I believe my writing has improved considering how poor my writing was at the beginning of the semester. My main goal when this semester began was to learn to develop my writing so as to be able to write college papers. I know my writing is not where I want it to be , but at this point I believe I have made progress as evidenced by the way I combine my sentence, write a complete sentence with fewer fragments, as well as my use of active voice versus passive voice.

Over the course of the semester, I have been able to identify some of my strengths and weaknesses. One of my strengths is my use of the writing center as well as meeting with my instructor on occasionally basis, which helped my writing process. On the other hand, one of my weakness is my use of thesis statement. As a writer, creating an effective thesis has been one the areas that I have struggled throughout the semester. To create an effective thesis,I know my thesis statement has to be concise and clear so that my audience can understand it.

 So reflecting back on the progress that I have made, I think I have accomplished some of the goals that I set for myself. I think my challenge will be to continue to write so that I can  continue what I have learned in English 102.

In regard to analyzing another' writer argument and after thinking critically thinking about my own arguments, I was able to identify some of the areas that I could improve on. One of the area that I was lacking was my thesis. I was unable to assert myself when making my argument because my thesis was weak. I discovered that most of the arguments that I had written lack a strong thesis which made my argument less effective. So I learned that having a stronger thesis as well as assertiveness when writing could improve my arguments.

Another thing that I learned after analyzing another writer's argument is that my arguments are not well organized. I discovered that I need to arrange my arguments in a way that my strongest argument comes first and the weakest argument comes last. In other words, I need to do a better job putting my strongest points first and putting the weakest ones last. So I feel that If I can change these two things my arguments would be more effective.

My most compelling evidence is my claim that undergraduate student who enrolled in graduate school immediately upon completion of a four year program are likely to have a competitive advantage in the workforce. This is strong evidence because it makes sense, and my audience can relate to it.  Everyone that has completed a four year college knows how hard it is to graduate. Taking a break after a four year college for a job only make makes it hard to enroll in graduate school. After concluding that this is my strongest claim, I am going to be restating this claim in my essay as I make my argument.

My weakest evidence is my response to the claim that students cannot afford graduate school immediately after a four year college program. I argue that most reputable companies has tuition reimbursement plan that can help upset the cost of schooling. This is my weakest evidence because completing a four year degree necessarily does not translate to a good job. To make this argument plausible, I will let my audience know that enrolling in graduate give a better competitive advantage in the workforce, but I will also let them know that they might accumulate a lot of student loan while doing so.

After looking critically at the two previous graded essays that I had written in this class as well as the other written in the past, I was able to identify 4 common patterns of errors. The first common noticeable error that I identified was my grammatical errors. In my writing, I made too many errors, such as using commas and conjunctions incorrectly as well as missing a subject or verb in a sentence. These errors made my essay very difficult to read, and I plan to avoid these errors by correcting my sentence fragments, correcting run-on sentences, and writing complete sentences.

Second, I tend to be excessively too wordy; In particular, I tend to write too many short paragraphs that should have been combined. I need to combine these sentences to make each paragraph better. I know it is difficult for me to avoid this short paragraph when I am writing, however I will make a conscious effort to limit my errors when revising my draft so that my paragraph can become more meaningful and flow better.

Third, after reading my two previous essays, I discovered that each paragraph that I had written was not well explained. In short, it lacked clarity. I know that I need to work on my transition and learn how to effectively use my conjunction to connect my points. I plan to correct some of these mistakes by thoroughly explaining each paragraph.

Finally, I tend to use the same word over and over again. I tend to be repetitive and redundant. I write to fill spaces as opposed to critiquing every word in each sentence. I plan to correct some of these errors by critiquing each word so as to avoid the same mistakes in the future.

My take on the peer review process in this class is that it is not the best but can be better. There are some areas that can be improved to make these review process more effective. First, I think we should spend more time on informal discussiion because I found that process very interesting. I like the informal discussion because it captivates everybody's attention, and it appears there is more enthusiam. I have learned one or two things each time we did the informal discusssion. So if I have a choice I would have preferred to do more informal discusssions.

As a peer reviewer, It is much more easier for me when I'm peered with somone that is prepared and ready. What I mean by that it that the process is better and easier when peered with someone that actually want to work on their draft as oppose to someone that is disinterested in the process.

As for group size, I would prefer a small group; myself and the other person. I think working with one person is much more effective. With one person a lot can be accomplished in a short period of time. Also, my experience from past reviews  has shown that having a large group is less effective. And finally, I do not have any problem with the amount of time with spent on previous reviews.  The most important thing for me is to be able to work in a small group as well as working with the right person.

Of the three assignments that we’ve done so far, I found assignment #5- analyzing an advertisement the most difficult. The easiest assignment would be the topic that I am blogging on at this moment. This assignment is the easiest for me because it requires less critically thinking, and the fact that I can choose my own topic. I choose to blog about this particular topic because it addresses some of things I want to write about.

As stated earlier, I think the advertisement assignment was the most difficult because it requires a lot of research and critical thinking.  There are two reasons why I think this assignment is difficult.
First, choosing the appropriate ad and finding an ad that has text-based evidence was hard. Second, analyzing the ad itself was not easy considering that we have to of idenfity: purpose, audience, genre, and tone.

Taking this class fit perfectly into what I want to do in the future because my major requires a lot of intensive writing. Besides that I think it is a great idea to learn how to write. The whole premise of taking this class is to get better at writing, so that it can help in the future.  There are lots of things that I find interesting so far in my college experience. I must say that I find blogging very intriguing. The idea of blogging is foreign to me, however, I find the experience really interesting. 

For this argument analysis assignment, I will be analyzing the essay written by Charles Murray in which he argues that:"It's what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learn to do it." This essay highlights the importance of post-secondary education. It argues that community colleges can be as effefctive as a uninversity in terms of job qualification. That job qualification shouldn't be based on bachelor's degree alone. It also indicates that students shouldn't  be subjected to studing in universtity alone but rather be given the opportunity to go with whatever works for them.

I choose this article because it explains some of the misconception about post-secondary education. It advocates for post-secondary education as oppose to a universtity degree. Another reason why I find this article interesting is because President Obama in his State of the Union addressed the same subject. This article is not by any means easier than any of the there other articles, however, what I find intriguing in this particular article is the writer's argument.