Dear Professor Johnson,

In this portfolio, I revised Writing Project 2, writing in academic settings, and

Writing Project 3, genre translation, to show what I have learned over the quarters of
taking writing. For writing project 2, I wrote about writing conventions used in the
General Chemistry 1C class taught by Dr. Crisjoe Joseph. I chose this paper because
although my evidence was solid and organized clearly, my conclusion was weak
because it was redundant. Choosing to revise this paper for my portfolio gave me the
opportunity to improve my conclusion and fix up mistakes in the body of the
paragraph. For writing project 3, I translated the song “Hero of War” by Rise Against
into a letter to a friend from a soldier going through boot camp. I chose this paper
because I had the same problem of being redundant and having a weak conclusion as I
did in Writing Project 2, but I also chose this paper because there were parts in this
paper that did not make sense because of my word choice. Given the opportunity to go
back and revise this paper gave me the opportunity to strengthen my conclusion and
clear up any confusion found in the paper. From reading these revised papers, the
reader is able to see how my writing has improved and what I have learned from my
time in a writing class at UCSB.

Throughout my time in Writing 1 and 2 ACE with you, Professor Johnson, I

have learned a lot as a writer. I learned how to improve my writing skills and how to
transfer the writing skills I have learned in this class into other classes. The very first
thing that I learned was that the rule of “Don’t use ‘I’” (Reid, 3), which was very
prominent in high school essays, was a big reason that some essays were not strong in
their arguments. Learning how to involve using “I” into essays again was the start to
me growing as a writer. From then on, I learned how to read like a writer, respond to
scholarly articles, write a convincing argumentative essay, what a genre was by
analyzing the different writing conventions used in different genres, and how to
translate a piece of literature from one genre into another. I learned to read like a
writer from Mike Bunn’s article, “How to Read Like a Writer.” In this article, Bunn
talks about “carefully [considering] the choices the author made and the techniques
that he or she used, and then decide whether you want to make those same choices or
use those same techniques in your own writing” (Bunn, 73). I used this especially
used this strategy when it came to using sources in my essays. Responding to
scholarly articles and writing convincing argumentative essays was something I
learned in high school, but taking writing in college has taught me how to strengthen
my responses and arguments.

In Writing 2 ACE, a good understanding of genres was very important because

the writing projects involved having to analyze a genre, seeing how a subject used
different writing genres for its topics but had the same writing conventions, and
having to translate an artifact written in one genre into another. The definition of
genre was very broad to me before this class. I used to think of genres to just be
different categories of songs, movies, or books. It wasn’t until I read Kerry Dirk’s
article, “Navigating Genres” that I learned that something is categorized into a certain
genre because they have features in common (250). Learning about genres has helped
me with the writing projects in Writing 2 ACE. With this new understanding of the
definition of genres, I learned that chemistry uses the literacy practices of visual aids,
attention to detail, and specialized diction in their genres and was able to put this new
knowledge into writing project 2 by showing how these literacy practices were found
in an interview with the professor for a General Chemistry 1C class and a student
majoring in pre-chemistry, journal articles talking about chemistry, and observations
from lecture. Also using this new knowledge of how genres have writing conventions
in common, I was able to translate a song into a letter in Writing Project 3.

Coming into this class, I knew I had a lot of weaknesses in writing. For
example, I wasn’t good at backing up my evidence or writing a conclusion for a paper,
but because of this class, I was able to improve this. In high school, we were taught
not to use personal experiences in argumentative essays and only use sources, but
coming into college, I learned that personal experiences are acceptable and more than
welcome when arguing your point. Now, backing up my claims is one my strengths in
writing and when stating a claim, I am able to effectively support it with evidence. For
example, in writing project 2, I claimed that chemistry uses literacy practices such as
visual aids, attention to detail, and specialized diction and I was able to back this
claim up with examples shown in my research. Writing a conclusion is still a struggle,
because I don’t know how to conclude an essay without summarizing the points made
in the body paragraph. In doing so, my conclusions are abrupt and often times
repetitive. For example, in writing projects 2 and 3, my conclusions were repetitive
and abrupt but after revising these papers for the portfolio, I was able to revise the
conclusion into a clearer and non-repetitive conclusion.

Along with my weaknesses, I also knew I had some strengths. For example, I
knew how to write an introduction that attracted the reader and narrowed from a broad
sentence about the topic to the thesis of the essay. Along with being able to write a
strong introduction, another strength of mine was being able to write using specific
language. If I was to write an argumentative essay, I was able to write using strong
and persuasive language to convince the reader to take my side of the argument.

There’s no method to immediately fix weaknesses in writing, but you can work
at it to strengthen it. In order to work at my weaknesses in writing, I would write a
rough draft of the paper and go back during track changes after getting input from my
peers during peer review to see where in the paper I could improve. Since the in-class
piece written on the first day of class about my understanding of genres, my abilities
as a writer have improved significantly because I have learned how to effectively
transfer the skills learned in this class into writing in other classes because I
understand how genres are used within each subject.

If given more time, I would continue to work on strengthening my weaknesses

and the only way to do that is to continue writing. I would work on my
syntax/mechanics to work on my grammar. This can be hard because there are so
many grammar rules and it can be hard to have a paper free of grammar mistakes, but
with practice, my future papers can have fewer grammar mistakes.

At the beginning of Writing 1 ACE, I had despised writing and didn’t feel like
it would be useful to me because I was a biology major, but my time in this writing
class has taught me to appreciate writing a lot more because I realized the skills
learned here can be applied to other classes. Now that my time in this class is over, I
hope to use the skills learned here in my future writing classes because these skills
were useful in getting to know subjects better and in understanding scholarly articles.

Thank you,
Britney Szeto
 Works Cited

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

Volume 2. Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor, 2011. pp 73.

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing.

Volume 1.2010. pp 250.

Reid, Shelley. “Ten Ways to Think About Writing: Metaphoric Music for College

Students.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Volume 2. Eds Charles Lowe

and Pavel Zemliansky. Parlor Press, 2010. 146. Web.