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Dear Reader,

Over the course of my fall quarter at UCSB I have been improving my writing skills in

my Writing 2 class. I have been given two projects over the quarter which have challenged me to

explore new genres of academic literature and write pieces about topics I was previously

unfamiliar with. The first project of my portfolio, WP1, I was given the challenge of translating

a scholarly stem article ,answering a research question into a new genre. The initial research

article I chose discussed the impact of green exercise on mental health. I seized the opportunity

of having creative freedom and working outside my traditional academic writing, and chose a

blog post as my new genre. Why a blog post, you may ask? I had the intention to speak to a

broader audience, I identified an audience that would benefit from research on green exercise

and reached out to people interested in the improvement of their mental well-being.

The original piece delved into the scientific findings of green exercise and its positive

effects of mental health. In my translation, I extracted key points from the study and emphasized

their relevance to everyday life and mental well-being. I took the knowledge I learned from a

course reading , Kerry Dirk “Navigating Genres” and extensively researched the new genre for

my translation. Dirk goes on to explain that inorder to effectively write a work, you have to

understand what benefits a reader receives from your genre and the aspects that are

characteristic of that genre. I extensively researched the genre of blog posts and learned they are

fairly short, simple, and communicate to their audience in a conversational tone. Additionally,

they are written in a manner that is informative but entertaining at the same time. As well as,

the end of a blog post involved leaving the feeling motivated to apply the content of the post

into their life.

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I chose a blog post to engage my intended audience and drawing on the Dirk reading

incorporated a tone that was more conversational and included examples to make my points

seem accessible to my audience. In my research and venture of writing in the new genre, I

learned blogs prioritized simplicity and clarity, but made sure to uphold the same scientific

accuracy as the scientific research backing their claims. Therefore, no graphs or calculations

were included to convince my reader, but the points made and advice given in the blog is

supported by research of my primary sources' conclusions. There is an emphasis for my audience

to take action themselves and give green exercise a try, to see improvement in their mental

well-being. Furthermore, I pulled from another course reading “Reflective Writing and the

Revision Process: What were you thinking?” by Sandra Giles,which details how a writer should

outline their intention for their piece and in their revision process ask themselves if they have

successfully carried out those intentions with their writing and make revision accordingly. One of

my intentions for the post was to leave my reader feeling motivated to prioritize their mental

well being with green exercise. In order to carry out these intentions, I provided my reader with

examples of green exercise they can incorporate into their everyday life such as a nature walk or

gardening. Additionally, in the process of revising my initial submission for my portfolio I

realized my blog ended quite abruptly and left my reader without concluding remarks. Therefore,

I added a conclusion at the end of the post that spoke directly to my reader and summarized what

they had just read, and motivated them to step outdoors and apply the blog's content in their

everyday lives. I was really challenged by this project, but enjoyed being given the opportunity

to write a work that was very different from anything else in my academic career, and hope you

enjoy it as much as I did.

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I’m excited to share the details of WP2 of my portfolio, in which I discovered a scholarly

conversation in writing studies. In this assignment, I explored a genre and employed keyword

analysis and citation chaining to identify a scholarly conversation in writing studies that was of

interest to me. I settled on the question “what are effective teaching strategies to construct

literary skills in students?” as the foundation for my exploration of writing studies. The goal was

to imagine yourself recounting an interesting story you overheard at a party. The challenge was

to trace this conversation throughout various sources and translate this academic conversation

into a narrative that considers an audience that is not educated on the topic. I chose to have my

conversion take place by email. However, the project you are reading in a way is completely

reinvisioned conversation compared to my initial draft of the project. My first attempt was

formatted as a singular email, where I recounted a conversation overheard at a party, teachers

sharing their instructional strategies. Upon receiving feedback and considering how to revise my

draft for this portfolio, I chose to instead format my conversation as a series of multiple email

exchanges. With myself emailing as a staff of educators asking them to explain the teaching

strategy they would be utilized to build their students literacy skills in an upcoming academic

year. This allowed for each of my sources to be explained further, which I felt lacked in my

original draft. In my final portfolio, each teacher made it clear how they came to adopt their

teaching strategy, by discussing the source I found in my research process.

