June 13, 2023

Dear Jesse,

In this portfolio I have compiled all of my work from the Writing 2 course. It shows my

growth as a writer and depicts the results of my revisions. These assignments addressed different

elements of writing and came together to help me learn a lot about the field. Writing Project 1

focused on genre translation and taught me how to read an academic piece and turn it into

writing intended for a different audience. It taught me about what genres are, how they are

distinct from one another, and how to translate texts. Writing Project 2 focused on finding a

conversation between written texts to answer a question about writing. I learned the answer to

my question and realized that I could use texts to find conversations between them. This

reflective letter is a reflection on the course and wraps up my work throughout this quarter.

Throughout this quarter, I have definitely grown as a writer. Although I became more

comfortable and efficient at writing, I think the most important thing I learned was that I can

break rules of writing. This helped me get truly creative and grow with my writing style. I used

to heavily rely on the five-paragraph essay format with rules that I was not allowed to break.

Learning that these rules are allowed to be broken really helped me break out of my shell and

feel more free with my writing process. I am now less scared to take risks and try things I feel

unsure about in my writing. Another way I have grown as a writer is I learned a lot about the

revision process and how to actually do it. The revision of the assignments for this class was the

first time I actually did a real revision for a written piece in my whole academic career. Before, I

would just fix grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Now, I truly tapped into my

creativity to see how I could make my written piece better through actual revisions. Learning to
break rules and revise my writing definitely led to the most growth for me as a writer, but I also

learned numerous other things.

As a student in the Writing 2 class, I learned many new things. I learned that writing is a

field of study with many research questions. Although I have participated in writing for most of

my life, I never considered that this process could be intricately studied. In retrospect, that was

naive of me because basically everything can be studied; however, it is still surprising to me how

much research exists on this topic. Through this course, I learned about discourse communities

and how writing fits this category. This group has a common set of goals, intercommunication,

provides information and feedback, specific genres and lexis, and has expert members (Melzer).

I learned lexis specific to the writing community and how to apply it. For example, I finally

understood what rhetoric is. I’ve heard this word thrown around in so many contexts, but never

knew what it meant. Through investigation in this course, I learned that rhetorical analysis is

used in our everyday lives without us realizing it and that that mindset can be applied to written

rhetorical analysis as well (Carrol). I learned about genres of writing and how broad they can be.

A genre is “a word we use when we want to classify things, to note the similarities and

differences between kinds of writing,” but genres do not always have clear cut definitions

(Bickmore). Overall, I learned a lot about the writing field of study and specific ideas related to

writing.

I also learned ideas and skills that can be carried over to other fields. I learned how to

navigate databases for writing studies, like CompPile. I had never heard of this database before

and struggled figuring out how to use it at first, but after using it for this course, I feel

comfortable using it. Even if I am not required to use this database ever again, I will know about

its existence and have it as a resource. I never considered that texts communicate with each other,
but it seems obvious looking back. This is not specific to the study of writing, so it will be really

useful to continue using in my academic career. I never thought to look at the cited sources of an

academic article to find more sources and I definitely didn’t think to try to find the connection

between them. Having this skill will help me make stronger arguments because I will be able to

see how my evidence connects with each other. It will also make finding sources easier because I

will be able to look in the bibliography of works I already found. The things I learned were

helpful in this class, but they will also be helpful in my future academic projects.

Specifically in this class, the things I learned directly led me to succeed. The weekly

readings allowed me to contribute to class discussions. They also furthered my understanding of

writing and prepared me for class activities. For example, “Responding—Really Responding—to

OtherStudents' Writing” by Charles Straub described ways to actually help someone when

proofreading their works and not just leave them a few comments that aren’t helpful in the long

run. This article helped prepare me for the peer review process that took place in this class and

gave me the tools to give constructive feedback on the works I read. All of the terms like

rhetoric, discourse communities, and genres helped me understand future reading assignments. I

also relied on my understanding of these ideas to complete future assignments. These things all

helped me gain more strengths as a writer.

If I had to compile all of my strengths and weaknesses as a writer into one sentence, it

would be that I can write very decently. On one hand, I am pretty good at integrating evidence

and coming up with strong arguments. I believe I have fairly good organization in my writing.

For example, my reflections have followed a clear format, with ideas being meticulously

organized in their corresponding paragraphs. I also have good grammar and punctuation skills, so

I don’t have those errors to distract from my written pieces. My main weakness is I struggle with
flow. This weighs down on my other strengths and makes my writing decent rather than great.

For my WP1 reflection, my peer reviewers commented that I needed better transitions on almost

all of my paragraphs. I went back and added some, but when I revised this reflection for my

portfolio, I still found some things to be choppy. I find that as I think of things, I write them

down so I don’t forget what I want to say, but that often leads to awkward placements of

sentences. This is definitely a skill I will need to continue developing to improve my overall

writing. Through the ten weeks of this class, I have found it easier to create a better flow,

especially with the journal prompts because they allowed me to write more casually, while still

practicing creating a flow. If I had more time, I would continue working on creating a better flow

in my writing. I would also work on coming up with more creative words in my sentences to

keep my writing from sounding dull and monotone. Overall, this class definitely helped me start

working on improving these skills.

Writing 2 taught me many new concepts and skills that I will continue to apply

throughout my academic career. I learned a lot about the writing field and have gained an interest

in studying writing. I deeply appreciate what I learned in this class and I really enjoyed it,

especially because of your instruction.

Sincerely,

Kristina Strazhnikov
 Bibliography

Bickmore, Lisa. “Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (ECO)Systems.”

Press Books, 2022,

https://pressbooks.pub/openenglishatslcc/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-

within-rhetorical-ecosystems/.

Driscoll, Dana, and Matthew Vetter. “Understanding Discourse Communities by Dan Melzer.” In

Writing Spaces. United States: Parlor Press, LLC, 2020.

Lowe, Charles, and Pavel Zemliansky. “Backpacks Vs. Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical

Analysis.” In Writing Spaces 1. United States: Parlor Press, LLC, 2010.

Straub, Richard. Responding-Really Responding-to Other Students’ Writing. The Subject is

Writing 2nd Ed (pp. 136 – 146).