Welcome to Erwaman's Web-Based Writer's Portfolio! Feel free to take a look around. This is the first Reflective Commentary. Enjoy!
~Erwaman~
Overall, I believe that I did a good job in creating a precise image for the reader, so that he could actually see the classroom, the people in it, and the card house. But there are still specific things I could improve upon.
I feel that in my first sentence, I shouldn't have started it out with just stating what my most successful moment was. I now reflect back on it and realize that it would have been better if I had set the mood and the tone first. I believe I should have started my composition with my third sentence, "I remember it as a somewhat sunny day, clear and crisp, and all the 4th graders, including me, waited for the principal to announce that the Halloween parade would be beginning and that we should file out. Now, if I were to still keep the first two sentences, I would definitely take out the "One of my most successful moments" part in the first sentence and most of the second sentence because there is no need to be so exact in the time and date, when my composition is about building a card house and not about how the time and date had an impact on my successful moment.
In the body part of the composition, there were times I would use "tower" and times I would use "card house" to refer to the same thing, the structure I was constructing. My interchanging use of the two words when referring to the structure may confuse a reader, perhaps making him think I was describing something else in the classroom. Also, as I reread my composition, I found that in the fourth sentence of the second paragraph, to what the word "tower" is referring to may be confusing. I said in the first sentence of this paragraph that I would usually use the word "tower" to refer to the card house I was constructing, but in the fourth sentence of the second paragraph of my composition, "tower" was referring to the point that the two cards came to when they were slanted vertically and balanced by pushing against each other with equal force at the point where they met.
What I tried very hard to do and was somewhat successful in was to set the mood in the introduction and build from there. It turned out that I started off setting the tone by describing how I built the base for the card house. Just as the base was what the card house was layered and built up on, the introduction was what I built on to gradually reach the climax or the top of the tower, where description and emotions increased, and everything became slow motion. I am very happy with the conclusion I have for this composition, because I ended with a quote I made, that sums up the composition and really sticks out in the reader's mind.
In my composition, I also found some well-written phrases and descriptions that I believe would create a vivid image in a reader's mind. For example, in the last sentence of the third paragraph, "the whole floor and perhaps the floor underneath tumbled down like a row of dominoes" was, in my opinion, a carefully worded phrase that could be easily pictured in a reader's mind that helped him/her become more involved into the story, following me step by step as I built the card house. Another example is the fourth sentence in the third paragraph, "Yet, my hands trembled, my body shivered, and all my classmates held their breath." This descriptive sentence helps the reader create the people in the room, giving them descriptions and characteristics. Overall, with this being the first composition I ever wrote in the seventh grade, I am very pleased and satisfied with this piece of writing.