Reflective essay (Essay Sample)

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Reflective Essay
It was not until the past spring quarter that I enrolled in the English composition class and evolved my writing skills tremendously. Prior to this occurrence, writing used to be quite challenging and I often faced difficulties in different areas. Sequentially, I lost confidence in writing because of the difficulty I was facing in constructing interesting compositions sans any error. Reflecting back on how I used to present my work, it lacked proper organization, made several errors and lacked convincing thesis statements. However, nowadays I have ameliorated my writing skills with major improvements in the aforementioned areas of concern. Since joining the English composition class, I have honed my writing skills, and the course has turned me into a mature writer who meets the university’s academic requirement.
My tutor has been a pillar through the journey since I started the course as he offered the much-needed help as I worked on the areas that required improvement. For example, while working on the second out-of-class essay, at first I did not comprehend the topic, but my tutor offered me the necessary assistance to decipher the points of focus. At that point, he provided me with the guidelines to build a thesis, which include reading the prompt and fathoming the background information on the subject. The next step is taking a position on the concerned matter and making a claim that can be supported using various references. Taking a position involves declaring what I believe is true based on the available evidence and my thoughts on an issue. I state the reasons to support my claim in the thesis, in addition to the supporting details. Finally, I combine all that information into a statement that defines my stand, reasons and elaborates my supporting references.
I have also learnt that, in addition to a strong thesis statement, an outstanding essay requires solid pieces of evidence to support the claims made at the beginning of the paper. This shows that the claims are not only true, but also bear meaning, which is important in presenting a unique paper. Supporting information includes different sources that are presented in an essay and referenced appropriately. The sources may be from personal experiences or credible authors that have knowledge about the subject matter of the essay. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid cases of plagiarism, where one borrows another person’s ideas and presents them as their own. Plagiarism is wrong and unethical; thus, it is should be avoided by the use of appropriate citing styles such as MLA or APA. It is crucial for a writer to uphold novelty in the written work in order to give the authors credit of their borrowed works. These are all facts that I learnt over the period I was undertaking the English composition course.
The format of writing research papers in MLA style consists of a 12-point Times New Roman typeface, I inch margins, and double spaces between sentences. The header comprises of the name and the page number on the upper right of every page while the title block on the upper left of the first page includes name, instructor, subject and the date. There is also a works cited section, which includes the reference list.
In addition, I also had the opportunity to work with the tutor, who helped me determine my weak points in writing. This was a vital step in improving my writing skills as I could not identify the mistakes I made, and needed someone to point them out and advise on how to rectify them. A common mistake, for example, that I use to make is the misplacement of commas in my essays. It is highly important to know where to place the commas in a sentence to avoid punctuation mistakes. Such a problem was one of the reasons that my essays were poor, but they have been eradicated since learning under the tutorship of my previous English teacher about such mistakes. Another weakness tha...