Goal One: One area in my writing that I would really like to work on for my Senior project thesis would be maintaining focus on the main Idea throughout the entire essay. Often times I will be reading through my essay and realise that my ideas have gotten lost through the essay. I feel as though when I am writing, I need to start with a very structured outline so that I can keep my original idea present in all paragraphs. Doing this can make the purpose of my essays more clear while adding detail and more descriptive words that intrigue the reader but do not pose a distraction of the main idea. To improve this in my future work, I can make sure to create a very clear and easy to follow plan of how my essay is going to look. A time where I could have carried my thesis out more would be my first draft of my in class essay. My thesis to start had many ideas in it. To improve this I could have refined my thesis and narrowed it down more. After doing this, creating an essay layout would have been easier to write off of and communicate my main idea more precisely.
Goal Two: Another area in my writing where I want want to refine is my sentence structure, I feel as though I use a lot of loose sentences. Loose sentences to me are the frequent use of the word "and" in places where other connecting word could be used that portray the idea and could convey the main point more precisely. I can improve this by avoiding bringing in too many ideas into one sentence and into my paragraphs in general. By doing this I will not have to explain as many things all at once. This will make my paragraphs less cluttered therefor making my sentences more clear. Combining like areas to avoid repetition make the point simple and clear making the essay overall easier for the reader to understand, Removing excessive information can help remove the use of words like "and", repetition and makes room for adjectives to make my writing more interesting. In my College essay I felt as though I was covering to many ideas in each sentence. For example, in my sentence "Zimbabwe and all the people I met taught me a lot of things that I would never have been taught by my privileged upbringing" . My sentence makes claims but has no focus to it. To improve this I can state what it taught me specifically and then continue into a sentence about how living in a county with less privileges has taught me this apposed to the privileged life I had in my home country.
Goal Three: Story telling is a great way to engage the reader and showing them a point rather than narrating it. It is a writing technique that I love to incorporate into my essays but don't utilise enough. For my college essay I really want to refine this so I can use it more frequently so I can intrigue the reader and have variation of writing styles. An example of an area where story telling was useful way my college essay, I ended up rewriting it many times and still was not happy with it, Finally after rereading it I realised that I was approaching my prompt in the wrong way, I was trying to explain exchange and the challenges that come with it where I could have shown it by using stories of the specific challenges I went through. Last minute I decided to change my essay entirely and ended up with a final draft that was much better than the many rough drafts I had before. I originally started my essay by explaining this fear of change I had which resulted in it being a very complicated unclear paragraph. After refinements I decided to start it by telling the story of the night before I left for my exchange portraying the anticipation I had the anxiety that I had before I took off for my year abroad, This makes it a lot more interesting and leaves the reader asking questions making them want to read more, To make sure I utilise this more often I need to really proof read my essays an find areas that are lacking and seeing how I can change them to make them more interesting, whether this means adding more story based techniques or other creative sentence/paragraph structure.