Portfolio Reflection essay
English and writing have always been my weakest subject that I hate most. Having knowledge of a matter and writing about it goes hand in hand, but it takes me multiple times to reread something before understanding it. I look at other people’s works for validation of my own. This is because I always wanted to be right, or correct. I was scared that whatever I wrote as a response to a question or essay prompt would be the wrong answer, especially if no one else wrote about the same matters. However, the way that UWP 1 was set up allowed me to be a lot more comfortable in my writing, especially the free writes where I didn’t have to spend time pondering over whether my ideas were right or wrong. Having recourses such as other peers commenting or reviewing my work also taught me that it is okay to not have perfect writing the first time around. There are so many concepts and conventions to keep in mind when writing that I have learned such as rhetorical concepts, processes, convention, research, and metacognition that allowed me to grow as a writer.
The first time that I was introduced to rhetorical concept was many years ago, but I never considered its importance in writing. Rhetorical concepts help a writer in analyzing and composing a text and may involve concepts such as genre, context, or audience. In the class reading “Backpacks vs Briefcases”, Laura Bolin Carrell points out two frameworks involved in rhetorical concepts which are: 1) exigence, audience, and constraints; and 2) logos, pathos and egos (48,52). By using these concepts, a writer is able to present their ideas in a more credible, persuasive, and organized structure. The first framework allows me to ask questions such as: “What is the biggest problem in Biological Sciences and how can it be solved?” “Who am I trying to inform?” “Is there anything such as the structure or jargon of my essay that hinders the audience’s understanding?”. These questions guided the direction of my research and what aspects of Biological Sciences I should focus on the most. Not only did it assist in analyzing my discourse community, it also helped me compose my essay and structure it in a way where the tone, language, and information is easy for other students to understand. The Rhetorical Analysis of Intros and Methods Sections Activity was also structured similarly where we examined the audience, exigence, and purpose along with two rhetorical actions such as credibility, background context, primary and secondary research, or clear definitions of “discourse community”. I developed credibility in my essay through the professor-written research papers, clear definitions of unfamiliar topics, and background information of what Biological Sciences encompasses. The use of rhetorical concepts allows my audience to immediately see the direction of my essay. Being aware of these concepts pushed me to continuously relate all of my paragraphs back to the audience and exigence, thus creating a cohesive essay.
We also learned about processes, something that I rarely did before. The learning outcome of processes centers around writing being a recursive process where students should be able to create multiple drafts and change their writing accordingly to the feedback they receive and idea changes. After reading Nancy Sommers' "Revision Strategies", it taught me that a piece of writing is never done after one or two drafts and as writers, we must look at the bigger picture of the essay and work on changing and connecting ideas instead of focusing on fixing grammar or word choice (384). Good writing is done when writers aren’t afraid of making big changes to their work and continuously develop new ideas and make connections. This can be applied to my DCP, as I have used my peer reviewer's feedback to change my essay and rewrite it in a way where every paragraph connects back to the exigence or thesis. Initially, the first time that I wrote my essay, it felt like I was writing aimlessly without thinking about making connections or addressing the problem. My paragraphs seemed to be chunks of different topics that can be essays of their own instead of part of one cohesive essay. As a result, I had to fix my introduction and determine a better thesis and exigence that would embody the entire essay. I connected each paragraph to flow better and changed my genre analysis section to more of a compare and contrast format as it made most sense to my essay. The recursive process takes time, but is essential to good writing.
Another learning outcome of this class involves conventions. Conventions are a common way of how a piece of writing is done, such as its form, language, and format. Having knowledge of conventions is important because it varies across discourse communities and different genres. A convention used in the genre of music sheets will not work when writing scientific reports. The assignment that helped me most understand the impact and importance of properly using conventions is the discussion assignment where we analyzed five different readings. Although these five readings contain the conventions of 1st person point of view, tone, imagery, and structure, they were each used in different ways to achieve different purposes. It is important to understand how these conventions affect the audience while they are reading your writing. Specific connotations mixed with tone creates a certain mood for the audience and structure allows the audience to easily understand the writing in an organized manner. For my Discourse Community essay, I kept the tone formal and factual, in attempts of purely informing my audience in the form of a scholarly research article, not an advice article. I also structured my essay that flowed best, and each paragraph was a different concept of Swales. Incorporating images allowed my audience to better visualize my genre analysis and understand where I was pulling my information from. Overall, having knowledge of conventions is beneficial when writing to achieve a specific purpose.
