Zhou Zhuang (Joe)

Allison Bocchino

Writing 2

15 March 2021

Writing 2 Reflection
As I look back on this quarter, I can see my improvement as a reader and a writer.

Throughout the quarter, I have learned how to be a reader and a writer by studying for

a wide range of reading materials and lectures. Before taking this course, I have not

realized that there are so many reading strategies that are not only beneficial for

understanding the reading materials, but helpful for writing. Reading like a writer

teaches me that when reading a new material, I am supposed to be focus on

identifying some of the choices the author made and the technique he used and

deciding if these techniques can be integrated into my own writings.1 Writing 2 is not

my first university level writing course, but it is the first course that points out the

main purpose of reading. Before this course, the reason why I read is to do the quizzes

with multiple choices and short answers. I used to believe that the only reason I read

is to understand what the author tries to tell me. I thought If I was able to answer

every question in the quiz/exam, I was a good reader. But this course makes me

realize that reading is not just reading, but a process of becoming a good writer. After

writing the drafts and revising the writing projects of this course, I am confident to

say that I am on the way to becoming a passionate reader who can interact with text

and make predictions of authors’ purpose, and thus becoming a creative writer.

Before this course, the structure of all of my writing assignments looks the same,
1.Mike Bunn, “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing, Vol. 2, 71 - 86. Parlor Press,
2011.
but this course shapes me into a creative writer by learning different discourse

communities and genre conventions. Looking back on my previous writing

assignments, I notice that most of my writing follows the structure of the

five-paragraph essay. This type of writing asks writers to write an introductory

paragraph that states the thesis, three body paragraphs that support the thesis

statement, and a conclusion to sum up everything mentioned in previous paragraphs.

This writing style made me be less creative and led to the lack of analysis and

argument. While on the contrary, now I am able to make detailed analysis and

arguments and know the purpose of my writing. I no longer use the five-paragraph

essay template and begin to think of what type of writing should I write for a specific

writing assignment, who is my targeted audience, and which genre I should use to

communicate with my audience. Thanks to a range of reading and lectures in this

course, now I am able to identify characteristics of different genres and their targeted

audience, and pick the right genre for my writing.

Looking back on my journals and two writing projects I have written in this

course, I would like to define my writing style as narrative, informal, and expository.

When writing the weekly journals, I preferred to include my personal experience as a

writer and my thoughts of the readings to express my arguments and opinions. For the

writing projects, I would like to use basic words and phrases in my sentence to help

readers understand my arguments. Besides word choices, I tended to explain the

concepts introduced by authors of academic articles and described their research

process and findings, which results in adding some unnecessary details for my WPs
2. Allison Bocchino, "WP2 Feedback.” writing 2: Academic Writing, 17 February, 2021.
3. Stedman, Kyle. “Annoying Ways People Use Sources.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol.2, 242 - 256.
Parlor Press, 2011.
When working on my portfolio and revising my WP1, I realized that I spent too much

time summarizing the articles. What the reader want to know is how and why the

academic articles are written regarding their discourse communities and genre

conventions. 2 Except for this, I also need to use chicago-style footnotes to cite the

course readings and my selected academic articles, instead of the MLA in-text citation

as I did in WP1. Therefore, I removed the first two body paragraphs that summarize

the articles and focused on analyzing the reason why each article uses different

research methods as a result of their genre conventions. I added the explanation of the

research method:”action research” to illustrate why the education articles use this

research method and how it reflects on the discourse community of education. For

paragraphs that analyze how each author collects data for their research, I added

evidence to emphasize that the data collection process of both articles to demonstrate

that the education article uses first-hand evidence while the business article uses

documentary evidence.

Besides revising WP1, I also revised the genre translation and the reflection on

WP2. In order to make my translation look more like a blog, I visualized my

translation by adding the elements of a blog like “Home”, “About”, “Contact”, “Log

in”, “other posts”, “like” buttons and other features of a blog. I also provided the icon

of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to imply that readers can share this blog to social

media if they want. In addition to visualizing my translation, I removed a lot of graphs,

tables, and research process descriptions to make the content of my translation sounds

less academic. Except for revising my translation, I also made a lot of changes for the
reflection. To specifically describe my translation process, I cited other blogs I found

online to express the process of my translation. For instance, I used the subheadings

of DaveDodgson’s blog to explain how to make a blog concise and appealing. I

enjoyed the process of revising my reflection on genre translation because it gave me

a great opportunity to look at my own thoughts and emotions. Although I had

significantly changed my translation, I would like to learn more jargon of a blog to

make my translation sounds more natural.

The portfolio has reflected how I improved as a writer, especially the use of

citations. Before taking this course, the only format I used is MLA format. I used to

believe that MLA format is enough for university level writing because it is accepted

by every course I have taken before. But writing 2 introduces the Chicago Style

footnotes, a citation that I have never used before. Besides the citation format, I also

learned the purpose of citations and how to use them properly. People always use

citations in a way that annoys the audience3. Although my use of citations for WPs

may have some problems, I am still pleased to see how I used citations to support my

arguments and improve the quality of my essays. Now I am not citing sources because

the instructor asks me to do so, but citing sources to make my arguments persuasive

and improve the credibility and reliability of my evidence. This improvement is

noticeable for the reflection I wrote in WP2, where I quoted a lot of blog examples

and cited what I learned from course reading materials to demonstrate the difference

between an academic article and a non-academic blog, and how I worked on my genre

translation.
 On the whole, writing 2 has changed my way of reading and therefore greatly

improved my writing. Every journal I wrote in this course was a reflection of the

reading materials I finished in that week, and these readings made me enjoy reading

and writing. I am glad to see the improvement of my reading and writing strategies,

and I would like to use the reading strategies I learned for my future course readings

and use them to benefit my writings.

Bocchino, Allison, "WP2 Feedback.” writing 2: Academic Writing, 17 February, 2021.

Bunn, Mike, “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing, Vol.

2, 71 - 86. Parlor Press, 2011.

Stedman, Kyle. “Annoying Ways People Use Sources.” Writing Spaces: Readings on

Writing. Vol.2, 242 - 256. Parlor Press, 2011.