This is my final self-assessment on my English literature class, as well as the biggest one; where I will be going through the three of my writing pieces accordingly, and share my thoughts on them. I will also let you know about the struggles and problems I had faced and how I overcame them,  the improvements that had happened as well as the things that I would do differently in my next writing pieces, which there will be many. However, this portfolio consists of three different types of written pieces which are, 1. The Literacy Narrative Writing, 2. The Exploratory Essay, and 3. The Critical Analysis.

I will start with the first and the easiest writing piece of the semester, The Literacy Narrative Writing. The reason why I am calling this piece the easiest one is because of the fact that this piece was fully based on my thoughts and experiences. It was simply the narration of one of my own personal life experiences. However, the problems that I faced were not simply solved over this piece of work. The first thing I had to tackle was the title. Having a good and engaging title is important for the readers as a good first impression. Because, if the title is not good and engaging enough, readers might turn their heads or start reading the piece without any positive impression from the beginning. So, to tackle this issue, instead of coming up with the title in the first place, I started outlining my essay and looked for the preeminent theme of my work. I found out that throughout my piece of literacy narrative, there were vast indications of the bond of trust between the characters in my essay, where the characters were me and my mother. Thus, I name my literacy narrative, “Trust”. A simple and strong meaningful verb, used as a noun here of the essay, representing both the name and what the whole content might be of.

Next comes the introduction of my narrative. Throughout the history of my writing, introducing an engaging introduction had been one of my toughest enemies, and it was not different here. To overpower my enemy here, I tried to be as realistic and as imaginative as possible from the beginning, since my big focus was to convey my story to you guys through the use of imagery.

“It is on an early evening of a beautiful autumn. Yellow crunchy leaves breaking and falling off of the gigantic trees across the road, and feet crushing on them as they accel towards their desired destination after a long day of work. Cars honking and the jingling bells of the rickshaw were all overpowered by the “Vroom Vroom” sound over the two shiny and heavy, metallic toy cars. “Labib! Where are you, my baby? What is it that you are doing?” My mother said. “Racing my cars!” I replied with a joyous tone. “Oh really? But baby you do remember that you have homework from school right? And you have to fix your handwriting too, or else papa is going to scold you.” She said. “Okay, but I want to play more, I don’t like studying,” I said with a sad tone. “Well, you can play as long as you want once you are done with the work.” Mother replied. I then gently place my favorite cars on my mothers dressing table and check twice to see if they are parked properly or no. Then I leave the room with my mother and go to the guest room where I had my studying table, to start working on my homework and my handwriting.”

In the introduction, you can see the variety of visual description about the scenario as well as dialogues. The details of the introduction help to paint the environment first, the whole set. Then, the dialogues show up, moving readers attention away from the setting to the conversation. Then, the curiosity of the reader of what the conversation might off help the reader to engage to it. Giving a feeling that the person, here, you yourself is present in the scene, looking and observing the conversation.

It may sound easy and simple to establish such an idea, however, since we are talking about details, it is important to put the details in the correct order and in the right places. Because, if a single detail is either put in the wrong position or is missing, then the whole puzzle on engaging the reader would never be solved. So, when facing such difficulties, it is a good choice to ask friends or family members of how easy it is for them to paint a picture in the mind through the reading. I had done it, and it helped to improve the hook in a significant manner. However, the rest of the pieces and the paragraphs were fairly similar and they worked out well.

Now let us turn our focus to the second major writing assignment, the Exploratory Essay. This essay, when I started was to me, hard enough to stop me in my tracks of writing completely. This was a new and fresh thing to me that I was not prepared to tackle with the arsenal I had. However, through class instructors help, I was able to come up with my thesis. A thesis strong and clear enough to give the audience the information they are expecting.

“The Don Quixote Effect is an effect that takes place in a person’s head when the person either entertains through various readings or listens to a lot of stories or novels that reflects their ideas and over time, they start to think themselves as the perfect protagonist of the ideal story they create.”

