Liu 1

Sinclair Liu

Professor: Katya Lopatko

Writing 2 (section 1600)

19 March 2023

Reflective Essay

Throughout the writing process, writing has forced me to think and observe how the world

works. And the revision process is like a mirror that allows me to observe my behavior, gain a

deeper understanding of myself as a writer, gradually discover my shortcomings and try to

correct them. But the process of self-reflection, while valuable, is not easy, as Harris says of it:

"Revising is the sort of thing that is fairly simple to describe but very hard to do well -like

playing chess, or serving in tennis, or teaching a class" (99).

First of all, regarding the WP1 essay, my thoughts were rather confused when I first wrote

it. When I finished the genre translation, I couldn't help but think about the YouTube video while

writing the essay. As a result, my essay focused more on describing the difficulties and negative

emotions I encountered while creating the video, thus neglecting to summarize the content of my

original academic article and missing the explanation of some in-text citations. In addition,

through peer review, which I think is the most helpful method for revising, my classmates'

suggestions allowed me to find some ambiguous phrases in the paper. Therefore, my major

revision for WP1 is to add an overview of the original academic article, add explanations to the

citations, and improve those ambiguous statements. Secondly, I am satisfied with the content of

WP2 compared to WP1. Because the reading difficulties discussed in WP2 were personally

experienced, I was able to think very clearly when I was writing. However, after reading the

content I wrote over and over again, I realized that my writing did not connect with the audience
 Liu 2

I was looking for, i.e. it did not resonate with the reader. At the same time, the articles did not

indicate who the readers of the content would be. This phenomenon is explained by Williams in

his article as a lack of understanding of the style of the article and the prevalence of the situation

"It is a problem that has afflicted generations of writers who have hidden their ideas not only

from their readers but even from themselves" (1). Therefore, indicating audience groups and

making connections in content became the main direction of correction for WP2. Next were

some questions about format and organization. I chose to create WP2 in a magazine genre, and it

was the first time I learned specifically about the format of magazine articles. The first problem I

faced was that when my document was presented as a Word document it was normal, but when it

was presented as a PDF document the formatting would change. But when I finally uploaded it

to Weebly as a Word document, the problem did not exist. Regarding the organization of the

article, I broke the long paragraphs of the article into several short ones. Through the feedback I

got from the assignment, I learned that the paragraphs in a magazine article should not be too

long so that they can help to catch the reader's attention. I also added some pictures to make my

magazine article look more like a magazine article. Throughout the revision process, I liked my

work on WP2 the most to increase the connection with readers. And designing the look of the

magazine is something I still want to improve.

The most important thing I have learned in this quarter year is the genre translation

activity in WP1. Before writing2, I thought that writing was only limited to articles, and I

thought that I was only taking writing classes or completing writing assignments to fulfill my

college requirements and that in reality, I only needed to speak, not write. The Genre translation

activity made me realize that writing is used everywhere in real life, but only in different genres.

When I chose Youtube Videos as my genre, I realized that it was not as simple as I thought.
 Liu 3

When the genre changed, the content changed, but there were ways to make sure that its meaning

remained the same, as well as to consider whether it would capture the attention of the audience I

was expecting my purpose, and my context, all aspects I had never considered before. In

addition, while reading the course readings I came across a quote by Giles that woke me up

"Reflection helps you to develop your intentions (purpose), figure out your relation to your

audience, uncover possible problems with your writing processes, set goals for revision, make

decisions about language and style, and the list goes on" (193). This made me realize that I

should not maintain the status quo but find ways to change myself. So I did some deep soul-

searching and tried my best to make a Youtube video, and although the quality of the final video

was not perfect, I learned a lot from this activity and became much more serious about my next

activities.

As a writer, I think my weakest point is my language ability, that is, my English is too

poor. In my reflective essay in WP1, I mentioned that "I had the fantasy of presenting this

academic journal perfectly with humorous and funny words and dynamic I had the fantasy of

presenting this academic journal perfectly with humorous and funny words and dynamic

graphics." The reason it was a fantasy was that I knew I couldn't create a video that was relevant

and interesting to the content of the article. The article was about economics, and I knew I didn't

know any interesting facts or authentic expressions. Or I know it but I don't know how to express

it in English and the translation software doesn't convey the meaning I want to convey. Secondly,

a lack of creativity is also a weakness of mine. I used to think that I couldn't come up with

original ideas because the topics were too difficult or the requirements were too tricky, and I

rarely thought about my problems. But after studying for a whole quarter, I realized that it was

just my lack of knowledge. After I went through various writing assignments and consulting
 Liu 4

materials, I was able to unconsciously push myself to keep learning, and these weaknesses

gradually stopped threatening me.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the gains I made throughout the semester. At the

beginning of the semester, I only set myself the goal of improving my creativity in writing, but

this goal was superficial. As I reached this goal, I created more goals, and invariably gained extra

and eventually reached the goal I started with. Even though this class is over, I hope I can face

my shortcomings and keep reflecting on myself so that I can slowly improve myself in the

future.
 Liu 5

Works Cited

Giles, Sandra L. "Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?."

writingspaces (2010): 191.

Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How to do things with texts. University Press of Colorado, 2017.

Williams, Joseph M., and Joseph Bizup. Lessons in clarity and grace. Pearson, 2014.