Reflections

Backward Reflection

As my first language is Spanish, writing in my own language hasnā€™t been so

challenging. Since I was in high school or even before, Spanish has been

one of my best grade subjects, although I must confess, Iā€™m not a big fan of it.

At school, I had the best Spanish teacher. He was a good writer and owned

several novels and books, his classes were all about poetry, essays and

literature, but even though I learned a lot with him about how to write

properly, I struggled a bit with my essays due to my lack of reading. I never

liked to read that much, and this affected my vocabulary and choice of

words.

I was fifteen years old when I first started learning English; like any new

language, it comes with its own challenges. The writing was difficult for two

reasons. First, it was a completely new vocabulary; sentences were

meaningless since I could not make logical connections between

words. Secondly, I could not express myself the way I wanted due to my

small repertoire of words. I had to depend on a dictionary, translating

between Spanish and English, trying somehow to make sense of words and

their meaning.

Grammatically I also had problems using verbs in their different tenses; it took

time to memorize them and learn how to apply them correctly. Phrasal verbs

were another big topic for me; combining two or three words from

different grammatical categories makes these difficult to interpret. For

example, ā€œCut it out!ā€ It cannot be understood based on the meaning of its

individual parts alone. Instead, it should be taken as a whole. It would sound

like the instruction being asked is to grab a scissor; however, it just means to

stop whatever you are doing. These grammar compositions give verbs a

completely different meaning which, in my opinion, it makes the road of

learning a little rough for starter learners like myself.

With all that and admitting that with time I progress in my writing, I never felt

like I was good as an English writer, I never dedicated myself completely to be

good enough for this, it was not something that I really needed, however,

moving to a different country where English is the mother tongue and dare

me to start a career in college made me realized how fundamental it is to

improve my English in all its categories.

At the beginning of this text, I didnā€™t expect to consider what Iā€™m about to say,

ā€œI have to establish a plan to develop my writing skillsā€ because this could

benefit my career and self-improvement. For that, I think the first I need is

discipline and willingness to learn, then start a plan based on writing

regularly and be my own editor, being tough to myself to upgrade

my writes; read more and go for challenging materials that I usually wouldnā€™t

read, it is proved that reading develop your writing skills when you pay

attention to vocabulary and sentence structure; also, transcribe text from

others writers to practice and see how the material flows. With this plan

I hope that my overall writing and communication skills improve to a level in

which I can fully portray my thoughts and emotions.

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