Dear professor

In this semester, I learned a lot of writing skills. The most impressive writing skills is
to create cohesion and coherence.

In the beginning of spring courter, I have troubles in writing essays. I always be very
ambitious when writing the outline of my paper. I think they will work well. However,
I got stuck when I try to change these short sentences into logical paragraphs. I
extends the short sentences in my outline, but they do not flow as smoothly as I
expected. When I finish my writing and return to it after one week, I found difficult to
follow my own writing. They seem like piece of claims. They work well individually
but did not have much connection with each other. Sometimes, even after I changed
them and I am confident about my logic. The professors still think the sentences does
not have a good connection.

After reading the William’s article about the importance of cohesion and coherence in
academic writing. I understand the problems in my writing. I made assumptions on
my audience and skip some of my logic. For instance, in the project 2, there is a
paragraph talking about the content of the brochure. In that paragraph I start with
“What content is required for the brochure is an important question I need to solve.”
But then, I start to talk about oncologists could spend more time on their reading
while patients finish the brochure in minutes. These two sentences do not have a
reasonable connection between them. The lack of connection breaks down the
paragraph in to different unrelated sections and confused the audience. Similar
mistakes happen all around project 1 and 2. William’s article provide a simple but
effective solution to my problems: To start the sentence with something the audience
already knows in last few sentences.

I polish my projects using the writing skill I learn in weekly reading.

I work on the coherence of the first project. The comment of this project suggests it
could address to the reasons behind the conventions in oncology, and the essay does
not have a central idea. After reviewing my draft, I realized the sections are redundant
and not discussed in detail. I attempted to includes every aspects of academic writing
but failed to explore the reasons behind them. Firstly, I read more research and study
the reasons of the conventions in oncology. After researching, I decide to change my
thesis form “explore the conventions of oncology articles through three aspects:
citation, jargon and evidence” to “clinic trials have strong impact to methodology,
evidence and citation.” This is a better way to connect the feature of oncology
research and the purpose of this discipline with the conventions. Because I choose a
new thesis, I completely rewrite the first project. I add a paragraph to explain clinical
trials. In this new paragraph, I introduce the characteristic of clinical trials: involve
people, costly and taking a long time to complete. I also cut the paragraphs so that I
can explain the conventions in detail. I only keep three conventions, methodology,
evidence, and citation. For each convention, I explain their connection with the
characteristic of clinical trials and I also include more specific examples to support
my explanation.

For project 2, I focus more on the cohesion. This reflective essay is about the different
aspects to consider when converting an article into a brochure, so it does not need to
be as coherent as project 1. I change the sentence structure and rearrange the
sentences to make it more cohesive. I also make the essay more coherent. In the draft,
I write the use of shelf name when I talk about the tone of the brochure. It seems out
of place. In my final project I include it along with the explanation of jargon. Because
changing the names is like the explanation of jargon. It is more coherent. In addition
to the sentence structure, I cut off some less persuasive content and add more direct
quotation from my brochure to make my example more specific. For instance, in the
draft, I write “I replace the complex jargons of immune suppression into the locked
trigger.” This sentence make sense but it is not specific enough. In the portfolio
version, I include the text from the brochure and the original sentence in the article
and analysis the effect of using metaphor.

I really enjoy the writing projects. They are very helpful for academic writing. They
help me to view the academic articles in a different perspective. Before this lecture, I
only take note on the content of the articles and never focus on its conventions. After
this semester, I gain a lot of writing skill and knowledge about oncology research
when I write the essays.

Sincerely, Shiyin Wang