Essay Reflection

During this entire year in ISKL, I have never done such harshly graded essays in my life. This year was a great, great challenge. I have, in this entire year, felt that these 2 essays were the hardest. I have written essays before but I always failed them and I don't think I will learn too quickly. this post is about the 2 essays I wrote.

Ideas and Content:
First of all I will talk about my 'Alchemist' essay. This essay, I didn't do so well on. According to me my writing kind of made sense but not really because I was missing some key parts and words. I did have a clear and focused topic because I kept on addressing the main idea in this essay. The essay showed me that I wasn't really clear with the topic. From my sense I know the topic well it's just really hard to write it down. I sometimes included interesting and relevant details in my essay but I still felt that there could be some more work done to it. I usually had quotations that related ti the main idea, although there was in the part where I didn't include the entire quotation which would have helped me with my explanation. In the Julius Caesar essay I did pretty well which shows some growth between the and now. My writing made sense sometimes. I had a clear and focused topic. I knew the topic pretty well but maybe my essay didn't show that. I usually included interesting and relevant details to my essay. I usually explained how my quotation related to the main idea of the paragraph.


Organization:
Continuing with the Julius Caesar essay I thought that I began with a great hook to grab my reader's attention and explained why it was significant and the context. I didn't really have a clear thesis statement. It just jumped right into the topic of the essay which I made pretty clear. Sometimes my body paragraphs would start with a good topic sentence. This is because I mostly just began with the context of the paragraph. I did establish context before introducing a paragraph. Although I think I did this after the quotation was introduced. All my body paragraphs ended with a good summarizing sentence. My conclusion was pretty strong and pulled all the idea together and put them into 1 paragraph. I always began with an interesting hook to grab my reader's attention. I did have a pretty clear thesis statement. My body paragraphs sometimes began with good topic sentences. I usually established the context of a quotation before introducing it. All my body paragraphs have okay summarizing sentences. I didn't really have a very strong summarizing paragraph that pulls together all my ideas together.

Personal Growth:
I do note improvement in between both my essays. I see growth because in the beginning of the year I was really new to this essay writing like as if I was in high school. Also in my past essays I haven't done too well. I feel like an Essay is my one enemy. Also there is a large amount of time in between of the 'Alchemist' essay and the 'Julius Caesar' essay. During this time I have developed a lot because we have done vocabulary and right now we know more vocab. This influenced the way we structured our paragraphs.

SLR's:
Thinking Creatively is very important in the process of essay writing. This is because you need to creatively structure your paragraphs and sentences to make it make sense. Also you need to use your vocabulary creatively to enhance a deeper meaning with the reader. The more clever you are with the words the better and more depth you put into your writing. I am not so clever with my words.