Castillo Munoz 1

Pedro Castillo Munoz

Professor Haas
WR 39C
June 3, 2015
Last Writing Chapter: Writing 39C
Sometimes, you have to look back in order to understand things that lie ahead. This
quote by American writer Ivonne Woon represents the foundation to my essay and my
thought process throughout this quarter. As expected, Writing 39C proved to be more
challenging than my past writing classes, but it also helped me developed many new, useful
skills and improve skills transferred from past classes. Having taken professor Lynda Haas
for WR 37, I knew persistence was going to be key to my success in this class. In
comparison with WR 37, Writing 39C is an argument- and research-based class with a strong
emphasis on social media. It focuses on deepening understanding of rhetoric and
communication in order to help students learn how to conduct scientific research and evaluate
various sources efficiently. The professor assigns two major essays that require the student to
fully engage in the subject matter, in my case the human-animal relationship. The historical
conversations project helped me enrich my research skills and it exposed me to scientific
papers while also teaching me how to utilize these sources to make researched arguments. In
the other hand, the advocacy project enlightened how social media, a form of communication
I had always used for recreational purposes , could be used as a potential resource for
argumentation and persuasionas a potent sources of information. Lastly, another big
component of writing 39C with professor Haas was review and revision. Students are
encouraged to give feedback for almost every assignment and in return receive feedback from
students and professor Haas. In general, this course taught me many useful techniques that I
am sure will be able to apply later in my educational and professional career.

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One of the main goals of Writing 39C is to expose students to scientific texts that call
for new readings processes and analysis techniques. All of the writing and composition
classes I have taken so far in my life used either novels or scholarly articles about a topic of
interest; before WR 39C, however, I had never been exposed to scientific articles, and neither
had I created a researched text. The general articles that I had dealt with thus far typically had
some bias in the way the evidence was presented and how arguments were made.
Furthermore, the structure was very similar to essays that my peers and I would write as class
assignments. As a result, finding and understanding the required sources for the HCP was the
most challenging part of the assignment. In my ePortfolio there is a section that contains all
the scientific articles I annotated and used, not only for the HCP but for the advocacy project
(AP) as well. In order to collect these sources, I first had to learn how to target scientific
articles that could be useful in creating researched arguments. I was introduced to very
specific databases, such as Web of Science, that contain mostly research papers published by
experts of various fields. Additionally, WR 39C helped me develop the habit of being curious
and creating a list of keywords to search on the engines and databases. For example, instead
of searching monkey experimentation, I learned to be more specific and use language such
as nonhuman primate experimentation. This strategy facilitated the process of finding
scientific articles and connecting them together to form a credible researched argument.
Besides the research component of the HCP, the incorporation of a dialogue and
timeframe within the essay was also a very challenging, yet rewarding, piece of this project.
When drafting the HCP, my understanding of rhetoric and communication was put to test. In
order to connect all my sources effectively and chronologically, I first had to understand the
sources and the way in which the information was being transferred. As I read more,
identifying the rhetoric of the piece work became easier, to the point where I connected ideas
from different articles as I read. I believe this ability was a product of the Connect

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Assignments and techniques that scholars/scientists utilized. More specifically, in order to be

able to understand the material I needed to take several steps in a specific order. First, I
started to look at the titles and subtitles of research papers and try to predict what the
chapter/section might discuss. Moreover, I began to highlight the first and last sentence of
every paragraph as I skim read chapters. Lastly, I would make notes of specific things as I
read, such as examples, analysis sentences, references to other sources, etc. In brief, exposure
to connect assignments and scientific databases helped me develop reading techniques that
allowed me to fully understand scholarly material and connect the materials in a way as if the
scientists were having a conversation themselves.
The second big assignment of this course (the AP) was broken into several sections;
each section aimed to improve a specific aspect of the students writing skills. The first part
of the advocacy project was to create a social media campaign to advocate an issue that was
related to the HCP topic selected. The purpose of the social media campaign was to raise
awareness about animal studies issues researched in class by using social media and
rhetorical arguments. As one can see under the social media tab in my ePortfolio, my group
and I decided to advocate the use of cruelty-free products by transferring knowledge to our
UCI audience about the experiments that animals are subjected to and about products that
could replace those that are not cruelty-free. As simple as the Cruelty-Free Anteaters
campaign might sound, my group and I encountered various obstacles during the week of
campaigning. In the beginning, for example, I was challenged by my lack of creativity and
confidence to help my group get started. The lack thereof, however, helped me become openminded and encourage my group members to share their ideas and make proposals. Sharing
our thoughts helped us be creative as a group because everyone had ideas that we put together
to make our campaign successful. For example, together we created a 7-day plan that outlined
what our campaign accomplished every day of the week of campaigning. We assumed

