Greetings Professor Britton,

The work shown in my portfolio has drastically improved since receiving the first writing

assignment in the beginning of Spring quarter. Each writing prompt, WP1 and WP2, helped me

focus on areas that examined concepts important to effective college writing. The examination

and the skill to analyze genres along with conducting effective academic research allowed me to

practice an excessive amount of reading, brainstorming, drafting, editing, and reflecting. My

favorite part about the process of creating my WP1 and WP2 was both projects allowed me to be

creative while also learning how to improve my writing along the process. For my WP1, I made

the choice to write a blog post that was interesting to investigate and additionally introduced me

to several genres that I would later examine. This procedure assisted me to develop my ability to

locate reliable academic sources, which helped me prepare for my WP2. Receiving constructive

criticism from my peers helped me feel more confident about my writing as they gave me

pointers on how to make it better. At the conclusion of the course, I have a greater understanding

of my most effective writing style and the areas where I need to improve. I have gained insight

on how to write effective papers, and how important the revision process is.

When I first came into this class, I was extremely nervous about the writing tasks we

would be assigned. Prior to this, I had the impression that I wasn't ready for a class that would

assign writing assignments and grade them. Throughout high school, writing was never my

strong suite. I remember teachers telling me that I had good ideas, but I wrote too much or had

context in my essay that repeat, and my argument was not clear. However, this was not the case

in my experience in Writing 2. After we read over the syllabus in class together, I felt more

confident that this class would not discourage me but teach me new concepts and help me apply

my knowledge to my major especially in ways that would teach me how to solidify my

high school. I was thoroughly taught how genres provide a framework for readers to interpret

written works along with examining more closely text conventions, styles, and how to engage

with the intended audience. By experimenting with various genres, it enabled me to better

understand how writers create something they are proud of because it all stems from who their

audience is. As I immersed myself in genres that tested my writing abilities, this developed into

one of my strengths that I gained around the conclusion of the quarter.

Within the text of Kerry Dirk article Navigating Genres the author mentions that we see

genres all the time yet some of us, including myself at the time, are not familiar with them. Dirk

explains that “genres are now viewed as even more than repeating rhetorical situations” (Dirk,

252). He goes on to discuss how genres should be used as a tool to accomplish goals and that

they have the capacity to either improve or harm human contact, which really helped me

understand the concept. This made me realize how important genres have been in my daily life.

The various genre definitions Dirk talks about throughout his article helped me better appreciate

writing around me and how it is critical to comprehend a genre’s context as it facilitates reading,

writing, and speaking. Throughout the end of his article, I knew what I was going to do for my

WP1 and what audience would be the best for my type of writing. My WP1 consisted of

analyzing how having a strong relationship with your family will help diminish the stress of first

year students. My overarching idea was creating a blog post specifically toward UCSB students.

My reflection on the process of creating a blog post in a non- academic genre helped prepared

me for the most relevant genre that could be applied to my WP2.

That being said, my favorite strategy that helped improve my writing came and applied to

my WP1 was from How to Read Like A Writer. Underlining the purpose of the work and
constantly reminding myself of its audience were two things I learned from the reading and kept

in mind as I edited and wrote my WP1 and WP2. When reading an academic essay, there are a

few things that Mike Bunn had me think about: the language the author uses, the types of

evidence they use to support their claims, how they transition from one topic to another, etc.

When Bunn explained concepts as such, it made me think about how I can apply this to my

writing. Through the process of my writing, I always thought back “Is this for my attended

audience?”, “what information do I really need to emphasize to convince my readers of my

argument” and lastly “is my argument effective to my audience?” By utilizing this process when

I read other articles, I applied these steps to my own writing as it made me think of specific

techniques that began my writing and revision process. This process has gradually transitioned

my writing into a better product as I no longer feel lost in my writing or confused on what I am

trying to get across to my audience.

On the other hand, What is Academic Writing by L. Lennie Irvin was another reading that

caught my attention. The post offered various ideas that helped me improve my writing, such as

dispelling common misconceptions about the craft. I used to think that every time I wrote, it had

to be flawless, so anytime I tried too hard to write an essay using words I looked up in a

thesaurus, it never turned out good. By debunking the myths of writing the perfect essay the first

or second time helped change my perspective of how to write. Each time for every assignment, I

sat down and wrote everything out on paper before I translated my ideas to my WP1 and WP2.

Developing these skills helped me think more long-term about the product rather than short term

success. However, one concept I still find myself struggling with is synthesizing and analyzing

information. Throughout high school I took AP Psychology where I always had to translate long

academic journals that used very scientific words I did not understand. Irvin’s 3 step process of
how to analyze concludes the steps of engaging in open inquiry where the answer is not known,

identify meaningful parts, and examine these parts along with how they relate o one another

(Irvin, 10-11). By following these steps, I applied them to both WP1 and WP2 as I had to find

various academic articles that sometimes would be 20 pages long. I learned to first skim through

the articles and try to identify repeating concepts that I then would examine and translate. This

helped me understand the articles more and cut down the reading time into half,

Let me now turn my attention to something that I should have done better from the start.

When WP2 was introduced, I was a bit perplexed on a topic I wanted to examine. I was not very

passionate with the topic I chose yet I still chose to stick with it. I had a lot of trouble with this

throughout the research process and our assignment to identify 10–12 articles and narrow them

down to at least 5 to base our WP2 on. Compared to WP1 where we only had to focus on 1

academic journal and had to translate it, WP2 had to be translated amongst 5 different articles on

the same topic which was more challenging. However, Jones’ reading on Finding The Good

Evidence where the article touched upon examining all angles of the argument and do not use

incorrect reasoning helped me. When looking for different perspective, I made sure to take out

specific quotes of each other’s argument to summarize each point into a social media post. I

found most of their augments to be very complex so the process of breaking it down to make it

easy for my audience to understand was much more challenging than other tasks. I applied

deductive reasoning that the article defines as starting from a large idea, which was improving

writing (my topic), and making into smaller categories that included the authors different

perspective. This method I worked through helped bring together my ideas and made an overall

compelling argument.
 Overall, I believe that Writing 2 has provided me with new concepts and ways of thinking.

From improving grammar, sentence structure, importance of vocabulary, and overall new ways

of engaging my audience with my writing has helped developed and improved new skills I was

not good at before. With being introduced to new genres, I now have a better grasp of

understanding how to write narrative and argumentative pieces by engaging different forms of

writing. My biggest takeaway however will be understanding the audience and purpose. This

concept was first introduced into my pre-requisite communication classes at UCSB where

audience and purpose were a focus. I solidified my knowledge that the audience and purpose

develop writing that is targeted, persuasive, and impactful. It was not only the valuable readings

that were extremely insightful on many different topics, but the continuous group work helped

go through harder topics that I sometimes struggled with. The strategic thinking that was put into

each slide during every lecture helped me brainstorm more ideas that were cumulative into my

WP1 and WP2. To conclude, without taking writing 2, I would not have become the writer I am

today without being walked through topics that are thrown at you while writing college level

essays.