Self Assessment

This semester I want to work on improving three things in my writing: punctuation, tenses, and common words that sound alike. When writing, I find that I don’t vary my punctuation much.  I also switch between past and present tenses, and confuse similar sounding words.

The biggest issue I struggle with when I am writing is keeping my tenses straight. When I review my writing, I often find that I have flipped between past and present tense. I struggle with the past and present tense when I’m writing an essay on a book – technically, the books I read take place in the past, but they are written in present tense. An example of me switching between past and present tense in my writing is in my rough draft of my final paper for Introduction to Shakespeare. I wrote, “The best representation of this part of the theme identity, is in Macbeth, where Macbeth finds out that he is supposed to kill the King.” What I would change now would be: find to found, is to was, where to when, and is to was. My new sentence would read, “The best representation of this part of the theme identity was in Macbeth when Macbeth found out that he was supposed to be kind.” I did notice the errors when I proofread my paper.

Commas are my go to for punctuation. Instead of just using commas, I want to learn how to use semicolons, dashes, and hyphens; using these different techniques will make my writing better and make it more interesting to read. Lately I have been trying to integrate these different forms of punctuation that I am not comfortable with…trying to get out of my comfort zone. An example is from my response to the SRTOL: “First though, students need to be encouraged at a young age to find their own identity in their writing – not taught a set of rules that they feel should be followed for every essay.” I love the idea of using dashes because it shows when a sentence is important…I just need to make sure I am using it correctly.

I also want to work on knowing the differences between their, there, and they’re. I am getting better, but I still mess them up sometimes and second guess myself. I know when to use ‘they’re’ because I know if in a sentence it could be said as “they are” then it is they’re. I also struggle with when to use ‘then’ versus ‘than.’ 

By the end of the year I will be able to notice when I mess up the tenses and know what tense I need to use. I am extremely excited that, after this semester, I will no longer need my mom to check my papers for grammatical errors. Instead, I will have her use her skills to make sure my content makes sense.