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responsibility of the activities that were assigned for each day and committed to make sure
the events were completed. Hosting several events and using media to its maximal potential
throughout this campaign exposed me to the a new, virtual world in which, just like in
writing, there is a main purpose/argument that is supported by evidence and transmitted using
rhetorical principles. Furthermore, this assignment helped me assess the efficacy of social
media to raise awareness and educate people, thus being able to make an impact all around
the world! As a result, this section served as a model to be followed when drafting the
advocacy essay.
The second part of the advocacy project is a researched essay that puts all the sections
into one, defines the animal studies issue, and presents a solution for this problem. More
specifically, the essay is divided into four sections: literature review (HCP), counter
philosophies, description of the problem, and solution of the problem. The literature review
section is a revised portion of the HCP essay that contains the most relevant information
pertaining the research topic, in my case nonhuman primate consciousness and
metacognition. The counter philosophies section consists of questions created based on the
scientific knowledge from the HCP and the questions are spread throughout the essay. The
last two sections work together so that the problem is introduced from a specific point of
view and a solution to the problem is given based on this same perspective. In short, the
purpose of this essay is to combine all the pieces of research and work together, while also
fusing all of the skills acquired/developed throughout the quarter in order to create a
researched text founded on credible sources and arguments. When drafting this researchedbased essay, I realized that in order to make a strong argument, one must structure and
integrate the evidence collected from research in a coherent way. This part was very
challenging because I had lots of articles and sources to pick from and make connections
with. In the end, I learned how useful it is to annotate sources and know the background of

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the source/article in order to be able to make strong connections between authors and content
of the texts. Furthermore, this project also taught me the significance of focusing on separate
sections of a long project. Drafting each section of the AP individually allowed me to
structure my argument more efficiently because the information was organized, as opposed to
having countless sources to place all over the essay. In general, this project helped me
become a better writer because through the process, my understanding of rhetoric and
communication were expanded and it automatically made me apply these concepts in
analyzing scientific articles to support my argument.
Ultimately, it is important to describe how useful it is to review and revise my essays
and other students as well. Peer reviewing was one of my favorite part of this course because
it enabled me to apply the techniques and skills that I have discussed above to my writing and
it enabled me to identify effect that these skills had on my writing. Although I had written
similar essays to the HCP and the AP in past classes, I still struggled with the body
paragraphs of my HCP because I did not set the authors in conversation. At this point, peer
review was very useful to me because my reviewers pointed out to me this lack of transition
among my body paragraphs. Additionally, my reviewers gave me very good feedback that
helped me narrow down the things that I needed to revise and give priority to, such as
establishing a timeframe and being less wordy throughout my essay. . Likewise, I made it my
responsibility to give my peers good, relevant feedback that could help them identify their
major flaws and work on improving them. In doing so, I mostly focused on content and
making sure the sources were used effectively to make the argument credible and coherent. In
doing all of this, I also learned the importance of summarizing and synthesizing and how I
can apply these when developing future researched-based compositions.
In conclusion, writing 39C was very successful in teaching me skills and literature principles
that will be of great use later in my career as a writer and engineer. I developed strategies to

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tackle academic and high-level research texts, absorb and understand the material in order to
make a strong argument. A new perspective was brought to my attention, which is to analyze
the rhetoric of, not only printed texts, but every communication that I encounter in my daily
life, such as social media. Being able to identify the rhetoric will help me understand what a
certain piece of literature, research paper, etc is trying to make me understand. Furthermore, I
learned to appreciate the concept of revision and providing feedback because it can improve
my writing skills. In the other hand, writing this essay allowed me to reflect on all of the
progress that I have made and it made me feel very proud and productive, mainly because I
would have guessed that one could learn so much from a writing class that last only ten
weeks. Now, I am determined to apply all of this concepts to every area that I possibly can
and hope that I can improve as I work my way through my college career. Special thanks to
Professor Haas for all of her efforts and willingness to help.