Montana Kearns, WRIT2, Fall 2015

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Cover Letter
Dear Matt,
These two essays are based off of reworked essays from my Writing 2 class at the
University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). In Writing 2, we do three writing projects
(WPs) that prepare us for writing in college. The purpose of Writing Project 2 is to analyze
UCSBs Music 11: Fundamentals of Music classs (within the music discourse community)
rhetoric, limitations, purpose, and use of evidence. In WP2, I present the argument that music
fluency is most effectively taught through the rhetorical practices of memorization, repetition,
visual representation, and aural practice. With this argument, I hope to inform readers of an
overview of the music class, should they choose to take it. My intended readers are students that
are interested in taking UCSBs Music 11 class. In addition to WP2, WP3 is also included in this
portfolio. The purpose of Writing Project 3 is to create a genre translation using the skills that
Ive learned in Writing 2 then explain what I did, how, and why I did it with the translation as
evidence. In WP3, I plan to argue that Writing 2s instruction of rhetoric, genre and conventions,
and discourse community has given me the tools to translate academic information into
something that is easy to understand as well as enjoyable to learn. With this argument, I hope to
demonstrate skills that Ive learned from Writing 2. My intended reader is another student who
plans to take Writing 2 next quarter.
Writing 2 has been a very beneficial class to me this quarter, as I have learned many new
concepts, improved on skills I already had, and have changed my ways of thinking when it
comes to writing. Ive learned quite a bit through the process of writing and revising the WPs
and have picked up on many things that I will take from this course as I approach new writing
projects in the future.
The process of drafting WPs introduced me to first-order and second-order thinking. Ive
learned that I personally can really benefit from the first-order thinking process of throwing out
all of the information onto the paper (unorganized, messy, and all) then fixing it up after. I used
these processes in both of my WP revisions, meaning that the end product is clean but the first
draft was what I would call gross. Speaking of gross papers, I now know that it is perfectly
okay to write a shitty first draft because even when its terrible, something good may come
from it. These good things may come from personal revision, and/or reader review. I used
reader review in class and with some peers in order to hear the reader reading my paper out
loud. This really helps me in understanding what my papers flow is like to someone other than
myself. In addition to that, Ive picked up on a really cool reviewing technique where one agrees
with every claim, then disagrees with every claim, I went through and did this with my WPs to
try and strengthen my argument. I also learned what argument is and why its important.
In addition to the above, Writing 2 has also taught me what a peer-reviewed journal is and
where to find one. I had no idea they were a genre of their own! We do a lot of work with genre
and conventions so I know a ton on that the majority of the class seemed focused on those.
Now, I feel that I can easily point out the conventions of any genre. The main thing with that is
having the right conventions present so that the work fits the proper genre, one of which the
audience will appreciate. Its all about the audience, and the audience likes to read easy. Reading
easy means having a nice flow in the paper with correct index and stress. I now know how
important index and stress are in the flow of writing as it is a huge help in convincing the reader.
Unfortunately, index and stress is something I dont have completely understood yet. What I do
understand, however, is quoting! Ive gotten some nice practice on paraphrasing and quoting

scholarly articles as well as making connections between different strategies of writing and
questioning why certain decisions were made (after reading How To Read Like A Writer). In
other readings, weve touched on some grammar, diction, and syntax and mechanics, however
not nearly as much as anything else; but I still feel like Ive gotten better at wording and also at
punctuation. All of which have helped me with my final portfolio. For my final portfolio, I
chose to revise WP2 and WP3. I chose those two WPs mainly because those are the two that I
got the best grades on, they were the most recent so the ideas are still somewhat fresh in my
mind, and I was far more interested in those. In revising them, I kept my data, reorganized it to
fit my new argument, and completely changed my audience.
For WP2, instead of writing to Mr. Wilson, I targeted a second quarter undergraduate student
who is about to take the class that I wrote about (Music 11). In that, I wrote to the student
directly, telling him/her what is important to pay attention to in the class and what the music
community deems necessary to know to be part of the discourse community. Since there is a lot
of information to that, it was very difficult for me to cut down on length, as you can probably tell
that I love being as wordy as possible. To do this, I did my best to remove extra words, take out
unnecessary details, and get to the point quickly. I also changed my argument a bit to better
reflect my new audience (the student). In addition to that, I explained what students need to
know to be successful in the class and what to expect. After reading my paper, I hope that the
student would be knowledgeable about how the class runs, whats important, and feel that they
know exactly what theyre getting them self into in taking this class.
For WP3, I again, changed my audience from Mr. Wilson to a student, but this time, to
one that is taking Writing 2A next quarter who wants to know what the class has taught me and
how Ive applied it. In that, I had to change my argument and made sure to stress all of the
techniques that I used in my translation and tie it back to what Writing 2 taught me. I focused
much less on the academic article, cut down on my description of the conventions, had to be
slightly less thorough with the previous and new expected audience, did not mention class
readings as much, and didnt talk much about specific examples that I included and left out. I
hope that after reading my paper, the student will have some excitement about what they will
learn in the class, or at least see that it will actually teach them something useful.
In both of my WPs, I did my best to be as clear and concise as possible since my page length
was reduced significantly. I defined jargon related to Writing 2 so that someone who hasnt taken
the class yet can understand what Im talking about. However, I chose not to define every single
term related to the music in WP3 as that would make the paper exceed the cap, any student
interested in the subject should take the time to look them up. I also left out a lot of other
information that was in my original WPs; for example, in WP2, I included different levels
within the discourse community of music and different ways of writing in the community (music
notation, textbook, peer-reviewed journals). I chose to leave these things out because it was no
longer essential to the prompt and would exceed the cap. I didnt need to specifically talk about
the way the music discourse community uses rhetoric in different texts, instead, I had to inform a
student what kinds of texts the class uses for persuasion. To be completely honest, I think that
the page cap really hurt my potential (not saying it wouldve been incredible, but going from six
pages to three and trying to include more evidence and detail was difficult). I think I need to
seriously work on concision. I hope that I was able to answer the prompts in full with sufficient
evidence to support it.
I plan to take quite a lot of what I learned from this course as I approach new writing projects
in the future. First and foremost, introductions in general. What Ive learned in Writing 2 about

how to write an introduction has completely altered my way of doing so. I will also take with me
how important audience is and filling the conventions needed to fit a genre, how to revise and
edit papers, and the work ethic of constantly writing an essay. Something that really stuck with
me was my instructors words, writers make the best lovers (something along those lines as he
himself couldnt remember his exact quote) because theyre always figuring out what the other
person audience wants and does what they can to satisfy it. From now on, I will look at writing
in that way. Ive learned a lot in Writing 2 about writing an essay, but also how to reflect through
metacognition, and what it means to revise something. I found out that before this class, my
idea of revising was keeping the exact same work with little to some improvement. I know now
that often, revising from the first draft to the final may include a complete re-write with the same
data. The only thing I wish we couldve gone over more is concision, rhetoric, and index/stress.
Other than that, I thank you, Matt, for all of the writing tools youve given me!
Best,

Montana Kearns
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