My Exploratory Essay was about the infamous Don Quixote Effect, where the topic itself is very vast and can be connected through various subjects. However, my focus was on one thing, and it was that how the Don Quixote Effect occurs in someone’s mind when they are reading any literature and how it develops or changes their thoughts, ideas, and ideals. So, to reach to this point I had asked myself what is the question that I want to answer, and how should I even ask the question, because I need the answer to be something engaging. Thus, I ask a clear and straightforward question, “What are the components that I am going to be talking about and how relevant are they?” Then depending on the relevancy I will take the answer and use it for my topic. I had to do it a couple of times, then finally I was able to come up with a clear thesis above.

Then Comes the harder obstacle. A challenge that was very tough for me to overcome and that was the part where I had to research. The reason why it was hard for me was that the topic I specifically looked for was very difficult to pinpoint, and it is not something uncommon when it comes to writing papers like such. However, the pieces of evidence and articles I found from the outside sources, I was able to send them in by accurately finding the exact points I had been looking for. Yet, the evidence was close but not as perfect as I thought. Thus, the Exploratory Essay did go out of control from my hand a bit, however, I learned that if it is not possible to find sources that connect to the thesis, then it is possible to come up with a thesis that would complement the researched topics.

Then the challenge I faced was to how to connect my researched scholarly articles and their ideas to the theme and ideas of the primary text I had been studying. This task was very hard because like high schools it was not only the thesis and the primary text that was involved. Rather, there was the thesis, the primary text, the scholarly articles, and even in the researched topics there were writings of different perspectives and setups. Combining all of these variables are not an easy fit. However, summarizing the different topics to blend them in with the thesis as well as the main primary text really helped with the paper. As well as some similar quotes helped to bind the paragraphs in a much better way.

Although it may sound hilarious, the word count was also an issue for me while I did this essay. I was not simply able to fill in enough words to reach the word count. However, I have learned something extremely important about why there might be a good reason to even give word counts. The reason I found out was to create complex structured sentences. If the sentences are too straightforward and boring, then yeah, the information I am trying to convey might get passed. However, it wouldn’t help the reader to enjoy the reading. It would feel to the readers that there are nothing but a bunch of facts thrown straight onto their face. Which is why, there was a new challenge that rose up, and that was to prepare complex sentences and initiate to think differently.

To overcome this problem, of course, I had started to think differently, however, it was not the only thing that could have saved me from the disaster of filling in words. More word count does not mean to throw in some more prepositions and conjunctions, rather it is how you can utilize and implement different and better-sounding vocabularies to spice the essay up. Thus, I had to look up more words in order to make a greater sounding sentence. And as a result my sentences were not only becoming richer, but also my personal vocabulary skills had increased.

Then finally comes the Researched Critical Analysis Essay. This essay was the largest and the most intensive essay of the three. In this essay, like the Literacy Narrative, I had to come up with a fitting title to engage the reader. Then, I also had to research and look up scholarly articles that would support my overall theme of the essay. I had to come up with a clear and concise thesis too, to clearly state to the readers what the essay is about. Now, in this essay, the work was based on a topic that had been very discussed in the nineteenth-century Russian society, which was lovesickness. And the task of the essay was to through extensive research and through the use of one to two primary texts, show how love sickness occurs. Wish the essay was actually as easy as at it sounded because, like the second essay, the Exploratory Essay, this critical analysis was also a very tough puzzle to put in together. However, since the main topic itself had various parts and a good amount of history behind it, I focused on getting the history covered right after the introduction first. Then, move in towards the deeper part of the topic, such as how lovesickness is painted in different texts and how it is occurring within the text.

Since there were two primary texts that were needed for the assignment, I sandwiched them in between all the other secondary sources’ explanations. As I told earlier, I gave information about the history of lovesickness, then I started with the primary text taught in class to explain how lovesickness resides in the text. Then go back up that is is right, I used the secondary sources for the greater confirmation. Then finally I had used the second primary source to wrap everything up as one singular context.

In the end, the work I have accomplished was not quite the exact pieces that I had imagined them to be. Imagining something is easy but putting them into words in an organized fashion is hard. While I am dissatisfied with my own work, it still reminds me that I have a greater room to improve, which makes me happy to know. Thus, writing is a process of trial and errors. And through various drafts and rewrites, I came upon the finale of my assignments which in the end reflects my writing style and how I can improve.