College Paper Reflection

Writing a paper about one of my experiences was definitely strange. Although I have written a reflection paper before, my teacher had told me that he did not get the point of my paper. As a result, seeing my first real college paper edited by the teacher made me realize that I have a lot of room for improvement in my writing. For example, some of the areas I can improve are fragments, word choices, and comma splices. First, after looking at my paper, I realized I have no problem putting fragments in my papers. The very first rough-draft I had of my reflection paper seemed as if every other sentence was a fragment. Nevertheless, I tried to fix all the fragments by my second rough draft, I still had quite a few in my paper. Next, I ran my
paper through paper rater, and I had some of my family and friends read it as well. Even through everything and everyone reading my paper; when I received my final graded draft, I still had some fragments within my paper. I hope in the future that I will be able to catch the fragments in my papers. I will also have more people read my papers who will help me see the fragments. Although I have quite a problem with fragments, I have an even worse problem with my word choices.
I like to use the words that sound juvenile for a college paper.
Using words such as got and them must be part of my normal vocabulary because while I am writing my reflection paper, I did not even realize that I wrote them. After seeing my graded draft of my reflection paper, I see that it is more of a problem than I thought. In my paper I use the word got a lot, which I did not even know that I should use a different word; similarly, I did not even know that there is an alternative word to use instead of got. Also, I use them quite frequently too, instead of actually saying what I mean or who I am talking about. Hopefully on the next paper I can catch myself using these words and find a better choice. This skill will not only will it make a paper longer, but so it will also sound more like a paper that one reads in a college class. Knowing now to not use those two words as much, I will try my very best to look in the paper, and try to avoid writing the words in my drafts before the final version. Right next to word choice, I have quite a problem with comma
splices. Therefore, I need to focus more on watching out for comma splices.
Although we have gone over comma splices many times in class, I am still struggling with leaving them out of my papers. Although this class has taught me about semicolons, FANBOYS, and HOTSHOT CATS, I never really look over my paper while I am writing, so I never remember where I think I can fix something. Therefore, I end up just forgetting about it. I know that there are other options for commas. When I am writing a paper, I just start to type and do not really pay attention to what I am doing with punctuation. After writing a paper for a while I begin to add commas where I think they belong, which nine out of ten times is probably not the right place. After the first two papers, I would like to be able to catch comma splices more easily. I know there will still be mistakes made; however, I just want to reduce the number of comma splices in each one of my papers. Even if it is only by one or two, that is still an improvement, and that is what I want to
achieve. Overall, I am learning that when writing there can and will always be room for improvement. Some of the parts of writing I need to work on are fragments, word choice, and comma splices. After the first paper I know I will not receive a super successful paper. Learning is being patient and taking baby steps toward my goals, which in English is to eventually write an almost perfect paper.