I have never minded English class. I don’t care much for writing and I would rather do anything but read a book however I understand the importance of literacy. I would say english is probably the most practical and useful class in school because it is something that you will have to do no matter what in the professional field. English class this year has made more comfortable with writing essays and I have begun to master the organization and fluidity of a strong essay. English was also one of my favorite classes this year and I truly believe that I gained a lot from it. As this year has progressed my ability to show my points in my essays rather than telling the reader what my points are has developed greatly. After taking an in depth look at my narrative essay which I wrote in the beginning of the year and my descriptive essay which is the most recent essay that I have written it is clear that my points in the descriptive essay are more put together and provide a much stronger case. In my narrative essay I told a story that explained a personal experience in my life but I did not make any points about how it affected me as a person until the last paragraph where I said, “Ever since I overcame this challenge and achieved my goal of making the A lacrosse team after working hard, my mindset has been the same whenever I have faced a challenge.” This was the second to last sentence. However after two semesters of English 11 with Ms. Crowell I learned how to use examples to explain my point. In my descriptive essay, which is one of the last essays we wrote, I said, “As we both grew older and more mature we started to become closer, especially when I graduated from my old school High Meadows and moved to The Galloway School. The more time we spent together and the more maturing we both did, the closer we got as friends.” here you can see how I used an example of how we began to spend more time together and explained how that affected our relationship. I learned to do this by taking memories or experiences and putting them into the essay as examples. From there I can unpack the examples and provide a clear and concise point with context. The next way that I have improved my writing is in my conclusions. Earlier this year we wrote an argumentative essay where I explored the effects of Galloway teachers being incredibly lenient toward their students. In this essay my conclusion does not make any strong points; I said: “Students have said that they feel the faculty is more concerned with the students’ happiness, disregarding any kind of preparation for the next stage in the students’ lives. The faculty’s decision to prioritize the students happiness and focus on the students understanding of the material hurts the students when they get to college and the professional field and are ill prepared for the workload.” This is a good point, but I repeated it throughout the essay which in my opinion took away from its strength. However in my Original Night essay which I wrote during the second semester had a much better conclusion. I restate my arguments that I made earlier and I even use a quote to back up another point: “The reader does not see much of Wiesel’s character after liberation, but in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech Wiesel explains how he has made his peace with God, saying, "I have faith. Faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and even in His creation" (120). This excerpt from his speech demonstrates how Wiesel has worshipped and mulled over his own personal vengeance towards God to the point where he has the ability to accept faith back into his life.” This makes my conclusion much stronger because I backed up my arguments as well as providing the reader with more arguments. I believe that my conclusions have gotten better because in class we have worked on making strong arguments and organizing our thoughts a lot. My writing has gotten immensely better from English this year, I have learned how to make my arguments stronger by supporting myself with examples as well as learned to wrap up my essays in a more clean and more effective way. I also became much more comfortable with writing essays this year which I am appreciative of, I think this is because we practiced writing essays so much so it became a more casual thing. Overall I thoroughly enjoy English this year and I will sincerely miss our class and the good times we had this year.