Strengths Essays Examples

Personal Strengths and Weaknesses as a Writer

Essay-Writing is a challenge and in every challenge there are points of strength and points of weakness. By reinforcing the strengths and working on the weaknesses one can successfully reach a desirable level in a specific skill - in this case, writing. I am going to list three strengths and three weaknesses that I have in writing and give a brief description about each one of them.

Revising
Going through old drafts and changing, omitting or adding texts to what you have written before is not as easy as it sounds. some people find it hard to consider a part of their text “irrelevant” and just omit what they have worked on so hard; they also get frustrated when they realize their draft is incomplete and needs more work to become richer. Fortunately I do not find this difficult; I easily let go of my irrelevant paragraphs and always enjoy looking for more material to add to my text. I think one of the reasons for this strength is that I always type my texts on the computer - even if it is still in the draft-stage. Using a word-processing software, it is much easier to revise a paper: you can change a word that has been mentioned in your essay repeatedly, using the “find” function, you can edit your spelling errors only by right-clicking and you can add more material to your work and organize it so easily.

‌Brainstorming

I am good at coming up with new ideas for what I have to write about. If I like the subject and I know a lot about it, then there is nothing more to do: ideas start pouring into my brain. And when it is a subject that I have little information about, I use the internet and the library or I ask people that I know have knowledge about the subject, I find myself some interesting information about that subject and then I start writing. I think the key to good brainstorming is to find the subject interesting, and if you don’t, at least find something that you like about it. One other brainstorming strategy that I have learned over the internet is called “Cubing” which is consisted of looking at the subject from six different viewpoints (description, comparison, association, analyzation, application, and argument) which has proved to be so helpful.

Grammar

With the help of a great grammar professor, some great grammar books and reading a lot of essays and scholarly texts for my major, I can say with confident that I am good at grammar. I avoid using complex sentence structures in my writing (as every good article that I have ever read are the ones which are written in a simple language) and try to sound interesting to the reader while I am being formal. I never use structures that I am not sure are correct, and when I have to, I check the correctness using my grammar books. I know when there is even a little grammatical error (as little as forgetting an “s”) the reader loses his or her whole trust in the author’s knowledge and becomes reluctant to keep on reading the rest of the text.

Weaknesses

Introduction
One of the biggest challenges in writing for me is how to start. I have learned in writing classes that you had better start the first paragraph with your topic sentence but this does not always satisfy me with my essay. I prefer to start my text with a more interesting way but I never know how to do it. Is it ok to start with a personal story which is somehow relevant to the topic? Is it ok to include a little humor? and if yes, to what extent? Most of the time when I start writing an essay and I take a look at my first paragraph, I feel like it has been cut and pasted from the middle of another article: it does not sound like it is the beginning of a text because I am not really good at giving that first paragraph an introductory characteristic.

Organization and Supporting the Topic

Organizing an article is one of the other examples of my weakness. Not only I have difficulty starting an essay, I also cannot finish it properly and in terms of the material that comes between, I am not good at organizing them into a suitable order using proper words. Sometimes when I read the whole five-paragraph paper I realize it lacks cohesion and that is because the three paragraphs in between do not seem properly related to each other, or because the ending paragraph does not give the reader a feeling of closure. I also do not seem to realize what sentence structure should be used for different purposes and audiences, so sometimes I feel like I have used a wrong structure for my formal essay. I also have trouble using different organization methods. For example when I am comparing and contrasting, sometimes I realize there are about five comparing ideas and only one contrast, which makes the paper seem unbalanced.

Procrastination

Unfortunately I am more concerned with the final version of my work rather than the process that needs to be taken care of first. Sometimes it is difficult for a busy student to sit hours in a library working on an article; so consequently the article is written hurriedly the night before it has to be submitted. This leads to lack of concentration, low quality of the paper and incoherence. Many of my friends tell me that they too are under the pressure of the due date; they are - like me - always anxious about the writing task they have to complete in a certain amount of time, but this anxiety does not really push them to start writing, but just makes them feel more and more stressed-out.