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Justin Aranda

Greg McClure

Writing 39C

18 March 2019

The Impact of Writing 39B and 39C

Taking Writing 39C was an exhausting experience that demanded a lot of my time and

effort but helped me improve my rhetoric analysis, research methodology and more. Having

taken Writing 39B the previous quarter with Prof. McClure, I was able to slightly prepare myself

for the workload and intensity of the course. Yet, even with the preparation, I found myself

spending hours upon hours either researching for better evidence, revising my paragraphs for my

essays, or tidying up my e-portfolio. The theme of the class was animal rights and I decided to

focus on assessing the issues within zoos for my Historical Conversations Project and advocating

for the abolishment of zoos for my Advocacy Project. Being that this class mainly focused on

argument and research I was able to properly learn how to write a scholarly supported,

argumentative paper. This meant finding scholarly articles that were credible, relevant, and

reliable and either supported or conflicted with views of my argument. While doing this, I

discovered how influential and impactful social media is in our current society because of its

ability to connect hundreds of millions of people with one another. This class also taught me how

to properly utilize peer and teacher feedback to help better my revision process. And lastly, I feel

as though I have acquired most of the necessary skills and knowledge needed to succeed in

writing papers at the collegiate level. The only thing I need now to better myself as a writer is

more practice and Writing 39C helped provide me with multiple opportunities to practice and

better my skills.
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Through the process of researching for my HCP and AP, I learned valuable techniques to

find great, credible sources to support my issue and argument. In high school and Writing 39B, I

partially learned about how to find good sources but my classes mainly focused on rhetoric and

analysis of texts. Writing 39C slightly focused on these two elements but there was a greater

focus on teaching students how to find scholarly sources. The most helpful part of the class that

bettered my research skills was the workshop McClure set up for us at the Multimedia Resource

Center. The workshop consisted of a librarian going over the basics and nuances of searching for

sources through UCI’s library. He explained to us how to read and analyze sources efficiently so

we wouldn’t waste too much of our time on one source, how important keywords are when

researching for reports, and how to take advantage of the plethora of research resources UCI

offers. Specifically, going over the importance of developing a list of keywords to use in search

The Figure above displays a list of the many different academic search engines UCI provides its students with.

engines to render accurate results was most beneficial for me. The topic I chose was focused on

zoos and I soon realized that there weren’t many scientific reports detailing extensive reviews of

zoos, so I had to be flexible and use multiple search engines to find sources. Doing this wasn’t

too challenging though because I had developed a list of keywords and phrases to search with

such as, “Zoo Animals,” “ Zoo Animal Welfare,” “Effects of Captivity,” and more. By using
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these phrases I was able to find all three of my main sources for the HCP and additional sources

for the AP. However, the scarcity of sources that actually contributed to my argument was still

alarming. I had to spend an extensive amount of time looking all over the internet and eventually

ended up altering some of my argumentative points so that they would align with the sources I

found. The research process was tedious for me, but thanks to the workshop and help from peers,

I was able to be persistent through the struggle, feed my curiosity about my topic, and find

good scholarly sources for my argument.

Argumentation was the other major focus of this class and as a result, I learned how

important and impactful social media and other forms of media could be when advocating for

certain opinions. Something that I enjoyed, that I had never done before, was creating a social

media campaign that led to the creation of an animal rights advocacy group and posting tweets

about animal rights. By creating an advocacy group, my group and I were able to collectively

focus our efforts on two main objectives, zoo reform and conservation of whales and dolphins.

We did this by advertising information on our website and making Twitter posts pertaining to

these issues. I also grew a better understanding of the power that social media possess in our

society by utilizing Twitter in this campaign. For example, I had created a tweet discussing a

post made by Freedom for Animals, an advocacy group my advocacy group supported, and

through my persistence to shout them out, they ended up retweeting one of my tweets. This was

incredible for my group and me because I, an ordinary person, was able to connect with a very

popular advocacy group that boasts over twenty-three thousand Twitter followers. Because

Freedom for Animals retweeted my tweet, it received over fifteen hundred views, more than five

times the amount of views my other tweets were getting. This instance of stardom I received
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Figure to the left displays my tweet that was retweeted by Freedom for Animals. Figure on the right displays the current statistics
of the tweet.

revealed to me how effective social media is at connecting people with one another and how

influential it could be in argumentation. It has convinced me that social media and similar outlets

should be used more frequently in scientific and scholarly texts because it would help expose

those text’s findings to a larger audience than they do now. It's one thing to construct a strong

argument, it’s another thing to be able to spread and expose that argument to others.

