Writing 2

Zack De Piero
March 14, 2016
Zhicheng Zhang
Metacognitive Reflection Essay
Walking into Writing 2 classroom, I felt very nervous when I saw my classmates who
were all strangers to me at that time. What also upset me was the moment when Zack walked
through the door, because my first impression of him was that he looked like Thor in The
Avengerbeard, long hair, and almost the same face. In the movie setting, he is a very

powerful but arrogant god,

so I thought that Zack must be very

serious and strict. (In fact he is serious and strict sometimes, but most time he is nice and
smiling like an anti-Thor. He is definitely the best teacher I ever met in UCSB.) What
stressed me the most, however, was the class itself. As an international student, I was sitting
with native speakers and learning a challenging writing class with them! I could imagine how
awkward it would be if a foreigner come to China and learn Chinese writing with us. I was
very unconfident in the beginning, but through studying of genre, conventions and moves, I

gradually found my way of writing, and it was this class that made me a confident person.
The first topic we learned was genre which is a particular category of writing, art, or
anything in our life. I could remember that day to study genre and convention we listened to
country music and analyze its features , and I was super confusing at timeI knew nothing
about music; I could not find connections between genre and country music; I did not know
what genre was. I was very depressed and upset that week because I thought I could not even
understand class content. Things started to change when I bought the course reader and read
Dirks article Navigating Genre. I had to say readings are super helpful, because from the
reading, I realized that country music was a genre of music, and its features were conventions
of genre. Immediate, I was so excited to find that everything seemed to connect with each
other, and concepts such as genre and convention suddenly made sense to me. In
addition, examples of recommendation letter and horror movies, and the chart we created
listing common features, further helped me understanding genre. As a result, I was less
unconfident than the first two classes.
Once I got familiar with genre and convention, and got prepared through PB1 and PB2,
we started WP1. In WP1, although we had prompt about what to write, we had a total
freedom on which genre to choose as a topic of paper. I remember what Zack said at the end
of one classit would be motivated for you to choose the topic you are interested in. I almost
spent an hour deciding which genre I was going to analyze. Suddenly I remembered that I got
used to searching for movie reviews every time when I watched a movie, because I was very
interested in other peoples voices. Thus I discussed about movie reviews of three latest
movieThe Star War, Ride Along 2, and The Hateful Eight, and analyzed their
similarities and differences in term of convention and rhetorical features.
Before the final draft of WP1, we did some class activities such as reverse outline,
highlighting activity, and peer review that I think were especially helpful. Reverse outline is a

tool that allows us to look back to the whole essay once we finish writing it, I still remember
that Dennis said that it works just like reverse engineering, which taking apart an object to
see how each part functions and contributes to the whole. Through reverse outline, I was
clearer about why I wrote each paragraph and how each one supported my thesis, and I felt
that my paper was more tightly connected. Highlighting activity focused on different part of a
paper such as textual evidence, our own analysis, and quotes from readings. It helped us to
see whether or not all parts were balanced. For example, through highlighting, I found that I
did not use enough textual evidence to convince readers. Thus I quoted more sentences in my
final revision to make my paper balanced. Peer review was equally useful as two activities
above. Having my paper read by classmates with fresh eyes provided me with a lot of
creative advices. For instance, I had not realized until one classmates pointed out that my
WP1 structure could be change to make the whole essay smoother, because it was usually
difficult for the writer himself to look at the essay as a whole. These three revising activities
benefited my a lot throughout the whole quarter. Also, I became a little confident when I
discussed with classmates and expressed my views in class activities.
It turned out that writing about what I was interested, and revising it with two new tools
and classmates advices really worked wellI got a grade that exceeded my expectation. I
felt surprised and proud because I never thought that I could be recognized in English
writing. I became more confident since then and I began to answer questions in class, though
sometimes I knew the answer but I always tried to use the best way to explain and express my
answers.
WP2 followed WP2 closely, so once we finished WP1, Zack introduce to us another
important term of this quartermoves. Like genre, initially I was confused about moves
and wondered whether it was the actual move we did everyday. However, after watching the
Michael Jordan and the Rocks video, and reading Mike Bunns How to Read Like a

Writer, I got a good understanding of what moves arein writing, moves are a series of
choices the writer make in terms of words, structures, and main ideas. I found the murder
activity the most helpful, because we wrote letters by ourselves to describe the murder event
from different angles such as a police report, a letter from garage representatives to media,
and a forensic analysis. This activity made us feel that we were all involved so that we could
better understand how moves were used in everyday life.
PB2A and PB2B were helpful preparation for WP2 because PB2A allowed us to examine
moves employed in an academic article and PB2B provided us a chance to look back to the
reading we did and find moves from them. For me, WP2 was really a challenge, because
we had to analyze similarities and differences among three articles. I decided to focus on
anger from a biology article, a sociology article, and news, but I struggled with the thesis
statement and the overall structure a lot. For thesis statement, I did not know how to organize
it and what argument I need to present. For overall structure, I found it difficult to talk about
three articles at the same time.
When we finished WP2, it was already close to final, so we only had one week or so for
WP3 which was to combine what we had learned this quarter such as genre, conventions,
rhetorical features, and moves, and apply them to transforming an academic piece into a
genre for a younger audience and the other for older audience. WP3 was definitely the most
creative one among three WPs, and it was the most time-consuming one. I transformed
Textual Silence into a chapter introduction of textbook for middle school students, and an
opinion piece for older audiences. I tried hard to recall what a chapter introduction was like in
my middle school, and finally I concluded that it had a transition from last chapter, examples
to help students understand, and words or sentences to reassure them such as no worries. To
be honest, among three WPs, I enjoyed WP3 the most as I could create and explain my own
work instead of analyzing others essays.

As I said that Zack organized this course very well, the final project was to build a
portfolio that reflects and summarizes this quarter. Reflections are important no matter in
writing or any other field, because it allows us to revisit work we have done and to see how it
could be improved, what might we change about it, how it affects us in the future. Just like a
conclusion paragraph is important for an essay, this portfolio project is essential for what he
have learned in this quarter. Looking back to three WPs, ten thlogs, readings, and class
activities and discussions, I feel proud of myself, and I am not the diffident person anymore.
In addition, I really learned a lot from this class besides genre, rhetoric, and moves. I
also learned writing techniques such as oxford comma, hedged language, and citing sources
that have multiple authors. These were all small technique that I often ignored, but once I
encounter these problems, I usually had no idea what to do.
Overall, I felt that I was lucky to select this writing class in my registration time. I have
friends who took other Writing 2 class and they only had three papers to write, when they
said to me that they were lucky because they had less work to do, I disagreed with them,
because I believe that it is worth practicing writing whenever I had a chance. Wrting 2 not
only improved my writings skills, but also turned me into a confident person.`