In my Alchemist essay, I showed good ideas and content because my writing usually makes sense making it easy for the reader to understand how Santiago's personality traits helped him achieve his destiny. I usually had a clear and focused paragraphs clearly based on the topic and I appeared to know the topic pretty well. I included relevant and interesting details occasionally in my essay to further develop the readers understanding on Santiago's personality traits and how without them, he wouldn't have achieved his destiny. In my paragraphs I included related quotes to prove my statement and I explained how the quotes related to the main idea of the paragraph. I could improve my ideas and content in the essay by including more relevant and interesting details to further prove my statement and have a more clear and concise topic.
My Julius Caesar essay did not improve compared to the Alchemist essay but my grade went down. My writing only sometimes/occasionally made sense to the reader but sometimes had to figure out what I was trying to say in my paragraphs. I usually had a clear and focused topic and I seemed to know the topic well, but not really well. I sometimes included interesting and relevant details to further enhance my readers understanding on Antony's motivators, but could have done better on that topic. The place where I needed much improvement was explaining my quotations and providing good context about them and explaining them. In some of my quotations, the reader was left guessing of how this was relevant to the paragraphs topic.
Organization
In my Alchemist essay, my organization was pretty well thought out. I began with an interesting quote to hook in my reader into my essay and what it was mainly going to be about. I had a very clear and concise thesis statement communicating what my essay was going to be about and what they would expect later on while reading it. My body paragraphs began with good and clear topic sentences clearly showing what the paragraph was going to be about and how that certain personality trait helped Santiago achieve his destiny. But I only sometimes provided context prior to introducing the quotation, but the quotation proved my statement but I only sometimes provided context before it. All of my body paragraphs ended with a good summarizing statement or smooth transitions into the next paragraph. My conclusion was strong summarizing all of my ideas in the essay and putting them all together to prove that these character traits helped him achieve his personality. The place where I could work on is establishing context prior to introducing my quotations so that the reader knows how the quote I'm providing them helps them create a better understanding of proving my statement about Santiago and how his personality traits helped him achieve his destiny.
In my Julius Caesar essay, my organization wasn't as good compared to my Alchemist essay where I had more time to revise and gain ideas for my whole essay. Here we just had 80 minutes and not that time to read through my essay to make sure my organization improved prior to my previous essay. But my essay still demonstrated appropriate organization with a hook in the beginning to grab the readers attention with a quote about Antony showing a motivator of his. I had a clear thesis statement in the beginning paragraph telling the reader what my essay is going to be about and what I will be talking about. My body paragraphs also began with clear topic sentences explaining what the following paragraph will be about. There were also room for improvement in my essay. I could have done better on providing context before introducing the quote so the reader is not left guessing what the quote is about and how it helps develop the readers understanding of the essay. I also could have improved my conclusion of the whole essay clearly concluding my main point in the essay and I could have revisited my introduction to make it more clear.
Personal Growth
From my Alchemist essay to my Julius Caesar essay, I noticed a fall in my grade showing I didn't improve the way I wanted to, instead it went the opposite way, hoping for improvement but there was not much improvement to see. This might have happened to the limited time provided for writing my Julius Caesar essay with only 80 minutes to draft, revise and come up with a final version of my essay. Whereas in the Alchemist essay we had weeks to prepare for it and we could have asked for help from the teachers/parents to make the best piece of writing we could make. Since this time, I wasn't able to do this, my grade went down significantly with writing it on my first try with planning but no opportunity to improve it by asking for help from the teachers, parents and not having enough time to revise it and to make it better.
SLR Reflection
The SLR I'd have to choose for drafting these essays would be "Learning Enthusiastically". Because for both of these essays before writing them, I asked for help with my parents and sometimes teacher to write the best piece of writing I could. I learnt enthusiastically because I used all the recourses I could to write the best piece of writing I could. Before the Alchemist essay, I looked through the book trying to find the best quotations to prove that Santiago was determined to achieve his destiny and before the Julius Caesar essay, I looked through the book for good quotations to show Antony's motivations.
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