I compared my two essays: one is from the recent AP language class, and the other is from the AP World History sevenstar online class.
First of all, my grammar improved a lot over these two years. When I first started my AP World History course, I had difficulties in writing due to my poor grammar. I often became confused between different tenses and sentence structures. Therefore, I became dependent on Grammarly, an online website made to automatically correct grammar. However, after Grammarly usage was limited, I began to really think before writing. During that time, my grammar improved a lot; these days, I don’t think I’m that dependent on Grammarly or other types of automatic grammar-correcting websites anymore.
Secondly, the usage of punctuation improved. In 10th grade, all the punctuations I utilized were just periods and commas. Therefore, the writing was somehow boring. However, after studying TOEFL and SAT, I began to utilize lots of different punctuations including semicolons, colon, dash, and exclamation points. I think these improvements allowed me to add more diversity and variation to my voice in writing. It allowed me to convey my opinion more thoroughly, and precisely.
Thirdly, the sentence length became much more diverse. Back then, I mainly used simple sentences and sometimes used compound sentences. However, these days, I am using more complex sentences, which have at least one independent clause and a dependent clause. This doesn’t mean that my sentences only became more complicated and long; I simultaneously use simple sentences according to the context. When I want to express short yet strong feelings, I even use two or three words. In essence, I am now able to freely choose the sentence length according to the meaning and feeling that I want to convey through the sentence.
Fourthly, my essay became much more coherent. While working on AP Seminar, I began to look at my writing from the third person’s perspective. I started to consider whether random people who don’t know about a certain topic can clearly understand my writing just by reading it. Through this process, I began to write more cohesively without logical jumps.
Finally, the vocabulary became much more diverse. I think this is due to the usage of thesaurus— during the college application, I often used a thesaurus to diversify the words and make my writing less dull. Moreover, throughout SAP class, I tried to memorize not just the vocabulary itself but the synonyms as well. Through the process, I was able to know lots of different words that can make the writing more vibrant and clearer.
Though it was a small step each time, the perseverance was powerful enough to make such changes. I hope I can continue my effort at college so that my writing can become much more natural and effective.
Writer: Yeyoung Jeon (Lina)
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