Knowledge of knowing how to perform proper research is important in all fields. Research involves gathering and analyzing information in order to make sense of a topic and develop new meaning. After reading McClure’s “Googlepedia”, I learned that Google and Wikipedia should only be used in the beginning of the research process, to get the ball rolling and get a general overview of the topic. Library research databases should really be where we’re getting our sources as they are more credible, professional, accurate, and relevant (237). Research should not solely depend on search engines like Google, but should come from databases, such as the school library's or Google Scholar. Through the Discourse Community project, I found that it was extremely easier to find peer-reviewed journals on a database than on Google. I never thought much of categorizing my research into primary and secondary before, but I learned that by combining the two, my analysis will be better backed up with evidence. The library database allowed me to find numerous scientific reports that were published on PubMed. I was also able to find secondary sources such as a book on college lab report writing and an article that was published in a journal on networking in biological communities. Introduction of the CRAAP test also allowed me to pay more attention to aspects such as the currency of materials and credibility. I used to think that only the content of the information was important since that is what my audience would be reading. However, this would cause my essays to be misleading and uninformative. Having proper research helped me in finding relevant and credible evidence which is important when the purpose of my paper is informing other students.
Something that I thought was pointless when first introduced to was metacognition. This is the process of reflecting on your work and being aware of your rhetorical choices, such as why an essay was organized a specific way or why a certain piece of evidence was used instead of another. According to Sandra L. Giles’ “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process”, reflective writing benefits the audience, writer, and instructor. The audience can be aware of the problems and trouble areas even before reading the essay; the writer can be an independent learner and figure out their own mistakes; and the instructor can guide your work more efficiently. (195,198,201). Reflective writing makes it easier for your peers to know what to focus on and give advice to specific questions you have that they otherwise would not have known. Because of the cover pages of our Discourse Community rough draft, I was forced to take time and read back my essay and reflect, which I normally don’t do. This process was important to me because it was the only time that I can get specific feedback. I addressed my concerns of my genre analysis, conclusion, thesis, and overall connection/cohesiveness of my essay. Being able to get advice from a peer’s or instructor’s perspective allowed me to garner ideas and develop my essay even more with different information, structure, and eliminating unnecessary areas.
This class provided me with a lot of different resources that I wish I had more time to explore. One thing that I wish I did was conduct an interview from a Biological Sciences graduate. I would ask questions that are catered towards lab reports and how many upper division courses require these reports, which would help me in developing my genre analysis as I would be able to relate it back to students. To assist my Participatory Mechanisms section, I would also ask about post-graduate life and ways to get involved within the community as an undergraduate. Moreover, a professor interview would be useful in explaining the process and revision of their scientific reports or what undergraduates would typically do if they worked with them in research. If I had more time, I would have also explored Google Scholar instead of solely relying on UC Davis’s library database. Even though I found the information I needed on the database, understanding how to use Google Scholar and the best way to navigate around it would be useful even after I graduate once the library database becomes unavailable. Although I did not have time to do everything I wanted for this project, I will keep these tools and methods in mind for future essays.
This course involved constant reflection, feedback, and re-writing. I better understood the topic when I had to comment on other people’s discussion posts. Likewise, peer-reviewing other essays gave me deeper understanding on what each section required and drew my attention to flaws of my own essay that needed more work. Peer reviewing is not mandatory for most essays that I wrote in the past. If this is the case for future writings, I will still seek out other students to give and gain feedback on each other’s works. For future classes, even non-writing centered ones such as Systemic Physiology which requires lab research, I will use library databases and Google Scholar to find accurate articles and peer-reviewed journals. Something that I avoided before, but will do in the future, is writing as a recursive process. Crafting multiple drafts ensures that my ideas are fully developed, analyses are connected to the thesis, and the entire essay is cohesive. I will also continue following the format of issue, discussion, and point in my introduction as it provides a structured flow. Moreover, after writing an essay, I will take a step back and reflect on the evidence I purposely used, word-choice, and organization. My writing can be better developed if I am aware of its flaws and strengths. Overall, UWP1 taught me a lot of useful writing conventions that I will use in the future. All of the discussion activities and scaffolding assignments in this class made me more confident in my writing as I didn’t feel lost and made me feel more confident in my answers that I thought were “wrong”. With these mini assignments and the huge Discourse Community Project I was successfully able to accomplish the learning outcomes: rhetorical concepts, processes, knowledge of conventions, research, and metacognition.
