Garcia 1Matt Joshua GarciaMs. Sanchez ERWC, period 316 May 2017Reflection letterFor my reflection letter I have chosen my Brave New World essay, the Racial Profiling essay, and the Into the Wild essay. From this work, I will reflect on what I learned about citations, parallel structuring, citing works, and more along with my strength and weaknesses, whether it’s MLA format or creating a well-done concluding paragraph. I will also address my academic essays, the new skills that I have learned, and the areas that needs improvement.The three essays that I have chosen were my Brave New World essay, my Racial Profiling essay, and my Into the Wild essay. The Racial Profiling essay was the first essay writtenbefore the rest. This essay was an example of an argumentative essay. I wrote this essay back in October of 2016. The next essay would be the Into the Wild essay. This was considered an literary analysis essay where we write about what we have evaluated and analyzed through the author’s work. This essay was written in November of 2016. Lastly, the Brave New World essay was the most recent paper that I have written. Along with the Into the Wild essay, this was a literary analysis essay. The Brave New World essay was written in April of 2017. Throughout theprocess of writing each of these essays, we were given prep work that enhanced our skills whether it was for essays or writing skills. The Bullying Unit packet, the M.U.G.packet, and the Types of Essays packet are three pieces of prep work that have impacted my writing. In the Bullying Unit Packet, it discussed various topics of writing. Whether it was about parallel structuring or noticing language. The bigGarcia 2idea from this packet, for me, was connecting ideas using parallel structure. This enhanced my ability to have smooth sentences that flows throughout the essay. For example, I stated that, “Oursocial media, our technology, and our other guilty pleasures has led us to a similar environment to the New World.” This was used from the Brave New World essay and it clearly shows that I used parallel structuring from using the word “our” before each example I provided. The M.U.G.packet helped with my punctuation and sentence structures.For example, in my Brave New World essay, I said, “ If you were feeling down/abnormal, the society of the New World would encourage you to have “a gramme of soma, a relieving, sensual, stimulating drug” (54). In this sentence, I properly placed my commas, quotations, and periods. Lastly, the type of essays packet describes the importance and goals of different types of essays such as argumentative essays, narrative essays, etc. This information about each essay was beneficial to me because it created an outline for any type of essay that I needed to write. During the course of ERWC, I enhanced my skill of creating a claim or thesis. For example, I acknowledged that, “from my perspective, Christopher McCandless, from Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, was a egocentric fool of unsound mind.” My claim clearly states my point and answers the prompt. Before, it would be difficult to come up with a thesis/claim, but now it is the easiest part of the essay. Another skill that I improved would be properly annotating texts. Because of the many worksheets, articles, and texts that we had to annotate, I have becomemore aware of details and important information that is needed. I have also learned to properly cite an evidence in my papers. Taking many quizzes about citing evidences have definitely impacted my way of writing. Other than quizzes, the constant writing of papers and citing evidences from websites, articles, or books have become part of my writing norm. Throughout my years of writing, having to write commentary in my papers have been up to standards, but IGarcia 3always wanted to improve. I love that this class emphasizes on writing which enhanced my commentary abilities. My Brave New World essay is an example of my rehabilitated commentary. I connected each commentary to the evidenced used, which complimented my thesis as well. Lastly, I had a better understanding for the works cited page. From the teachings of Ms. Sanchez, I learned the rules of the works cited page and how to properly integrate each sites. Through the year, I have developed and enhanced some of my writing skills. An example would be my introduction paragraphs. My introduction paragraphs used to be my weakest paragraph, but I have learned to be more creative and to hook my reader. On the other hand, my conclusion paragraph would be one of my weaknesses in my writing. It has become one of my weaknesses because by the time I get to the concluding paragraph, I am tired and I start to get sloppy. By that time, I want to get the paper over with and I rush, which I have to work on throughout my years of writing. Another weakness would be my evidences. The problem with my evidences is how impactful it should be. It may relate to my thesis, but it’s not as strong as anevidence should be. On the contrary, MLA format is one of my strengths. Because we have to do MLA format for every essay/paper, MLA format has been a breeze. In the beginning of class, I had an idea of citing evidences, but I didn’t know how to properly cite evidences. I only knew how to cite books in my essays throughout my freshman and junior year, but now, I learned to cite various types of evidences. For example, if it was from an website I would have to first write down the title of the article, then title of the webpage, then the year it was published, lastly the date of when I accessed the website, including the day, month, and year. Thanks to many quizzes and worksheets on citing various types of evidences, my knowledge of citations has expanded.Garcia 4I believe that my critical reading skills have improved throughout this unit. Having to write essays demands you to analyze you read and having many essays to write, I believe that mycritical reading skills has improved. In addition to the essays, we are given worksheet and articles to annotate like the types of essay packet. Lastly, before we write an essay, Ms. Sanchez gives us an outline for evidences and commentary, which requires us to practice our reading critical skills of analyzing, paraphrasing, or summarizing the text. How have you improved your critical reading skills?By completing the course of ERWC, I have learned that the expectations of college level reading and writing is