Self Assessment

Writing papers used to be something I enjoyed to do, until my teachers started pointing out all the mistakes I was making. Being in college, sentence structure and good grammar has become an important part of my life and something I need to work on. When looking at my writing there are three specific things that I would like to improve. My writing needs work on run on sentences, punctuation with commas and semicolons and use of quotations. I look forward to working on these things throughout the semester and improving my overall grammar.
To work on these things I found a couple of old papers that I wrote last semester. Within these papers are several examples of what I can work on. A paper from my Greek Mythology class called The Story Within Us, has several examples of these areas of interest. First I’ll start with my run on sentences. I like to write papers from off the top of my head first and then work on the construction later. No matter how many drafts I do there are still sentences that people point out to me that should be broken up. To me they sound fine but I need to make sure that I don’t write the same way I talk. One example would be “Times and ideas change therefore society cannot keep the same stories forever; stories must change with everything else.” The professor for this course wrote on my paper that this was a run on sentence and added in a semicolon. I did not originally use a semicolon because I don’t understand when they should be used. What I hope to work on this semester is to break up these sentences into multiple sentences using commas, periods and semicolons. Another example of my run on sentences is in my World History paper on the repression of Haiti. This particular paper I got carried away with because I was very passionate about the topic. One of my run on sentences was: “If I were given no reason I would be extremely upset so I can understand why the Haitian people are unhappy with this government intervention.” This sentence could have been broken up into two but because I was in the groove I didn’t notice. Understanding grammar will help me to realize what I’m writing as I’m writing it.
The second area of work is my comma use. I have always gone with the rule of thumb that whenever you pause when your speaking you should use a comma in your writing. So far this rule has not helped me because I can never figure out where I naturally pause and therefore still use commas in the wrong place. Teachers always put red marks around commas I use or ones I should have used, for example “His story was not fitting his current situation and that confused him so instead of turning to love like Oconeechee did, he lost himself, he did etc.” This sentence could also be categorized as run on because I should have used a period rather than a comma.
Last but certainly not least is my use of quotations. When using quotes I usually just jump straight in and don’t lead up to them well. Even more importantly sometimes you have to quote multiple things at a time. I’m not sure how to do this because I don’t know if you should use quotes twice within a sentence. An example would be “This same idea is reiterated in Waguli’s rituals.” “remember to always listen to the God’s.” In this sentence I was quoting a paper but also quoting a ritual that the paper talked about. I was not sure how to do this so I separated the quotations. I’m not sure this was the right thing to do so I would love to learn. All of these things are common mistakes people can make and I am excited to learn how to use grammar correctly. By the end of this semester I will look back at this paper and laugh at myself.