To whom it may concern,
Over the past quarter, I have made many improvements in my writing skill through my experience in writing in my UWP-001 class. These developments are evident in my Literacy Narrative and Research Paper, both of which properly demonstrate my understanding of the concepts taught in this class.
Each of my essays have different tone, feel, and general syntax to adapt to different audiences and purposes. The Literacy Narrative was intended to become a sort of storytelling paper, with a focus on illustrating a past experience related to writing and language. As a result, I wrote the narrative with a heavy emphasis on the first person point-of-view, writing the words out in as a “stream of thought”. Because of this, my language and style were relatively informal, lacking the business-like impression from most scholastic papers. As it was intended for a more general audience, I also used several paragraphs to explain the background of writing and fanfiction, assuming that most readers would not know this.
On the other hand, my research paper is dedicated to a much more formal purpose. Unlike the literacy narrative, it is sectioned into neat little portions that each cover a separate part of the thesis statement in order to preserve an easy-to-use structure. It sticks to formal language, and the only time I use first person to write is to express the thesis in the last paragraph of the introduction. Given that the audience is intended to be college students who are familiar with the term “millennial”, there is only a small paragraph dedicated to quickly outlining its definition. I did have a few more paragraphs to help expand on the background information in the original draft, but I took them out while trimming the superfluous parts. I also strove to remove all cliche and colloquial phrases during proofreading. As a result, the paper’s syntax feels much more smooth and professional than the narrative. Along with that of the narrative, my attention to detail here demonstrates a clear understanding of the different rhetorical situations in both papers.
Prior knowledge and outside sources are also properly utilized in both essays. Students around my age (my intended audiences) are not as invested in books, writing, and fiction as much as I am, so I made sure to properly explain the terms and concepts such that they would be able to clearly understand. I paid special attention to the common traps that I explain later in the paper, making sure they were written in such a way that it would be easy to connect them with many types of fictional media and entertainment. In contrast, as mentioned above, I knew most people my age would be familiar with the term “millennial” and its reputation, and as a result I instead made an effort to cut out any lengthy descriptions out of my research paper to respect my audience and keep any superfluous parts down to a minimum, leaving only a brief definition.
Both of my essays have gone through extensive revisions in order to correct mistakes while drafting as well. The biggest example of this was in my research paper while I was still writing my abstract, with my thesis being “Why do millennials have such a bad reputation, and do they deserve it?”. As it turned out, that thesis’s scope had been much too broad and it had been unable to clearly state its point. In addition, some of the citations I had found were also poorly utilized, some of them not even looking like they belonged in my paper. After it was returned together with some constructive feedback from my instructor, I rewrote my main idea and gave it a focus on the workplace, where most of the animosity towards millennials seemed to stem from. Upon thinking about it from this angle, I also found additional ways to rework my usage of the evidence into a more coherent and plausible structure.
The literacy narrative does not have as grand of a story of revision as the research paper, but the two paragraphs near the end above the conclusion came about as a result of my proofreader advising me to add some more detail about how the experience had affected the me of today.
Personally, I feel that the greatest strength of the papers in my portfolio is the flow. Similar to how I try to make reading my own fiction a smooth and engaging experience, I tried to even out the transitioning from one idea to another so that the logic followed a clear train of thought, becoming much easier on the reader’s eyes. In the research paper, I took it a step further and placed each main point that I wanted to make into its own neat little category as well, allowing readers to quickly understand and move between arguments.
To be honest, if there was one thing that I would improve if I still had more time to do so, I would try and find more arguments or experiences to present and talk about in the research paper and literacy narrative respectively. I feel like the two papers no longer have anything to fix in their current state, given the many hours I spent revising them. As such, I would look for more things to write about and thus improve the quality of the essays instead.
In the future, I will probably apply the concepts I learned whenever I write a new paper. I would use knowledge of the rhetorical situation to plan out the tone, syntax, and flow of whatever I will write, conforming to proper expectations for first person narratives, responsive persuasive letters, and formal research papers. I now also have experience in picking out proper sources to support my arguments in the latter. In addition, trying to reverse outline what I have after I write my first few drafts will allow me to see what I wrote from a reader’s point of view and correct or add anything if needed.
I would like to thank you for the time you have taken to peruse through this letter, and hope you will enjoy reading through my other two papers.
