Dear Roberta,

I am so excited and thankful to write this reflection letter for the many outcomes I
gained this quarter under your help. I truly felt that I have learnt a lot of helpful skills
from this class, especially when I was working on the final course portfolio. In the
progress of this final project, I felt both enjoyable and stressful overall.
As you will see in my final portfolio, I revised all writing projects. However, I hope
my grade will be determined by the revised WP1 and WP2. It was a difficult decision for
me to make. Before I received my feedback of WP3, I have already almost finished my
revision plans for both writing projects. I did not satisfy too much to my result in WP3 so
that I revised WP3 as well. To be honest, I felt more confident in revising WP1 and WP3
to get a higher score, but the revisions in WP3 I made was less related to writing
strategiesI just needed to design the formats for two genres and revise several words
instead of put a lot of efforts on revising writing. Though I do hope to get a good grade to
finish this course, Id rather like to push myself in keeping consistent hard-working in
writings in this course so I chose to submit revised WP2 as part of my grade, which is the
most difficult project for me to revise. Therefore, I finally decided to choose revised WP1
and WP2 under pressure, but I really like my new revision in WP3, so I put it on my
website as well.
Because I revised all three writing projects, I felt that I went over the whole quarter
again during this revision progress. Though I am the author of these papers, I still made
myself as a reader to read through the whole paper, and came up with comments to
myself, just like doing a reader review alone. Referring to feedback from reader reviews
and you, I found that the common mistake in three writing projects was the unclear
statement. Sometimes, I wrote uncompleted sentences which could only convey half
meaning. However, the missing part was always just the key point to identify my ideas.
Therefore, I checked every sentences, from the thesis statements and topic sentences to
explanations of evidence, to clarify my statements. For example, to use more accurate
vocabularies and sentence structure grammatically, to fully explain the general ideas and
words, and so on. In addition to the clarity of the statement, I also made improvement on
my explanations to make my statement more persuasive. I strengthened my analysis by
specifying detailed significances on evidence and expanding my explanation. I tried to
make my paper more logic, just like a deduction that the conclusion comes out naturally
and powerfully. Therefore, in the revised version of these writing projects, I added more
my own words to state my ideas, which is the part I like most in the revision because
these works are full of my clear and direct thoughts, and I can also share my thought with
readers, which is the happiest thing as an author.
During the revision, your feedbacks and my partners comments were pretty helpful
to me. Sometime, I was stuck into one mode of thought and could figure out the weird
point. Others advice points out for me so that I can see my weakness more
comprehensively, which benefits me a lot. Through this progress, I not only practiced
skills of evaluating texts, but also reviewed the writing strategies in different genres so
that I would understand more deeply about my topics. For example, in WP1, I reviewed
how to recognize and identify the genre conventions in non-academic works, which is the
basic skill of this quarter. Because this project was aim to analyze and compare two
different genres, I learnt and understood the importance of audience for a successful
article at this time. In WP2, I learned that there are still many differences in the same

genre, such as the academic works, which is a deeper and further aspect of genre
conventions. From the examples I analyzed, I felt the selection of evidence in academic
works is pretty significant and can even improve a text by applying appropriate evidence.
Under such analysis where I got to know how an academic article organized, I not only
got to know the significant points when writing such an academic text in the future, but
also became skillful and less stressful when reading an academic work.
All I reviewed and learned got practiced in WP3 to apply these skills flexibly. I
believe that this chance of creating is a rehearsal for me to write articles in the future,
including academic papers. The most important thing as a writer I think is to predict
potential audience before creating. Though different texts and genres have different
purposes, all of them published are aim to convey authors own ideas. Therefore, clearly
identifying audience, using accurate conventions to satisfy readers expectations, authors
will reach their goals in their works for sure, which are also successful works.
All in all, Writing 2 is the most helpful writing class for me so far, because what I
experienced and learned in these projects is pretty practical and useful, and can be truly
applied into my future writing. By using these strategies flexibly in the future, I hope I
will not treat writing as a trouble any more.
Sincerely,
Fanqi Jia