I can see a definite improvement in my writing as I look back through my portfolio.  My writings from 9th grade really are horrible compared to what I did later.  Comparing my writing as a freshmen to my writing as a sophomore there is an improvement to be seen: the overall feeling is less clunky.  Then, from sophomore to junior year, there is even more of an improvement: there's far less clunking and it is less formulaic.  Of course this might have something to do with the differences in the purposes of my essays from last year to now, but I have still leaned how to make them more interesting.  This improvement can also be seen in my history essays.  I think that I figured out how to make my arguments better as well as keeping them from being in-your-face formulaic. 

I think that my best two writings from this English class have been the memoir and the argument essay.  The 

memoir was just lovely to write.  I let myself just let go of  my style so it came out nicely, I believe.  I also was able to write about my feelings of waderlust, which had been  muchn more rampant than usual at the time and I was able to figure out exactly how to say what I was feeling because I was feeling it right then.  The argument was good as well because I knew what I was doing in writing and argument essay from my experience in history classes, so I was able to concentrate instead on my kaing my argument well, so I think that came out well.

I definitely see room for future imporvemnt in my writing.  There's always room for improvement, after all.  Besides that, I always feel like I am hyperaware of this because whenever I finish a piece I am invariably embarrased by it because I see where there is room for improvement.