My research process for this project was quite efficient, as I utilized the skill of forward

and backward chaining to find my sources. I had never taken this approach to research before,

but I wish I would have been taught it sooner due to its effectiveness. I was able to find sources

that present various teaching strategies , in order to assign one to each teacher in my
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conversation. This greatly helps as I have never written about the field of writing studies before.

It was a completely unfamiliar genre, compared to the stem related papers my academic career

has been filled with. However, after completing this project I gained confidence in writing in a

diverse range of genres, and feel better equipped to do research in my future. Throughout this

assignment I placed an emphasis on clarity and creating a conversation that is meaningful to

someone who wasn’t originally a part of the academic discourse regarding literacy skills. I was

challenged throughout this project but learned many useful writing skills and gained a lot of

confidence in my writing skills that will benefit me.

My approach to writing in general has completely changed throughout the course of my

Writing 2 class. The first aspect to how my writing has changed that comes to mind is my writing

process. I now put a lot less pressure on myself when writing my first draft. I've always struggled

getting started and it hinders my writing process a lot. Often leaving me with less time to revise

because my first draft took a considerable amount of time to write, due to the fact that I was

trying to make it perfect on the first go around. I utilized the first order thinking concept taught

to me in a course reading, “Teaching two kinds of thinking by Teaching Writing” by Peter

Elbow. Engaging in first-order thinking encourages creativity without adhering to a rigid

structure, emphasizing the importance of freely expressing your thoughts and putting words onto

paper .Choosing to get word on the paper in my first draft, I held off on revisions. On future

drafts I was more critical , making revisions and analyzing what I had written for clarity. I found

this sets me up to have more than just one or two drafts , as I keep going back to my work I

notice different things and bring new ideas to my work. This thinking process greatly improved

my writing not only in my course but sets me up for future success, as I was never taught to have
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an extensive writing princess beyond being told to just double check my final submissions for

grammatical mistakes. This course has transformed my opinion on writing, being as most of my

academic career has been writing research papers on scientific topic, I feel my opinion of writing

was that it is to present and argue findings. In writing 2, I read and discovered many new genres

outside of the stem field, which was rewarding. In studying these new genres I learned that

written work is intended to speak to a specific audience and adheres to rules in order to do so.

My previous writing experience I have not had to consider my audience, it's always been my

professor who I am presenting research findings to. But, my study of genres and the writing

strategies that are characteristic of each genre have taught me to prioritize understanding my

audience and the rhetorical moves I make to effectively speak to my audience. For example, in

my writing project 1, the genre I worked with was a blog post, so I had to write in a manner that

was engaging and motivated my audience. The information I presented was concise and my tone

was conversational, a characteristic specific to the blog genre. I have to tell you one of my

favorite strategies I learned in writing 2 was backwards and forward chaining, a skill we learned

for our second writing project. A strategy that involves taking the primary source you found in

your research and utilizing it to further find sources related to your topic, both sources that are

published prior and following your primary source.It is a simple strategy that involves looking at

your primary sources works cited to see what research they examined to support their own, it

allows your to find related research for paper which is something I’ve always struggled with.

This is going to be very useful and applicable in my future academic career as I often write

research papers and need lots of sources discussing my research question.

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Best,

Hope Galvan
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Works Cited

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writings , vol. 1, Parlor

Press, 2010, pp. 249–262.

Giles, Sandra L., et al. Zemliansky, Pavel, and Colin Charlton. “Reflective Writing and the

Revision Process:What Were You Thinking?” Writing Spaces. Readings on Writing, vol.

1, Parlor Press, West Lafayette, IN, 2010.Elbow, Peter. “Published works by Peter

Elbow.” Everyone Can Write, 2000, pp. 471–499,

https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195104158.003.0028.