Journal #35

After reading my reflection blog from back in September, I can definitely see improvement in my writing. At the beginning of the year, I kind of had an idea of how to write in this more formal style with support, but I still had much to learn. Something that I noticed between my September post and my Whitman's post from yesterday, is that I used a lot of first person in my writing. I put in a lot of my personal opinion rather than stating facts and then backing it up. In formal writings, we are not suppose to let our own opinion and first person ideas influence the writing unless we are specifically told to do so. It was almost like a fancy journal post. In my Whitman's discussion post, I think I did a much better job focusing on facts and support and not adding in my two cents on the topic. Something else I noticed from my old blog was that I had some grammar mistakes. I did not proof read as well as I thought I had, but this is something that I have improved on and is not present in my current posts. Something that my September reflection blog did a better job doing than my Whitman blog was the introduction and conclusion. My September blog had both a formal introduction and conclusion while my Whitman blog does not. If I were to be writing in an essay style format, I would make sure to include both of these parts, but I did not feel the need to do so with my discussion post, although I am sure it would not have hurt. My Whitman post however, has much more support through out the writing compared to my Independence Day post and has several different sources. I think this really strengthens my points. It is encouraging to see how my writing has improved over the months and I hope to continue to do so.