English 111 Final Letter - Carly Fatzinger

Dear Professor Williams,
The reason for this letter is to inform you of the revisions that I have made to my Formal
Assignment Two, “The Stranger in the Photo is Me,” for my English 111 final portfolio. The
formal assignment is a profile essay that covers my growth from my childhood to my age now.
While reading over all of my essays to pick for this assignment, I settled on this one because I
believed that it needed some revisions and could accurately show my growth in this class. The
letter contained a lack of transitions between paragraphs and very short sentences with little
detail. I felt like with the revisions, you are able to see my growth in this course and writing in
general. As an example, I was not very happy with the ending of my introduction paragraph. I
decided to target that for revisions first, changing, “From starting preschool to a Junior in high
school, a lot has changed about me,” to “From starting preschool to a Junior in high school, I’ve
encountered multiple situations that have shaped me into who I am now.” The sentence was
revised because it lacks detail and ends abruptly, and my writing has changed enough to notice
these small but important pieces that could take my writing to the next level.
Before taking English 111, my writing lacked the ability to have diversity and different styles of
writing. All assignments were written the same with, with the same format, and lacked the
creativity of different types of essays to explain a topic. My papers also lacked structure and
planning before writing. Outlines and peer reviews really helped me this semester grow as a
writer and be able to not only review others' writing better, but assess my writing myself.
During this course, I have improved my writing and became more confident in it. With discussion
board posts I have been able to practice my writing to gain a better understanding of it. The
positive responses from peer reviews and the constructive feedback have also helped me
increase my confidence in my writing. The prompts for discussion boards have better my ability
to research and produce an informative and persuasive response.
My revised essay is a clear way to see my improvement in writing during the course. I almost
felt like I needed to completely rewrite the formal assignment to fit the way I write now. Pieces of
my paper lacked the information we learned later in the semester that could’ve given it an extra
boost. Revisions in the introduction and conclusion paragraphs, in my opinion, showed growth
between the quick, detailed absent sentences prior to re-evaluation. My corrections placed more
informative and specific sentences that allowed me to get my point across in a more mature
explanation.
I chose Formal Assignment 2, “The Stranger in this Photo is Me,” to cover for the reasons of it
being a while written assignment, for a few months ago. The writing is not my best, which is why
I chose to use it for revisions. I remember while writing the paper I thought it was great work and
very well written. Upon reviewing for revisions, I could clearly see the growth I encountered
throughout the months in between writing. My growth was visible and allowed me to create
advancements for the rewriting of the formal assignment.
A section of writing from “The Stranger in the Photo is Me,” I would like to focus on is my
introduction. Originally, the paragraph is full of short, choppy sentences that lack flow and
meaning. Starting with small revisions, like moving words around, or lengthening out a
sentence, I noticed a change already. The paragraph started to flow cleaner and seamlessly, as
well as making the writing sound more mature. Making my way to larger, I deleted certain parts
and completely rewrote the sentences that I had originally written. Deleting sentences removed
the unnecessary details and points written to lengthen the paper. This cleared the paper up and
allowed it to flow with the newly reworded sentences in a readable and clear way.
The writing process for this paper made me reflect on my past to obtain the differences of my
life from my childhood compared to my life now. The reflection required me to compare my
interests, views, beliefs, and overall tasks of my everyday life then and now. Seeing how much
my life and I have changed permitted me to write a detailed, well explained paper. Parts of the
paper were written to show the contrast of my obligations now and the very little obligations I
had as a child. I got there by writing examples of priorities I focused on mainly at the time, like
playing outside with my siblings or being the first to the swings and contrasted them between
my obligations now. The difference showed the drastic difference between stress levels of the
tasks and how they would affect my future. The process of digging through my past produced a
paper with lots of examples on how I’ve grown.
This paper still isn’t perfect, and there are still many things I would change if I had the time or
instruction to do so. I would like to have gone into more detail on my past and the experiences
that happened to me. I would also like to lengthen the middle paragraphs and add in more detail
on my life as a child, and more detail transitioning into a young adult. I am not happy with the
overall flow of the essay, how it bounces from paragraph to paragraph changing topics. I
would’ve like to make it flow smoother, but this could just be me overanalyzing and criticizing.
The work I’ve done throughout this semester has visibly improved as I read over my formal
assignments and discussion boards for my final exam. As a student, note taking and responding
to peers really gave me a better understanding of what I was learning instead of just going
through the motions trying to finish. I learned how to write more mature papers with research,
outlines, and critical thinking. I’ve taken many writing risks, like picking hard to research topics.
For example, while writing my formal assignment 3, I picked the topic of marine pollution. The
prompt of the paper was argumentative, and it was very difficult to find a source that was for
marine pollution. I decided to stay with the prompt because the topic is important and more
people need to be informed about it.
Overall, this course boosted my writing skills for not only English class. I am now able to write
clean and detailed papers for all subjects that might need me to. The course has allowed me to
learn how to self assess, notice my strengths and weaknesses, obtain what I actually am writing
about, and effectively peer review. English 111 will definitely help me in the future and I am very
grateful for this class and the material from it for my writing.
Carlyle Fatzinger
[email protected]

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Dear Professor Williams,

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