last year. However, I still think my analysis needs to be improved, by going even deeper into the piece and analyzing beyond the text into the real world implications. Also, another aspect of my writing that I think I can still improve on is the way in which I condense my thoughts and make concise arguments, rather than long and complicated ones. This will make my analysis more specific and straightforward to understand it better. I plan to accomplish this by making writing conferences with Ms. Nagi. I think this will help me and I wish that I would’ve scheduled some during the first semester, as I think it would have helped me with my analysis. I think one of my proudest assignments was the Gatsby test short answer because I since it was one of the most recent ones we have done, it has reflected more accurately my growth over the semester. It demonstrates my growth of a greater understanding of the topic we have been discussing, The American Dream, as well as shows my improvements in developing my argument and purpose with effective quotes. In the future, I would like to focus on working more one-on-one with Ms. Nagi through conferences to help my writing skills. I think this will allow me to understand more about what she wants to see from me and will help me to get higher scores through more corrections and a better understanding.