English/Writing Analysis

Throughout my middle school and high school years, I have struggled with writing because it does not really interest me; in terms of a career. Besides of the lack of interest in writing, I will still put the best paper forward in my eyes to be turned, in because I care about having good grades and preparing myself for the future. Therefore, to plan for my future, I plan to take the ACT, The American College Testing Program, where I plan to achieve a score as close to thirty-six as possible. Even though, I know that it is highly unlikely for me to obtain a score of thirty-six, I hope to obtain a score of at least thirty-two. Since I know that it is going to be very tough to achieve a score of thirty-two, I plan to take the ACT multiple times
until I obtain a score of at least thirty-two, if not better. Immediately after taking the exam, I believe that I will have an idea if I do well or not, because usually if I am able to focus on the exam at hand, I obtain great scores; but if I am not able to focus, I firmly believe that I will do poorly and not up to my standards. Before I take the exam I have an idea of what my strengths are in the writing and the English sections of the exam.
Before I take the ACT, I believe I have a good idea of what my strengths are in writing and English are; therefore I know that I will take the extra writing portion of the exam. I have a great trust in the elements of my writing, such as focusing on a topic, expressing my opinion in a paper and the organizing of my ideas. In terms of focusing on a topic in writing, I believe that I excel in that process because once I acquire an idea of what I am going to write about everything starts to flow out of my mind and onto the paper I am writing. Also, I believe this is true because I am usually able to catch myself from going off my main topic; so I do not have a sentence in my paragraph/paper that does not directly correlate to my paper at all. Netherless, I also believe I excel at expressing my opinion on a paper for various reasons. One reason this is true because I am a very opinionated person and I let everybody know what my opinion is on something and that directly correlates from real life onto my papers. Also, because every paper has some type of opinion in it depending if it is noticeable or not; I have been told by my past English/writing teachers that I am very opinionated and they can tell that just from reading my papers, I justify my side of something very clearly, by just coming out and saying it; not hiding it. Also, I believe I am very good at organizing my ideas of a paper because I usually will not start a rough draft without a brainstorm or prewrite that says everything I am going to say in the paper. Also, because I have everything flow by ideas in my papers, if something is in my paper and it does not flow I usually change it around to make it flow with everything else in the paper. Despite believing I have very good writing strengths, I also believe I am strong in various English sections of the exam. In the English section, I believe I am strong in the use of apostrophe's and the unity of my papers. Throughout my papers, I constantly read what I write to make sure that is flows and to check if I have any misspellings. While I do this I also check for apostrophes, if I am unable to decide if the word needs an apostrophe or not I sound it out until I am certain on an apostrophe or not. Also, I believe I have very excellent unity in my papers. In my opinion, this is true because all my papers stick to one main overall subject and build on that certain subject to justify my position. Despite, excelling in my opinion in certain places of English/Writing I firmly believe that I struggle with some of the sections too.
Although I excel in some sections of English/Writing, I believe I will also struggle in certain parts of the exam, when I take it.
In English/Writing I believe I struggle in sentence variety, revising of my papers, deciding if a sentence is a sentence or run-on and where to put certain types of punctuation. In the terms of sentence variety, I struggle in that section because despite having many ideas to transmit the point I across, I oftenly use the same words over and over again just using a different layout to say something else. Also, I struggle in sentence variety because I do not have a huge vocabulary on different words to use; so in my opinion that when I use the same words over and over again, I often bore the reader. I would like to extend my vocabulary enough so that I am able to consistently use different words rather than the same old words. Despite struggling in sentence variety, I also struggle in the revising portions of my papers. When I revise my papers I see the small things such as, misspelled words and punctuation, but I miss the big things such as, run-ons and fragments. Although misspelled words and punctuation mess up my paper a lot they do not mess up my paper like run-ons and fragments do. I believe that I miss the run-ons and fragments a lot because it is my writing and if it sounded right in my mind the first time, it will sound right in my time the second and third times I read it. Another idea I struggle in is punctuation because if I believe
there is supposed to be a comma in a sentence, there is really supposed to be a semicolon, so overall it just confuses me. Once I do this with punctuation, it starts to make me think twice about whether it should be a comma or semicolon; so I usually put the wrong punctuation because I second guessed myself. Despite struggling in areas of English/Writing, I also have set goals for myself, to improve in the sections I struggle in and the ones I would like to improve before I take the ACT.
After analyzing my strengths and weaknesses in English/Writing, I have set myself goals to obtain by the end of the Advanced Writing course.
The goals I have set for myself are: improvement in sentence variety, to improve my vocabulary, be able to recognize punctuation errors more and finally the revising of my papers. To improve in my sentence variety I believe that I will have to read more books to see many different types of vocabulary, and once I do that, I plan to apply it to my sentences. Once I do this I firmly believe that my sentences will become one hundred percent better and so will my vocabulary because I will not use the same words over and over again. Vocabulary and sentence variety goes hand-in-hand, and if I obtain one of those goals; I believe that it will help me obtain the other goal. Next, I believe that if I am able to recognize run ons and fragments in my papers, they will flow a lot better and make more sense with less mistakes. As of right now I believe fragments and run ons are my biggest problem in terms of writing; once I am able to overcome this obstacle of writing, my writing will elevate to the next level, in my opinion. Finally, if I am able to revise my papers better the first time, it will make my life so much easier. This will make my life so much easier because if I can correct something the first time I do it, it will save me time in the future, so that I do not have to go back and fix it once I see my grade on the paper. Despite all these
weaknesses in my English/Writing, I would like to at least if not better obtain a score of thirty-two or better on the ACT. In order for me to do this I have to improve all of my weaknesses in English/Writings, but I must also keep a strong grip on my different strengths such as Math and Science, since those are my favorite subjects; I tend to focus more on Math and Science because in the future, I would like to go into a field that involves Math or Science. Overall, the main goal for me is to obtain a score of at least thirty-two on the ACT and to make myself an overall better student.