For the last two years English class has been great, much less stressful than my other classes. I can’t go into much greater detail as I am not the sentimental type and it kind of feels awkward talking about it. What I all will however talk about in this blog is what my strengths and weaknesses as a writer are. I am doing this in preparation for portfolio night, a night were I present what I have learned throughout the year to a group of parents. Due to portfolio night I have tasked to pick out two assignments, one from 7th grade and one from 8th grade and analyze my strengths and weaknesses back then to now. I chose the two assignments I did due to one, in my opinion, being awful or mediocre at best, the second being near perfect.

The first assignment is a performace task from 7th grade which I personally believe is my worst assignment. It was an arguementative essay I was to write on the which form of water drinking was superior, bottled water or tap. As you can see by the red marks there was prevailing issue in the essay, small grammar mistakes, a lot if, some because I suck at typing, others because I was rushed, most of them are because I am bad at immediately noticing them. Hindsight is 20/20 however and I notice them almost instantly after being turned in. In paragraph three there was also a run-on sentence, that unfortunately happened a lot a while back. What would happen is that I would have too much to say and all of it felt too important to cut out. Then I wouldn’t know how to seperate the run-on into seperate sentences. There also seems to be fragments of unfinished sentences or I put the opposite of what I meant and this is just me forgeting to delete previous versions of a sentence. This assignment would have been an example of how I demonstrated the F.L.A.G.S. learning outcone of being an effective communicator. To have demonstrated that I must have shown that I analyzed sources, put forth an arguement, defended it, and presented it logically with evidence. I did accomplish this as I got the highest score possible on everything except on number of grammatical errors. This assignment would also demonstrate the learning outcome of becoming global and civic minded. I was further educated on the effects bottled water had on the world and my community.

The second assignment I chose was an 8th grade performance task. The prompt was to come up with an arguement for or against the Pure Water program approved by the city council of San Diego. The Pure Water program is a water recycling program. We got extended time to work on this essay after the class didn’t do so well on it and I would think that it improved our writing greatly. I only made two grammatical mistakes, the lack of one comma and a word in the wrong position. I didn’t do so many annotations of my strengths because there was nothing I was that proud of aside from the thesis statement and conclusion. I annoted them I felt they are very solid and well made and flow well, that is what I really focus on in my writing, I try to make it flow well and sort of have a rythm. On the last sentence there is an intentional grammatical error, the substitution of “them” for “’em”. I did this intentionally to improve the flow of the sentence and make a strong call to action.  This assignment show I have achieved the F.L.A.G.S. learning outcome of being an efective communicator which again involves being able to construct an arguement and defend it. The learning outcome of being global and civic minded as I learned about a project that is effecting my community.

Looking at these two assignment I have to the obvious conclusion that I have improved greatly in the grammar department from 7th to 8th grade. I would also say that my thesis and conclusion flow better and are much more solid. I would say right now though, that my only weakness as a writer would be the fact I can’t write very quickly. I can’t type very fast and it takes a while for me to translate my ideas into words. To prepare for high school I should probably practice spead writing and how to type to improve as a writer.