L.+Reflection+Paper

In the beginning of the year I thought of myself as a good writer. In Germany that was maybe true, but I had to rethink when I had to write my first essay in my English class. It was about my American Dream and it was a total disaster: I could not think of key words, my structure and my grammar were just wrong, and after 30 minutes I had hardly written anything. In this essay I want to explain the improvement that I made in writing after one year America and one year in English 11. The first thing to improve was my vocabulary. I heard many words just walking through Kempsville´s corridors and in my English class I learned their meanings and how to use them. Learning how to talk like an American kid was fairly easy, the real challenge is to write it down. I am still struggling trying to spell the “hard” words. But even that gets easier, for I continue to talk, read, and write. Even though it may seems strange I sometimes just know words, their meaning and spelling, even though nobody ever explained it to me. I might just read them once somewhere or hear somebody saying it when he was passing me and it just stuck. But words are just the beginning if you want to write a good essay. Thanks to my English class I learned many rules that I had to learn in order to be a good writer. The first new thing that I learned was that I have to choose a side, when I write something. Other than in Germany were I give both sides three arguments and than determine which side should win, I decide in America beforehand and than just support that one side. I am still giving the other side one counter argument, but that should be a weak one so I can make my arguments look stronger. Other than that I also learned that I am never supposed to write the word “you” in an essay. If I would do that, I would get it immediately marked. But not only in the grammar and vocabulary part I improved, I believe the my maturity level as a writer grew over the year and also my creativity. Living in a different culture can be very tough sometimes, but it also gives a deep understanding of how people think and it shows different points of view. Of course I am still a German and have many ideas of how the world should work from Germany, but now I can combine it with the American point of view. Therefore I might think if something that nobody else does, for they do not have the same background as I have. That ability gives me a head start, since I always try to make my essays unique, which makes them more interesting to read and usually bring me more points. Over all I can definitely say that I improved in every aspect of writing this year. I got stronger in spelling, grammar, and creativity. But even though I got better in all this aspects I have still a long way to go, for I have still everywhere a lot of room for improvement. If I would have to name my greatest weakness in writing, I would say it is spelling, since I really have to study the words and it is not easy for me to learn them, my greatest strength however is my creativity and my ability to put my ideas into words, for I believe that my essays are usually very different from the rest of the class. In my opinion my weakest essay this year was the narrative essay. I knew when I was writing it that it was not good and I just did not see a way to improve it. I chose a bad theme and could barley write anything about my race. In contrast to this essay I did not have fun writing it. Even though I am still writing on this essay I am sure that it is my favorite piece, for I can resume my year and list all the things I learned and show myself that it was definitely worth it to leave my home for one year and come to live in America. It is great that everything is so different here, especially the teaching methods. I am not quite sure which I prefer, but the question whether I like wiki spaces or handwritten portfolios better is easy. Wiki spaces is really easy to handle and I can be sure that I will not loose my essays somewhere in my room. Of course sometimes there can be problems with uploading it, but than I can just print it and upload it later in school or wherever. Wikispaces.com gets a clear “Thumbs Up”. All in all I am thankful for the great experience that I had in America and for all the things I learned in English. I hope I can use my new skills and knowledge in my further live and obviously I can not wait to return to Virginia Beach.