9th grade writing assesment

 So far, 2011 and 2012 has been one of best years in writing. I have come to learn different techniques and styles of writing that have saved my papers throughout the year. In all of my papers I had some mistakes, but in general they were good. This year we wrote the literacy narrative, literacy analysis, global issues, profile narrative, and WrAP. As far as things go, I think I did fair on them, however it was the simple mistakes I made in every one that led me down.

First, let’s start with the first two that I wrote, the Literacy narrative and the profile narrative, to show how I progressed in just one paper. First off, the minor mistakes I had from my literacy narrative were things such as word duplication, comma splicing, and missing commas. These mistakes could have been easily avoided, so I paid them no mind. When I began to look at things such as ideas and organization, it allowed me to compensate these mistakes with the next paper. Problems that occurred with ideas and organization were paragraphing and easing into foreshadowing entirely too quickly.  I believe that the grade I got on the paper was relatively fair, but more than a good grade, I was able to put my newfound adjustments in the next paper which was the profile narrative. I did a lot better on this paper, besides a few minor mistakes in conventions and those. I had no mistakes as far as Ideas, voice, and organization go. Also, my reflection turned out to be quite accurate as I thought I had done well in those areas.

My next two papers were actually the hardest to write because of the content they expressed and because of the issue of formality in them. Both papers were supposed to be formal and were analytically-based. With my literacy analysis, I had a few major flaws that tore down my paper. My paper overall was average, but a lot of the problems that were prevalent were repeated mistakes that I had made before. I completely agree with Dr.D looking back at the paper that I had, my thesis was good, but I didn’t have much supporting evidence. My other flaw in this paper was citation, which had followed me to my Global issues paper. My main problems with both of these papers were to use citations and sources properly. I felt as though I needed to focus on those main points for the next research or analytical paper I had coming next.

Finally, I had to write the WrAp. I have never liked this paper since I started doing these in 6^th grade. My main reason for the distaste towards this paper was because you only have 2 days to do all of the pre-writing, drafting, and writing the final draft. I function better in writing when I have weeks before an assignment is due because I pre-plan a lot. Overall, I was not enthusiastic with my score for the paper, and I think that I would have done better had I had more time. Overall, I got the average score for most kids my age. I got a 23.5, and a 24 is actually pretty good, so I was close. Because I had only two days to work on it, my score had dropped dramatically. For all of the sections, I got 4’s (except for a 3.5 in support) because I didn’t have enough information to make a good enough essay. I was missing quite a bit of support and backing evidence to help my cause. And like I said, if I had more time, I would probably do a lot better.

Based on the feedback I have received throughout this year, I need to really focus on the simple mistakes that I have consistently been making in writing. Small things are the things that seem to be tearing me down. Also, I seem to have the grasp of the concept of the task at hand; however, the final product sometimes lacks all of these parts working in tandem.

From what I can gather, next year, I need to focus more on paying attention to the assignment as a whole and not picking out details that need to be done. I feel like if I can do that, my papers will sound better and I can finally start the individual pieces of word choice, voice, organization, sentence fluency, and ideas to work in harmony. So doing more prewriting and things of the sort should cover that bit. I also want to get the chance to be graded and checked by my peers. This year, I spent over an hour per person checking their papers to make sure they did a great job, whereas every time we had peer reviewing, my paper got read for maybe 5 minutes maximum. To me this is just messed up, and if I could get more help from peers, I would do better. Next year I also just need to simply try harder to write better. I know if I just try hard, I can make better papers.

English essay list of common mistakes

Comma splicing

Lack of detail in some areas, but a lot in others

Awkward spreading of paragraphs and sentences

Adding in extra and unnecessary sentences

Ambiguous pronouns

Word Choice