Dear Julia,

This quarter I have learned about what makes good writing good writing, and how to

become a better writer. I have always been motivated to be a good writer, and actually really

enjoy it. However, prior to this class, I was missing a lot of the tools that would help me

understand what I was doing wrong and how to improve. Through readings, in-class activities,

and projects we have done in Writing 2, I have become a more conscious, more developed

writer. I would like to continue working on the structure and finetuning of my writing and work

on projects that expand outside the realm of genre conventions.

I would define my writing style before this as something that is very reflective, I like to

add my own thoughts and sayings into my writing, however I have learned that there is a time

and place to write in the free-lance way I like to. I enjoyed our free write activities and often

would rather write a creative piece filled with metaphors and figurative language; however, this

was not the focus of this class. Despite this, I think my creative voice can still be seen in the

connections within my writing. For example, in WP1, I analyzed a horoscope app versus its

antecedent genres. I gave a thorough analysis of the reasoning for the transition from

horoscopes in newspapers to on an app – that reason being the change in audience- and

connected the way the conventions had evolved because of the newer “tech-savvy” generation

that is using the app. In another instance, in PB3, I develop a poem based off of a psychological

article. I specify the way I developed each line of my poem, describing what part of the

psychological article the information in my poem came from, and how my lines were crafted

from it. I did this in a way so the reader could understand the inner workings of my mind and

comprehend my work to its fullest.

 I decided to revise WP1 and WP3 for my final portfolio. My reasoning behind revising

WP1 is because it was the very first WP we did and even though it was not my lowest grade, I

felt like I had the most to improve on it. I now had a much deeper understanding the prompt,

as well as the mindless mistakes I had made. I did, what feels like, major reconstruction in that

essay. My WP1 focused around the horoscope genre in past tense and modern day. Before, I

had focused the attention of my essay onto the present-day horoscope app I was analyzing, and

what it did, rather than the genre conventions. I went back to the genre activity we did in class

to be reminded of what my focus should be on: diction, tone, format, reliability, jargon, and

audience – all examples of genre conventions. When looking at this essay, you will see I scraped

a lot of the writing and added in two new main paragraphs. One that that focuses on the

conventions of the horoscope app and then another that compares it to one of the antecedent

genre’s – newspaper horoscopes. I also added a more exciting lead sentence, to truly engage

the reader right at the start, and elaborated on my thesis to create a more thorough argument.

I developed my thesis last, because after reading through and revising the whole essay, I could

see clearly, the overall point I was trying to argue. While revising WP1, I also found a lot of

“fluff” or words that provided no substance or meaning to the concept I was describing. I would

often think “what am I really trying to say here”, delete the excessive vocabulary, and get

straight to the point. In addition to this, I found many grammatical errors, including inconsistent

verb tense, and missing commas and apostrophes. When I took time to take a closer look at my

writing, I was able to fix these minute details. I also added in transitions at the beginning and

end of the paragraphs where I hadn’t, to connect different aspects of my paper and make it
more fluid as a whole. Overall, I feel as though I made drastic improvements to this paper, and

directly addressed the prompt itself, rather than my interpretation of the prompt.

I also decided to revise WP3 because I really enjoyed writing it and wanted to go back to

improve it to its full potential. Although there is always more you can do to improve a piece of

writing, I feel as though I strengthened my essay as a whole, through strengthening my

argument. I did this through taking your notes, which suggested elaborating on my thesis as

well as making sure all my paragraphs correlated with my argument. While revising, I deleted

sentences that strayed off topic, and elaborated on my main ideas in each paragraph. I

continued to develop the reasoning behind the choices I made in the poem I wrote, so that it

would make more sense to the reader. I replaced vague words with more distinctive ones and

also deleted words such as “highly” or “very” that were unnecessary to my sentences. I

discussed the genre conventions of poetry versus academic writing in more detail to show my

understanding of them, as well as to address the prompt more directly. Additionally, the

biggest improvement I made in this paper was turning my conclusion from a personal reflection

to a conclusion that followed the conventions of the closing for an analytical essay. I was

influenced by Maddelena’s “’I need you to say ‘I’: Why First Person Is Important in College

Writing” when making my original thesis statement, and also included this first-person

perspective when making my closing statements. I deleted the reflective thoughts and feelings I

had originally discussed in my reflection and replaced them with argumentative assertions. I

feel as though overall, these improvements made my argument stronger and more persuasive.

This portfolio reflects not only, that I have payed close attention to the readings and

class activities but applied my newfound knowledge to my writing to improve it. It also depeicts
that I have truly put effort into refining the broad and minute aspects of both of these projects,

so that my main claim is more prominent, and the reader is left with a clear understanding of it.

My revisions show the new depth of understanding I have of genre conventions, and the

higher-level writing skill I have accumulated over the quarter. My strongest feature of my

writing is my ability to defend the choices I make, which I am able to do because I have put

thought into the pieces I create. With my future projects, I will not have my first draft be my

last draft as I previously had in a lot of cases; but I will rather go back, and use the ways of

revising you taught us to improve my papers and develop multiple versions of a piece before

turning in a final copy. I will also continue to make more conscious choices with the details I

decide to include and the connections I make with in my writing. I am excited to continue to

grow as a writer, as I feel as though this has been a big first leap of improvement for me to

make. Although this class was very tough for me, I have become a more critical writer out of it,

and still even enjoy writing! 

Thank you for all your time, and dedication to our class this quarter, your effort does not go

unnoticed.

Sincerely,

Malena Halle