My Literacy Reflection

For me, written literacy has always been my area of weakness. A plan to improve these skills started before I commenced my first unit. A month prior to university studies I enlisted the help of ‘Grammar-Monster.com’. Most nights were spent tediously reading through the website page by page; this helped me refresh the limited information I had retained from school, as well as teach me the correct technical terminology for most grammatical aspects of writing. Once I had started my studies and had gained access to the Curtin website, I was able to use “The Learning Centre – Online programs” (Curtin University of Technology, 2015). In the transition from one study period to the next, not only do I read through these programs but I also consult books that I have purchased. Books range from ‘Year 3 Grammar and Punctuation – Back to Basics’ (Hazell, 2012) to ‘Context – Text – Grammar, Teaching the genres and grammar of school …show more content…
PaperRater (http://www.paperrater.com/) suggests I use a thesaurus to reduce the over use of simple words and that I should consult a website such as Vocabulary builder to improve my vocabulary – I will get ten random words from vocabulary builder each day of study; Polish my writing (http://www.polishmywriting.com/) says I should be careful with nominalisation; Writer’s Diet (Sword, n.d.) is saying that my writing is at ‘heart attack’ level with the excessive use of verbs and nouns. Knowing where I am going wrong is the first step in fixing my problems.

Writing literacy, in my opinion is one of the most important things school students need to learn. Even though I understand the above mentioned websites are just a guide, consulting them with my writing will help highlight areas that need attention. In saying that, the most valuable tool I plan on using is the feed back I get from my tutors. To me, there is no substitute for the real