Revisions play a major role in the formation of arguments and by utilizing peer and

teacher feedback, I was able to formulate sound and coherent arguments. For me, teacher and

peer feedback were the most helpful form of aid I received in my writing process because it gave

me a different outlook on my own writing. I have always struggled with forming and

constructing long essays, such as the Advocacy Paper. But, I was able to resolve this struggle of

mine thanks to the feedback I was given. Below you can observe the writing feedback I received

from McClure and in the snippets of feedback, he identifies issues within my paper and provides

a solution to resolve the issue. Specifically, I was struggling with the formation of argumentative
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The figure to the left displays my teacher’s feedback on the overall structure of my Advocacy draft. The Figure on the right
displays my teacher’s feedback on the introduction in my Advocacy draft.

thesis in my introduction and the structure of my entire essay. His feedback forced me to rethink

how I was approaching my essay and it lead me to completely scrapping my original

introduction and topic sentences and creating new ones. I rewrote new topic sentences for all of

my paragraphs so that they would better describe what was being discussed in the paper to help

with the flow of it all. I then condensed all of my topic sentences into broader versions of

themselves and placed them into my introduction so that it would lay out an “overview of the

whole paper.” Pieces of feedback like these have all positively influenced my revision process

and helped me gain metacognition. Thanks to this feedback, I was able to make the necessary

revisions to transform my Advocacy paper into one that consists of a sound argument that flows

coherently and chronologically. Furthermore, the structure of my class, the interactions between

my peers and teacher and the many assignments given to me are ways that Writing 39C has

helped me feel engaged in my learning process about writing.

The Writing 39 series at UCI has helped me elevate my writing style from mediocre to

the collegiate level through the discussions I’ve had in class with my teacher and peers and all

the writing assignments I’ve been assigned. Taking Writing 39B last quarter had the biggest

impact on my writing style because it was my first collegiate level writing course and the
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standards held in that class weren’t even parallel to the ones I had in high school. I remember it

was my second day of class and McClure completely reshaped my view of how to write an

essay. In high school, the five paragraph essay was the go-to format, but in college, it was a

completely different writing layout. As you can see in the image below, McClure told us to

forget

The figure above is the list of notes about an essay format taken during my Writing 39B class. The highlight portions of the text
are pieces of information that I learned specifically from that class.

that format and be more concise and precious with our writing. He redefined what an

introduction and conclusion should be functioning as and encouraged me to write as many body

paragraphs as I needed so that I could cover every point I was discussing in my paper. I went

from writing subpar essays that I’d complete in just a couple days, to spending weeks writing,

researching, revising, and more just to complete one essay. I learned that in order to create a

good paper at the collegiate level, I needed to have the openness to allow someone to reshape

my writing style and teach me to dedicate more of my time and effort into improving my skills. I

was able to practice my newly acquired skills and knowledge about writing by truly attempting

to do my best in all of the writing assignments. Assignments like the two sentence horror stories,
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my own monstrosity, the entire research process for the HCP and the Twitter posts for the SMC

have given me the opportunity to enhance my writing and creative skills. I’ve also gotten to

practice my improved writing skills in other classes outside of the Writing 39 series. For

example, in my Sociology 1 class in Fall 2018, I was asked to write an essay every week

explaining the topics we discussed in class. I started off by writing the standard five or three

paragraph essay and getting a B or B+ on each paper, but as I learned more about writing in 39B

I could see my sociology papers improving. I’d find myself spending more time planning out the

essay, find more ideas and topics to analyze and discuss, and asked others to peer review my

work. I implemented the techniques I learned in 39B and ended up getting an A on my last three

papers of the quarter. As you can see, the writing 39 series has made me a better writer and has

helped me be more successful in not just that class, but many others.

For me, I am very glad that I took Writing 39B and 39C my freshman year of college

because the skills and knowledge I gained from these two classes will benefit me for many years

to come. As a psychology major, I know that my profession will most likely consist of a lot of

writing, and being that I was responsible and built a solid writing foundation for myself early

into my college career, I feel more prepared writing in my other classes and pursuing my career

choice. For once, I finally feel confident in my writing capabilities and its all thanks to the

Writing 39 series. By pushing me out of my comfort zone and challenging me to do my best for

every single assignment, I have developed not only a better understanding of writing but also a

better appreciation for writing.