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Billie Thai
Professor Ditch
English 113A
8 December 2015
Journey Through the Social Construction of Gender
It all started when I entered room 207 in Sierra Hall, not knowing that my writing would
improve over the semester. Transitioning from high school writing to college writing was a
difficult change because of the different writing styles they both have. High school writing was
more focused on the thesis and supporting evidence in the essay. In college writing, it is more
focused on organization and connecting ideas to the main argument where evidence can be used
to support the main idea. Over the past few months, I have grown accustomed to college writing
styles and habits through the help of my peers and professors. From what I have learned in high
school, some advantages that I have gained that has assisted me in my writing experience was
being able to integrate quotes to sentences, cite respected sources, and transitions. English 113A
has become a tough and memorable experience to go through because of the amount of worked
we put into to improve our own writing. Since I am going to be talking about my journey
through the experiences that I have encountered in college writing, the specific exercises, tedious
revisions, and annotations have helped me improve my writing skills. As I begin to reflect on my
previous works throughout the semester, learning about the social construction of gender has
helped me realize the importance of how certain traits and characteristics are placed on men and
women.
In Progression I, there were some assignments that have helped me along the way to
write my final essay for that progression. One of the assignments was to write rhetorical
summaries on the four articles we read from Composing Gender. At first, rhetoric was all new to

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me and I did not know what it meant. After having a lesson on it, I learned that rhetoric is a skill
that anyone can use to persuade and advise their audience with through speaking or writing. This
assignment was useful because it helped me have a clear understanding of what the argument
was for each article that I read. Because of the assignments that had to do with rhetoric, I was
able to have a clear argument in my thesis. For my argument in my Progression I essay, I stated
that Both Lorber and Devor share similar ideas and arguments on how society is shaped, and
how society itself limits certain genders/sex (males and females) with specific roles and
behavior, such as masculinity and femininity (Progression I). The problem with this thesis
statement is that I did not add the consequences of being an outcast of society. I then fully
explain how society constructs its genders through performance and expectations with the
clarification of consequences of not conforming to societys gender norms.
Annotations also became an important factor in which helped me improve my writing.
Throughout both Progressions I and II, annotating was the least favorite activity that I had to do
while reading. There are two types of readers, passive readers and active readers. Passive readers
read only to get through assigned pages, pay little attention on identifying the main ideas, and
avoid rereading areas they did not understand. Active readers on the other hand critiques,
questions, and reexamines the material they are reading through the use of annotations.
Annotating was a problem for me in the beginning because I did not know what I was supposed
to write while I was reading. I still remember highlighting mostly everything on the page in
Composing Gender, until Professor Ditch had taught how to annotate efficiently. I had learned
that the best way to annotate is to write important ideas or information down next to the material.
Also, finding reliable evidence in the material should be highlighted so it is then easy to support
the argument from the paper. I realized that annotating had become important in reading/writing
because it was easy to find quotes that supported my argument in my Progression essay. For

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instance, in my first Progression essay, you can find many reliable quotes that I use from
Composing Gender to support my argument.
As I look back on Progression II, another important factor that contributed to my
improvement in writing is revisions. Revisions played an important part in the Progression II
essay because as a class, we demonstrated that we could improve our papers through the tedious
revisions we had to do. Although we revised our previous Progression I essay, Progression I does
not compare to Progression IIs revisions. Throughout Progression II most assignments were
looked over and had feedback from either the professor or my peers. When I first received
feedback from the peer reviews on my Progression II rough draft, I noticed that I was missing a
couple of evidence to support my argument, I did not have a clear argument, and my paper was
not organized. After revising some of the mistakes I have made the first time, I then got peer
reviewed again seeing the small errors I needed to fix such as, grammatical issues, MLA format,
and making my counterargument clearer. For my argument in my Progression II essay, I mention
that Gender construction shown in the media has a huge effect on society because it can impact
mens and womens body image and behavior in a negative way (Progression II). While
working on revisions and after constantly reading over my argument, the feedback that was
provided to me helped me write a much clearer argument. I then fixed it by adding the negative
effects that the media can cause through their advertisements.
Furthermore, I believe that because of the exercises, annotations, and tedious revisions
we have done within each progression, it helped me become a much skillful writer than I was
before entering English 113A. With the help of Professor Ditch and our Supplementary
Instruction leader Teagan Fish, I was able to learn many great things that I can bring to the future
especially, the social construction of gender.