The first time that I was introduced to rhetorical concept was many years ago, but I never considered its importance in writing. Rhetorical concepts help a writer in analyzing and composing a text and may involve concepts such as genre, context, or audience. In the class reading “Backpacks vs Briefcases”, Laura Bolin Carrell points out two frameworks involved in rhetorical concepts which are: 1) exigence, audience, and constraints; and 2) logos, pathos and egos (48,52). By using these concepts, a writer is able to present their ideas in a more credible, persuasive, and organized structure. The first framework allows me to ask questions such as: “What is the biggest problem in Biological Sciences and how can it be solved?” “Who am I trying to inform?” “Is there anything such as the structure or jargon of my essay that hinders the audience’s understanding?”. These questions guided the direction of my research and what aspects of Biological Sciences I should focus on the most. Not only did it assist in analyzing my discourse community, it also helped me compose my essay and structure it in a way where the tone, language, and information is easy for other students to understand. The Rhetorical Analysis of Intros and Methods Sections Activity was also structured similarly where we examined the audience, exigence, and purpose along with two rhetorical actions such as credibility, background context, primary and secondary research, or clear definitions of “discourse community”. I developed credibility in my essay through the professor-written research papers, clear definitions of unfamiliar topics, and background information of what Biological Sciences encompasses. The use of rhetorical concepts allows my audience to immediately see the direction of my essay. Being aware of these concepts pushed me to continuously relate all of my paragraphs back to the audience and exigence, thus creating a cohesive essay.
We also learned about processes, something that I rarely did before. The learning outcome of processes centers around writing being a recursive process where students should be able to create multiple drafts and change their writing accordingly to the feedback they receive and idea changes. After reading Nancy Sommers' "Revision Strategies", it taught me that a piece of writing is never done after one or two drafts and as writers, we must look at the bigger picture of the essay and work on changing and connecting ideas instead of focusing on fixing grammar or word choice (384). Good writing is done when writers aren’t afraid of making big changes to their work and continuously develop new ideas and make connections. This can be applied to my DCP, as I have used my peer reviewer's feedback to change my essay and rewrite it in a way where every paragraph connects back to the exigence or thesis. Initially, the first time that I wrote my essay, it felt like I was writing aimlessly without thinking about making connections or addressing the problem. My paragraphs seemed to be chunks of different topics that can be essays of their own instead of part of one cohesive essay. As a result, I had to fix my introduction and determine a better thesis and exigence that would embody the entire essay. I connected each paragraph to flow better and changed my genre analysis section to more of a compare and contrast format as it made most sense to my essay. The recursive process takes time, but is essential to good writing.
Another learning outcome of this class involves conventions. Conventions are a common way of how a piece of writing is done, such as its form, language, and format. Having knowledge of conventions is important because it varies across discourse communities and different genres. A convention used in the genre of music sheets will not work when writing scientific reports. The assignment that helped me most understand the impact and importance of properly using conventions is the discussion assignment where we analyzed five different readings. Although these five readings contain the conventions of 1st person point of view, tone, imagery, and structure, they were each used in different ways to achieve different purposes. It is important to understand how these conventions affect the audience while they are reading your writing. Specific connotations mixed with tone creates a certain mood for the audience and structure allows the audience to easily understand the writing in an organized manner. For my Discourse Community essay, I kept the tone formal and factual, in attempts of purely informing my audience in the form of a scholarly research article, not an advice article. I also structured my essay that flowed best, and each paragraph was a different concept of Swales. Incorporating images allowed my audience to better visualize my genre analysis and understand where I was pulling my information from. Overall, having knowledge of conventions is beneficial when writing to achieve a specific purpose.
