Contreras 1 Soledad Contreras March 11, 2014 Writing 37 Intensive Writing Professor Haas Final Reflection Essay Coming

into this class has been both an exciting and nerve-wracking experience. Writing 37 is the first writing class I take in college, so I wasnt sure what to expect and my nerves were due to the fact that writing hasnt always been my strongest topic. From the first day of class until now, I have improved tremendously in my writing skills. This class has specifically furthered developed my curiosity, openness, creativity, responsibility, flexibility and metacognition,-which are the Habits of the Mind we learned about during this course. When I was informed that our theme was going to be the Mystery Genre, I wasnt very excited because I had never engaged in a mystery novel or watched mystery movies for fun. This is when my curiosity about this genre sparked because I was willing to learn about it. I didnt know much about this genre, in fact, I had only heard of Sherlock Holmes a couple of times. To learn about the Genre Convention, we discussed the Four Stages of Genre Development which are: Primitive, Classical, Parodic, and Revisionist. We mainly focused on the Classical and Revisionist stages. In the Classical stage, the genre is at its peak and its extremely popular amongst the population. The conventions of the genre receive their fullest expression and the audience knows what to expect. We see this in Conan Doyles short novels, The Sign of the Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, which are the books we analyzed during this course to help us understand the mystery genre. The Revisionist stage focuses on genre films that reinforces the

Contreras 2 genre conventions established in the classical stage or changes it to suit the new audience, or in other words the rhetorical situation. To study this we were introduced to modern day mystery films like the Sherlock Holmes films, Psych, BBC Sherlock, Elementary, and House MD. We were responsible for analyzing the changes in the genre conventions established by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during the Victorian Era. My group and I chose the Sherlock Holmes films. To be able to understand the rhetorical situation of the mystery genre Conan Doyle wrote about, we did research and presented on the context of the Victorian Era, where it all began. The first essay we had to write in this class was about Conan Doyle. We were asked to either write an analysis of the Cultural or Historical Context in Conan Doyle, or an analysis of a mystery genre convention present in Conan Doyles novels. I chose to write about the specific convention of the three characteristics a detective must possess, which are observation, knowledge and deduction. I learned that Conan Doyle was the author that established most of the genre conventions for writing mysteries. From writing Textual Analysis I learned that it is very difficult to analyze without taking things apart and completely focusing on one part of the text at a time. Analyzing has always been difficult for me because I am good at explaining the overall picture but I have never been the best at analyzing when it comes to a text. I also learned that when writing academic essays, or any type of text, we must always be aware of our audience, that way the tone of our paper is adequate for the readers. Before this class I never paid attention to this concept of the rhetorical situation and now I realize it is a very important aspect of writing academic essays. The Conan Doyle essay was the one I decided not

Contreras 3 to fully revise because being the first essay I write in a very long time, it didnt come out very well written. I chose to revise the third paragraph because that was the paragraph where I analyzed the genre convention of observation and therefore because I need more practice analyzing, I decided to challenge myself to make a good analysis. The strengths of this revised third paragraph will be the part where I analyzed that he uses observation as a way to deduce and that is a scientific logical approach that Sherlock uses that allows him to come up with a conclusion. My Conan Doyle essay needed a lot of revision and it gave me practice for the second analytical essay we wrote which is put together much better and needs less revising. To continue, the second essay we wrote in this class was about the modern-day texts. We were responsible for analyzing the conventions present in the Conan Doyles stories that are now revised in the modern day texts. I chose to write about the Convention of the main detective and his sidekick. In the Conan Doyles novels, I observed how Sherlock Holmes is arrogant, serious, and unemotional. His sidekick, Dr. Watson, is the perfect professional British gentleman. In contrast, in the modern day films, Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, we can easily observe an increase of action adventure, comedy, and a bigger bond between Holmes and Watson, which appeals more to the 21 st century audience because they express more love, friendship, comedy and an overwhelming action adventure plot. From our focus of analyzing genre, I learned that conventions are elements that make one genre different from another. I can now more easily be able to analyze while reading and writing in the future instead of just viewing the overall picture. This second modern day essay is the one I decided to

