The above essay was the final project in Spanish Practical Speaking and Writing. It involved interviewing people living in Spanish speaking countries and supplementing this information with secondary research. This is an example of my ability to interpret information given to me in qualitative interviews and supplement it with additional research. Where this writing sample could improved is in moving beyond a statement of fact and analyzing the implications of the findings. I was limited in this sample by my still developing ability to express complex ideas in written form. I included this artifact to show how my writing skills improved from the previous sample. I am able to simply write more than I was able to in the past. I show signs of being able to organize and present original thoughts, but I was not yet at a level where I felt confident in my writing skills to express those ideas. A lot of the writing style here is very basic, as a result of lack of comfort with variations in transitions and other grammatical constructs. 

 

The following sample shows another clear jump in my writing skills. In the sample from Practical Speaking and Writing, I am using repetitive vocabulary and and basic grammatical constructions. After this point in my coursework, I began to recognize how using my full range of subject appropriate vocabulary strengthened my writing. Today, I make a point of editing my written compositions to include stronger vocabulary and different sentence styles to maintain the reader's interest, much like I would in any English paper.