Knowledge of knowing how to perform proper research is important in all fields. Research involves gathering and analyzing information in order to make sense of a topic and develop new meaning. After reading McClure’s “Googlepedia”, I learned that Google and Wikipedia should only be used in the beginning of the research process, to get the ball rolling and get a general overview of the topic. Library research databases should really be where we’re getting our sources as they are more credible, professional, accurate, and relevant (237). Research should not solely depend on search engines like Google, but should come from databases, such as the school library's or Google Scholar. Through the Discourse Community project, I found that it was extremely easier to find peer-reviewed journals on a database than on Google. I never thought much of categorizing my research into primary and secondary before, but I learned that by combining the two, my analysis will be better backed up with evidence. The library database allowed me to find numerous scientific reports that were published on PubMed. I was also able to find secondary sources such as a book on college lab report writing and an article that was published in a journal on networking in biological communities. Introduction of the CRAAP test also allowed me to pay more attention to aspects such as the currency of materials and credibility. I used to think that only the content of the information was important since that is what my audience would be reading. However, this would cause my essays to be misleading and uninformative. Having proper research helped me in finding relevant and credible evidence which is important when the purpose of my paper is informing other students.
Something that I thought was pointless when first introduced to was metacognition. This is the process of reflecting on your work and being aware of your rhetorical choices, such as why an essay was organized a specific way or why a certain piece of evidence was used instead of another. According to Sandra L. Giles’ “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process”, reflective writing benefits the audience, writer, and instructor. The audience can be aware of the problems and trouble areas even before reading the essay; the writer can be an independent learner and figure out their own mistakes; and the instructor can guide your work more efficiently. (195,198,201). Reflective writing makes it easier for your peers to know what to focus on and give advice to specific questions you have that they otherwise would not have known. Because of the cover pages of our Discourse Community rough draft, I was forced to take time and read back my essay and reflect, which I normally don’t do. This process was important to me because it was the only time that I can get specific feedback. I addressed my concerns of my genre analysis, conclusion, thesis, and overall connection/cohesiveness of my essay. Being able to get advice from a peer’s or instructor’s perspective allowed me to garner ideas and develop my essay even more with different information, structure, and eliminating unnecessary areas.
This class provided me with a lot of different resources that I wish I had more time to explore. One thing that I wish I did was conduct an interview from a Biological Sciences graduate. I would ask questions that are catered towards lab reports and how many upper division courses require these reports, which would help me in developing my genre analysis as I would be able to relate it back to students. To assist my Participatory Mechanisms section, I would also ask about post-graduate life and ways to get involved within the community as an undergraduate. Moreover, a professor interview would be useful in explaining the process and revision of their scientific reports or what undergraduates would typically do if they worked with them in research. If I had more time, I would have also explored Google Scholar instead of solely relying on UC Davis’s library database. Even though I found the information I needed on the database, understanding how to use Google Scholar and the best way to navigate around it would be useful even after I graduate once the library database becomes unavailable. Although I did not have time to do everything I wanted for this project, I will keep these tools and methods in mind for future essays.
This course involved constant reflection, feedback, and re-writing. I better understood the topic when I had to comment on other people’s discussion posts. Likewise, peer-reviewing other essays gave me deeper understanding on what each section required and drew my attention to flaws of my own essay that needed more work. Peer reviewing is not mandatory for most essays that I wrote in the past. If this is the case for future writings, I will still seek out other students to give and gain feedback on each other’s works. For future classes, even non-writing centered ones such as Systemic Physiology which requires lab research, I will use library databases and Google Scholar to find accurate articles and peer-reviewed journals. Something that I avoided before, but will do in the future, is writing as a recursive process. Crafting multiple drafts ensures that my ideas are fully developed, analyses are connected to the thesis, and the entire essay is cohesive. I will also continue following the format of issue, discussion, and point in my introduction as it provides a structured flow. Moreover, after writing an essay, I will take a step back and reflect on the evidence I purposely used, word-choice, and organization. My writing can be better developed if I am aware of its flaws and strengths. Overall, UWP1 taught me a lot of useful writing conventions that I will use in the future. All of the discussion activities and scaffolding assignments in this class made me more confident in my writing as I didn’t feel lost and made me feel more confident in my answers that I thought were “wrong”. With these mini assignments and the huge Discourse Community Project I was successfully able to accomplish the learning outcomes: rhetorical concepts, processes, knowledge of conventions, research, and metacognition.