Dear Valentina:

Thank you for giving us so many amazing lectures. I have learned a lot on writing through out

this semester. Before attending the class, my primary goal of writing is to achieve high scores. I

was always thinking about what the teacher likes and never thought about my actual audiences.

Now, whenever I started to write, the first thing I would consider is who are my audiences. Also,

throughout analysis on different essays, papers, and articles, I gradually learned how audiences

and disciplines can shape related genres, and how significant influence audiences can generate

on writing conventions and writing styles.

I also learned how to treat writing properly, most importantly about brainstorming. Before this

quarter, I seldom use creative thinking before writing as most of my writings appeared during

exams where there was not enough time for me to brainstorm. Therefore, when I first wrote my

WP, I was scared, not only because I feared revisions but also because I still treated it like those

one-time exam essays. After several times of project-building and revising classes, now I no

longer fear writing down a shitty first draft. I treated it more like a freewriting to record all my

thoughts. I think this is a huge improvement in my attitude towards writing and can help me

consistently in the future.

For this final portfolio, I chose my writing project 1 and 2. Even though all three of my writing

projects get the same score, this does not mean that they are of similar qualities. After I finishing

writing my WP3 and looked back to my old WPs, I thought that compared with WP3, they both

have great space of improvements. Revise these two WPs can help me look into problems related

to my previous writing and can help me further develop my writing skill.

For the first writing project, when I first went through the submission draft, I immediately

noticed that the structure is awful. Ironically, in high schools, I always thought I can generate a

clear logic flow during writing. Therefore, the first thing I did is to summarize each paragraph

and look for a new sequence to arrange each idea. When revising my WP2, I also found similar

problems. Even though my idea arrangement was much better, in some parts the logic between

paragraphs were still weird and even made me, the original writer, confused when re-reading it.

So, after my revision, you can see that both WPs have a completely different sequence of

paragraphs. The ideas are showcased in a more logic way and each paragraph will have an

obvious thesis.

The second major revision I did in both paragraphs is on styles. Before going to colleges, I

preferred using long, complex sentences as suggested by my SAT teachers. I once thought that

the use of long sentences can help to make my essay looks more mature. For WP1, almost all the

sentences I wrote are extremely long. For WP2, situation is getting better, but I can still find

some long, redundant sentences. Consequently, in the final portfolio, I paraphrased these long

sentences are either broken up or paraphrased. Compared with the original submission draft, the

two writing projects will have more sentence varieties and easier to read.

The third major difference is on the addition of evidences. For both portfolios, there are two

types of evidences: evidences from reading materials and evidences from essays to be analyzed.

When writing previous writing projects, I did not realize how important the reading materials

were in terms of supporting my statement. Therefore, the addition of these materials was more

like to fulfill a requirement rather than to make it as an evidence. This wrong attitude towards

reading materials lead to an awful evidence adding manner. My addition of evidence did not set

any stages, and the contents following the evidences usually have no correlations with the
evidence (Stedman, 2011, p.247). This is really annoying for readers because it is hard for

readers to understand why I put evidence here. So, in the final portfolio, I rearrange almost

every piece of evidence from reading materials. I tried my best to fit each evidence into a proper

language scenario. The evidence from reading materials in final portfolio should be more

coherent with contents around them.

As a physics major student, I may not have intense writing assignments in the future, but I still

need to face lab reports within next few quarters, and eventually I will write my own essays. This

class is my first-time experiencing college writing. It shows me what college writing looks like

and its requirements. With the knowledge of genre and discipline, and the detailed analysis of

essays in my discipline, I start to have a clear image of who my audiences are and what they

want. Also, equipped with all the technique learnt during classes and revision workshops, such as

the inclusion of evidences and different rhetoric elements, I am now fully confident that I can

write beautiful essays. My first college writing out of Writing 2 will be next quarter in Art

History 6B if I successfully get out from my waitlist. I am now looking forward to using all the

skills learnt in this class to compose an elegant art history essay.

In the end, I want to say thank you to you for leading us to college writing and help us improve

our writing skills. What you’ve taught us in class will not only be helpful in my future college

writing but even helpful after my graduation because writing will absolutely be an essential skill

in my future works and life.

Wish you a happy Christmas and enjoy your winter break!

Sincerely

Hanjie Wang