Over the course of the semester I have notice recurring ideas and issues in my own writing, as the semester progressed using peer review comments I have worked to fix these writing problems. One problem that I have had to work on since high school was formatting my paper and the issue of comma splices, in all of my papers this semester and especially the third paper I tried to make sure that I properly formatted my paper and as little grammatical errors as possible.
Another problem that I struggled with early on in the semester was getting my point across early in the paragraph or paper. I developed strong ideas and opinions but tended to wait until the end of a paragraph or the paper to clearly state my idea or opinion. Although this still got the point across at some point in the paper it is a much less effective way to write than to provide the reader with my thesis early on in the writing. As the semester progressed I attempted to work my thesis into the paper or paragraphs as early as possible to make sure that the reader could understand what the point I was making before diving into the evidence.
For example in my final paper I wanted to make the point that there are two typical paths that child prodigies tend to follow as they continue into their academic careers. I feel that I did a good job stating my opinion early in the paper because as I wrote this paper I made sure to consider where I was placing my thesis and opinions as I made new points in the paper.