Contreras 4 fully revise because I was surprisingly very interested in the movies and I was able to closely analyze a scene, thus making this my stronger essay. The greatest strengths of this essay are the introduction because I have a good thesis. The greatest weaknesses I would say is the paragraph where I am asked to analyze the bachelor scene where this convention is at play. I believe this is the most difficult part of the essay because we had to analyze every aspect of the scene like the lighting, sound effects, music, focus, angles and so on. If I had more time to work on this essay I would definitely focus on the scene analysis because this is what this class was mostly about and something I should get more practice on to further improve my analysis skills. Besides doing individual activities like writing analytical essays in this course, a lot of our work was done in groups. At the beginning of this course we chose groups. My group consisted of Linda, Lizette, and Bella. The first group project we did was a presentation on scientific discoveries and Criminology and Religion during the Victorian Era. We worked well together, especially because our communication was very good and also because I learned that if we split up the work load equally, it becomes simpler to finish efficiently without having conflict. From the first presentation I learned to never read of the screen when presenting, to make eye contact with my audience and to speak loud and clear. Our second presentation was about a genre convention of mystery. We chose to present about the convention of clues. From this collaboration my creativity sparked because I was able to come up with an interactive activity which was to bring puzzles to the class as a symbol of putting clues together. Form this group presentation I learned that we must support each other and listen to each others ideas and

Contreras 5 comments because two brains are better than one. Collaboration also means listening to each other to improve. We also presented on The Final Problem and on the Sherlock Holmes Films. Another group thing we did were peer-reviews, where two of our classmates would read our essays and critique them to make them better. I learned that one should make good comments on someones paper so that you can receive the same in return and thus truly improve one anothers essays. I also realized that after reading some elses paper, one is able to reflect on their essay and improve it. Throughout this course we also completed weekly connect grammar and language assignments. I didnt realize how incorrectly we can speak and write until I started doing these modules. After reviewing the data in my module I was able to conclude that I had the most trouble with Critical Reading: Paraphrasing and summarizing to understand a text. This is one of the most important aspects of this class and today I can say that summarizing is giving a brief explanation of a passage in your own words stating the main points, while paraphrasing is precisely giving a restatement of everything in your own words. Usually the length of a paraphrase is the same if not longer than the original passage and the summary is much shorter. I also had a lot of trouble with the module of Subordination and Coordination because I had never heard of these terms before and I really didnt know anything, so when he Fo cus round came around, it did a very good job explaining the differences and therefore I now know that subordination and coordination are ways of combining phrases clauses and words. This module of subordination and coordination is where I had the most growth because I learned

Contreras 6 the most. . I still need help in the area of fused run on sentences because I tend to do that a lot. Overall these modules were completely worth my time and I have gained more confidence when it comes to communicating, which is such an important aspect of any career and of life. The last thing we did in this class was the RIP Seminar, which was an overview of all the things we learned about our theme, the mystery genre. During the RIP Seminar, my main role was to play Mrs. Hudson, who was the apartment manager where Holmes and Watson lived. My other part was to buy and apply the blood on the people who were going to be playing the dead victims, so I applied red finger paint on Lizs shirt before we arrived so that it could dry before the seminar and I applied blood on Johns face right after he presented. I was also responsible for make-up so I took my make-up kit just in case anyone needed it but we only ended up needing the blood. For the preparation of the RIP Seminar I helped with the powerpoint presentation by gathering some pictures of the modern day Sherlock Holmes films. I especially gathered pictures for the movie. Sherlock Holmes: A game of Shadows. I also helped with the script for scene two with Linda and Liz. I was especially in charge of the dialogue between Holmes and Emma Stone as she is introduced into the mystery because that was the part I played. One of the things I believe went really well was the google document. It contained a lot of pictures and only a small amount of words describing the pictures which encouraged the presenters to look at the audience and not the screen as they spoke . From the
other class, I learned that the horror genre has evolved due to the fact that in ancient horror

movies, the virgins were the only ones who would survive and now we see that characters who

Contreras 7 are sexually active have a chance of survival. One thing that went really well in their presentation is that they were all very well dressed and that showed professionalism. Overall the RIP seminar was a great experience and, everyone did an amazing job. It was not only funny and engaging, but everyone worked as a group and it was noticeable that we worked well together. To conclude, writing 37 has taught me many skills that will come in handy in many of my future courses. I am now a better writer because from now on I will consider the rhetorical situation before writing an essay. Also, I am more aware of the genres and will continue to recognize different conventions which will make me a better analytical person. I have also improved my metacognition through this reflection essay because I am reflecting on everything I have done this quarter. One of the greatest areas of growth has been in my communication skills and presentation skills. I am now more confident when standing in front of a crowd. The connect models have increased my language and grammar. The way I work within a team is also an important aspect that I learned that will help me in my future endeavors. I must continue to further practice writing analysis because I can only improve from now on with practice. Overall this class was not only intellectually stimulating, but also fun and I go a lot out of it thanks to Professor Linda Hass.