Sincerely,
Andy Yao
Over the past quarter, I have made many improvements in my writing skill through my experience in writing in my UWP-001 class. These developments are evident in my Literacy Narrative and Research Paper, both of which properly demonstrate my understanding of the concepts taught in this class.
Each of my essays have different tone, feel, and general syntax to adapt to different audiences and purposes. The Literacy Narrative was intended to become a sort of storytelling paper, with a focus on illustrating a past experience related to writing and language. As a result, I wrote the narrative with a heavy emphasis on the first person point-of-view, writing the words out in as a “stream of thought”. Because of this, my language and style were relatively informal, lacking the business-like impression from most scholastic papers. As it was intended for a more general audience, I also used several paragraphs to explain the background of writing and fanfiction, assuming that most readers would not know this.
On the other hand, my research paper is dedicated to a much more formal purpose. Unlike the literacy narrative, it is sectioned into neat little portions that each cover a separate part of the thesis statement in order to preserve an easy-to-use structure. It sticks to formal language, and the only time I use first person to write is to express the thesis in the last paragraph of the introduction. Given that the audience is intended to be college students who are familiar with the term “millennial”, there is only a small paragraph dedicated to quickly outlining its definition. I did have a few more paragraphs to help expand on the background information in the original draft, but I took them out while trimming the superfluous parts. I also strove to remove all cliche and colloquial phrases during proofreading. As a result, the paper’s syntax feels much more smooth and professional than the narrative. Along with that of the narrative, my attention to detail here demonstrates a clear understanding of the different rhetorical situations in both papers.
Prior knowledge and outside sources are also properly utilized in both essays. Students around my age (my intended audiences) are not as invested in books, writing, and fiction as much as I am, so I made sure to properly explain the terms and concepts such that they would be able to clearly understand. I paid special attention to the common traps that I explain later in the paper, making sure they were written in such a way that it would be easy to connect them with many types of fictional media and entertainment. In contrast, as mentioned above, I knew most people my age would be familiar with the term “millennial” and its reputation, and as a result I instead made an effort to cut out any lengthy descriptions out of my research paper to respect my audience and keep any superfluous parts down to a minimum, leaving only a brief definition.
Both of my essays have gone through extensive revisions in order to correct mistakes while drafting as well. The biggest example of this was in my research paper while I was still writing my abstract, with my thesis being “Why do millennials have such a bad reputation, and do they deserve it?”. As it turned out, that thesis’s scope had been much too broad and it had been unable to clearly state its point. In addition, some of the citations I had found were also poorly utilized, some of them not even looking like they belonged in my paper. After it was returned together with some constructive feedback from my instructor, I rewrote my main idea and gave it a focus on the workplace, where most of the animosity towards millennials seemed to stem from. Upon thinking about it from this angle, I also found additional ways to rework my usage of the evidence into a more coherent and plausible structure.
The literacy narrative does not have as grand of a story of revision as the research paper, but the two paragraphs near the end above the conclusion came about as a result of my proofreader advising me to add some more detail about how the experience had affected the me of today.
Personally, I feel that the greatest strength of the papers in my portfolio is the flow. Similar to how I try to make reading my own fiction a smooth and engaging experience, I tried to even out the transitioning from one idea to another so that the logic followed a clear train of thought, becoming much easier on the reader’s eyes. In the research paper, I took it a step further and placed each main point that I wanted to make into its own neat little category as well, allowing readers to quickly understand and move between arguments.
To be honest, if there was one thing that I would improve if I still had more time to do so, I would try and find more arguments or experiences to present and talk about in the research paper and literacy narrative respectively. I feel like the two papers no longer have anything to fix in their current state, given the many hours I spent revising them. As such, I would look for more things to write about and thus improve the quality of the essays instead.
In the future, I will probably apply the concepts I learned whenever I write a new paper. I would use knowledge of the rhetorical situation to plan out the tone, syntax, and flow of whatever I will write, conforming to proper expectations for first person narratives, responsive persuasive letters, and formal research papers. I now also have experience in picking out proper sources to support my arguments in the latter. In addition, trying to reverse outline what I have after I write my first few drafts will allow me to see what I wrote from a reader’s point of view and correct or add anything if needed.
I would like to thank you for the time you have taken to peruse through this letter, and hope you will enjoy reading through my other two papers.
Sincerely,
Andy Yao