For the past two years that I have been in English class, we have learned how to analyze texts and advance our writing skills through various prompts. This blog post was written so that I could reflect on the skills that we learned and how we were able to preform these assignments for both grades. In order to demonstrate how I was able to grow as an English student, I have chosen to talk about an essay called the “Perfect Paragraph” and a “Narrative Essay.” I have decided that these two artifacts would show my growth in literature as well as how much detail I have included in the appropriate areas to support my claim or main idea. Not only does it represent my writing skills, but it also shows how I am able to write about a topic using reliable resources and connect ideas to support my claims in various of ways or create a story from a certain point of view with the given prompt. In addition, there were areas that I have been able to identify are my strengths or weakness and ways I have improved or could improve using the steps I have taken to complete the artifact.

During our seventh grade year we were given an assignment to do research on a state and explain what type of resources are provided to them that benefit the people. When I looked back at this assignment, I have discovered that I was able to write a topic sentence that briefly states my topic. I also was able to make a smooth transition when I was moving onto the next subject by making a relation to each topic so that they tie back to how people in the Dominican Republic are happy. There were also some flaws in my writing like as I demonstrated I focused more on a certain topic other than the idea of how the Dominican Republic is happy and my concluding sentence didn’t accurately explain my main topic of this paragraph while on the other hand, my topic sentence briefly explained what I will be talking about and I was able to make comparisons so that my transitions to another topic was smooth. Nevertheless, from this assignment I was able to demonstrate that I can be Global and Civic Minded which meant that I was able to consider the needs of this country and how certain enhancements improved their lives.

An assignment that stood out to me during my eighth grade year was when we were given prompts based on the “Black Blizzard” that affected an entire town and we had to write our own narrative using the information we took from several documents. After I have completed this assignment, I was able to discover that I was able to add detail to describe what the characters are witnessing without overdoing it and to give more depth about certain events. It also allowed me to focus on certain dialogue between certain characters so that my audience is able to further see the events through my characters’ eyes. There was some places that I needed improvement, like for example in this assignment I was able to see that I couldn’t use a variety of words to indicate dialogue in my story nor was I able to use proper detail to describe my characters’ actions. Moreover, after I have completed this assignment I have come to realize that I was able to be a critical and creative thinker because I used the information that I gained to come up with a story of how people like us could of reacted to these situations.

As a English student for these two years, I have been able to enhance my skills in writing such as the assignments that I have demonstrated in these two artifacts. These assignments allowed me to build on my comprehension for a topic and to completely focus on the subjects that I have stated fully as I build on the topics. It has also shown me that I fully understand what my writing prompts are so that I can take any known knowledge and combine them so that what I am writing about is focused on the task itself. Through these assignments, I have also seen that there are areas in these two FLAGS outcomes where I am able to excel out while others I need to improve on so that it helps me in the near future. I do understand that areas such as the amount of detail needed for describing the main topic or to summarize the ideas in my writing thoroughly so in High School I plan to practice various of ways to improve my writing and focus on how I organize my writing in the future to compare it to my years in middle school. To sum it up, I have been able to experience how I am able to take what I have learned in English through these past years and imply it to my writing throughout the following years.