Writing 2: Growing as a Writer

My writing portfolio consists of two writing projects, and this reflective letter. The first

project is a translation from an academic article to a genre of choice (I chose a children’s book). I

also included a reflective essay for this project, where I talk about the translation choices I made

and specific things I kept and deleted during the translation. In the second project, I researched

the topic of reading comprehension and paraphrasing, and how they relate. I then collected

several different perspectives on this topic from many articles and people and created a project

that reflected each perspective. I presented this discourse community as a Reddit thread, so it

could be easily read as a conversation about different perspectives about reading comprehension

and paraphrasing. I included articles that talked about strategies for reading comprehension and

paraphrasing, why these two things are beneficial to students, and how they can help one another.

In this final reflective essay, I will examine the choices I made for both writing projects in both

the genre translation and discourse community presentation. I will also talk about writing

strategies I have learned throughout this quarter during the Writing 2 course.

In my first writing project of genre translation, I made many changes from my second

draft to my third. One major piece of feedback was that the story of my children’s book was not a

typical story that would engage children, and that I should explore more traditional writings for

children. I realized that in order to complete this genre translation, I couldn’t keep the story that

was told in the academic article: a story about college students and how they started a major

project on feminism and how it became a trend around the world. I realized children would not

be interested, nor would they relate to college students, and wouldn’t be able to fully grasp the

project that was created. Instead, I chose to completely change the story but keep the main
message of the article, which was that feminism can look different on everyone and that

everyone can benefit from equal rights and being a feminist. I created a character named Emma,

who was a child just discovering feminism and what it means to be a feminist. She asked several

people in her life their stories relating to feminism, all of which had different stories and showed

that anyone can benefit from being a feminist - even men. She talked to her mother, grandmother,

and the male cashier at the gas station. She even noticed things in her own life that could relate to

sexism and unequal treatment based on gender, which I thought was very important for a

children’s book because it allows other children to relate to Emma’s character. Lastly, I changed

the formatting of the book to include shorter sentences, larger words, and more pictures that

related to the story. I added page numbers and simple words which allowed the book to be easily

read by kids who may have just learned to read.

In my second writing project, I also changed several things from my second to third

drafts. The major thing that I realized I needed to include in my conversation about reading

comprehension was a contrast between different opinions and different people. I realized I had

too many articles that agreed with each other, and not enough that had conflicting opinions and

thoughts. So, I searched up more articles that focused on reading comprehension and

paraphrasing and tried to find ones that had different reasons for why reading comprehension

and/or paraphrasing was beneficial and different strategies for going about these things. I also

deleted one part of the conversation that I thought was redundant and then added different

perspectives to the conversation.

Throughout this course, I have grown a lot as a writer. Both of the writing projects

assigned to the class were things I have never done before. From high school, we were usually

just assigned standard, 5 paragraph essays. I learned that academic writing can consist of many
things. I never knew what a discourse community1 was, let alone researching one enough to

recreate the conversation. I also had never studied genre and had never focused on specific

aspects of how to translate from one genre to the next.

In high school, we were often taught to write about three main points in 5 paragraphs,

with topic sentences and thesis statements. Through this course I now know that to truly write

meaningful words, instead of just filling a certain paragraph count, I can write as many

paragraphs, that may or may not have a thesis statement, and writing topic sentences that sum up

the main point of the paragraph instead of exactly directly reflecting the thesis statement.2

One main topic we studied in Writing 2 was that writing is a process and that drafts can

be written over and over to become better. I have struggled a bit with this topic, as I am very

used to creating one draft, editing it, and then never touching it again. I still find it hard to accept

that a piece of writing can always get better, although I have gotten better at it by being forced to

write three drafts for each of our writing projects. I also struggle with the mechanism of “shitty

first drafts”3 because I tend to always want to have a clear focus of the paper before I write it.

Usually, this works pretty well for me, but I have tried to focus less on making it perfect on the

first draft and just getting some words on the paper. I think I did this pretty well with the second

writing project when I put everything on the paper for the first draft and didn’t worry about

making it as clear as possible or writing everything in the best order. I learned I was able to

correct these things in the second and third drafts and that I didn’t need to make it perfect in the

beginning.

1
Understanding Discourse Communities - Writing Spaces. (n.d.).
https://writingspaces.org/sites/default/files/melzer-understanding-discourse-communities.pdf.
2
Vogan, R., & Plotnick, J. (n.d.). The Transition from High School to University.
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/transition-to-university.pdf.
3
Lamott, A. (n.d.). “Shitty First Drafts” Anne Lamott From: Bird by Bird.
http://www.asu.edu/courses/fms209/total-readings/lamott-shittyfirstdrafts.pdf.
 I will continue to work on my revision process as a writer and get used to seeing writing

as a process that can always get better. If I had more time, I would write many more drafts for the

two writing projects so I can further this idea of redrafting4. Although, in my other classes I can

utilize this tactic by writing first drafts long before the paper is due (instead of the day before), so

I have time to make many revisions on it.

4
Giles, S. L. (n.d.). Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You
...http://wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces1/giles--reflective-writing-and-the-revision-process.pdf.