Tiffany Yin

Allison Bocchino

Writing 2

7 June 2020

METACOGNITIVE REFLECTION

Coming into college, I was most worried about my writing skills. I was never good at English

because it wasn’t my first language, and I felt ashamed for not taking Honors and AP English

courses during my time in highschool. Somehow, I opted out of Writing1, and I was honestly

shocked and was very anxious to take Writing 2 at UCSB. Knowing that I was taking a writing

course online kept me up at night because I felt unprepared for the amount of writing and

expectations I had to meet. However through informative recorded lectures and dense reading, I

have learned so much about writing in Writing 2 than I have ever in my educational career.

The first reading assigned, “How to Read Like a Writer”, I learned that I must read in

order to get better at writing. Bunn states in his writing that, “You are reading to learn about

writing”. He claims that when reading, it is important to read like a writer. When reading like a

writer, we are not reading for information, but for writing structure, word choice, and techniques

we can use towards our writing in the future.1 We are reading to learn about writing. This one

sentence was repeated by adults in the past, but after reading the whole chapter, it made sense to

me that this process is “automatic”. Just by reading with a writer mentality, you already improve

your writing in the slightest amount.2 This was a first step into improving my writing. I am a

1
Bunn, Mike. “How to Read like a Writer”. Parlor Press. 2011. Page 72

2
Bunn, Mike. “How to Read like a Writer”. Parlor Press. 2011. Page 72
visual learner; I learn things best by seeing examples by others, so after reading all the course

assignments with a writer mindset, I was able to retain the knowledge and apply that to my

writing through weekly journal assignments and the writing projects.

Another lesson I learned and applied to my writing is to consider who I am writing to.

Through Karen Rosenberg’s “Reading Games”, I learned about several strategies for rhetoric

reading, but the most influential one in my writing was taking the audience in consideration since

this was something I never even thought about approaching a piece of writing. For example, the

style and tone I write in varies for the specific assignment. For Writing project 1, my audience

was just my mentor and classmates. We are all in the same writing discourse and we are all

knowledgeable about writing. Therefore, I had to make the choice to sound formal to be on the

level. For Writing project 2, I translated my academic article into a magazine article. These are

two very contrasting genres since the audience of each is opposite. While academic articles are

often read by experts, magazine articles are read by anybody: scholars or not. Therefore, I wrote

in a more casual tone and tried my best to sound modernistic and interesting throughout the text

but especially in the title because it reveals to the reader how I will approach the whole subject.3I

made the title a question so it lurs the readers in while giving a hint of what the article will be

about.

Even though I thought I was improving as a writer, my writing projects earned a lower

grade than I imagined. In writing Project 1, I did not do a fine job of analysing.This issue

stemmed from me not explaining my thought process enough. There was no issue with the

information I provided since I chose to discuss it to back up my thoughts. However, I realize I

3
Rosenberg, Karen. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources”. Parlor Press. 2011.
Page 215
was not putting those thoughts into words enough which made each paragraph seem pointless. I

received a comment saying that while reading through paragraphs, the reader felt confused on

where the information was going towards and how it felt “summative rather than argumentative”.

After highlighting and grouping my information into four categories: point of the sentence,

quotes, analysis, and point of the paragraph, I visually saw how the majority of the information

provided in my writing were quotes and points are barely any analysis. Some of the paragraphs

did not even have analysis! This moment was very shocking to me since I thought I was

providing relevant information as evidence to prove a point. Only 15% of each paragraph was

analytical thinking. Even though this scared my pride, I will now always remember to back up

my evidence with a good amount of clear analysis so I do not want to confuse my readers. I

would categorize my past self as an “incomplete” writer. I wasn’t putting in enough of my

insight onto paper--- even though I did have that information to back up in my head. However,

after visually recognizing my flaws and applying my knowledge to my next round of revising, I

would define myself as a “cautious” writer---- I go back and reread as I write in order to see if

my information is backed up by evidence and analysis. This was the most memorable task I’ve

done in any writing class because it will be applicable to any writing assignments in the future

and it really helps me visually see the balance of information to analysis within my work. As a

visual learner, this was very helpful and memorable to me; I will continue to revise my writing in

this way!

In the first submission of my Writing Project 2, I completely misinterpreted the prompt

and was unable to submit what was asked of. I made a mistake of translating my Writing Project

1 instead of translating the genre of the primary source I chose. This resulted from me being
careless when reading the prompt. I never want to make that mistake again. I will take this

mistake as a reminder to myself to double check the prompt and check before and after finishing

the assignment. Other than that mistake, I was proud of the genre translation I did and especially

happy with the way I explained the thought that went through my head with my writing

convention. However, when revising, I made sure that every sentence I wrote had a clear

purpose. I reformatted some sentences from the end to the beginning for better organization and

clarity. I did not want my reader to have to feel confused reading it in the final submission. I did

get a bad grade on my first submission, but I am now proud of the work I’m submitting for these

reasons.

My lack of analysis is the result of me having difficulties putting my thoughts into words.

Even when I argue in person, I feel that I could never win a verbal fight because it takes longer

for me to process my thoughts into words. I recognize that this is a weakness I am having when

speaking, so from now on, I plan on taking argumentative writing as an opportunity to practice

formatting and organizing my thoughts for clarity. No matter what the genre of writing, I have

the privilege of taking time and sorting out my thoughts into wording that is more clear and

powerful. I know that I have the creativity and ideas in my head, but failed in the beginning to

state it and let the audience know. From now, I will now focus to improve most on practicing

backing up my claims with clearer personal insight.

Writing 2 was a very memorable course as a student. I learned not only skills for writing

but also thinking and cautiousness through trial, feedback, and error. I am thankful for these

qualities I gained because I will carry everything on to my other academic courses and through

my future career.
Works Cited

​ age 71-85.
Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” ​Readings on Writing. P
Parlor Press. 2011.

Rosenberg, Karen. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources.Pages 210–220.
Parlor Press, 2011.