March 17, 2016

Dear Scott,
Throughout this quarter, I have been able to learn a variety of new things concerning
writing and I have also been able to improve my writing skill as well. Through revising and the
activities we did in class, I have been able to learn different ways to revise my papers and what
revision entails. I have also been able to take information from the readings and apply that to my
writing such as the article on conventions within genres and shitty first drafts. Overall, I have
been able to learn more about the process of writing and I plan to utilize what I have learned with
my future writing assignments.
One of the writing projects I chose to revise was Writing Project 1 Genre Analysis. I
chose to rewrite this project for a few reasons. Since this writing project was completed in the
beginning of the quarter, I have learned a lot about writing and my writing capabilities have
improved. Therefore, I wanted to make use of what I have learned and improve this project.
Another reason I chose to revise this piece was because it is the project I received the lowest
grade on. Lastly, even after submitting my final draft, I felt like there was specific places in my
essay that I could have made better.
I revised my introduction, providing further context as to what my paper was about and
the importance of being able to distinguish between genres. I also made the difference between
the purpose of newspaper articles and interviews much more clear. I wanted to make the
differences between the genres explicit. I added more of an explanation as to who the audience of
each genre is, in order to fully get my point across. I distinguished between the audiences they
have in common as a result of being on the same topic, and the audiences that are specific to
their genre. I made sure to bring ideas to their logical conclusion, such as explaining why
headlines are important in informing the reader, even though articles still inform without them. I
added explanations to why I believed each convention was associated with purpose, audience,
and context. I also focused on the subtopics within paragraphs, organizing them in a way that
makes the writing flow more smoothly and make more sense.
The feedback you gave, overall, was a big help. It gave me a place to start the process of
revising my essay. I found it most helpful when you specifically told me where to look to revise,
for example paragraph 4, and then told me what I said and what you wanted me to do differently
or expand on. I also found it helpful that you separated the feedback into analysis and readability
categories. This made it easy because I could first focus on content and then organization.
In this essay, I am most proud of my introductory sentences to the paragraphs about
purpose. In the feedback you provided, you told me to make the difference between the purpose
of newspaper articles and interviews more clear. This proved to be a very challenging task for
me. However, when I was finally able to differentiate between the two purposes and put it into
words, I felt very accomplished.
I would still like to work on the structure and organization of my essay. Organizing the
topics and subtopics within my paragraphs was challenging and I feel that I could continue to
improve it. I also think that some of the paragraphs could be broken down and made into two. It
may help make the points being made more clear and coherent.

The other writing project I chose to rewrite was Writing Project 3 Writing Across
Genres. I chose to rewrite this because I ran out of time when I first submitted it and felt as if
there were some things I still wanted to say and revise. By revising it, I was able to add my
additional and final thoughts as well as make all the improvements necessary to make it the best
I could.
In the metacognitive essay, I added more conventions and went on to explain which ones
I found most important and why they were important. I explained their relationship to audience,
purpose, and context. I added more about how I used these conventions to write in my own
genre. I also explained how specific decisions I made met the specific requirements of the genre.
I made sure to focus on what was lost in translation and why it was lost. I included the
considerations I had to make in trying adapt to the requirements of the genre. In my childrens
story, I attached add, subtract, change, and move the words stuff and things so that they
were not as abstract of concepts. In my first flyer, I got rid of the rubric to follow the convention
of simplicity more closely. In reality, it would be very unlikely to find a rubric on a flyer, so I
changed the questions in the rubric to questions directed to potential applicants. I also changed
the tone of the flyer to be more inviting. Lastly, I removed the citation from the second flyer
because it is also unlikely that a flyer would cite something.
The feedback you gave for this project was in much more depth than the feedback from
writing project 1 and was extremely helpful. I liked that you not only told me what I could fix
but what I did well too. You also offered specific ways I could make changes, such as what to
add. The fact that there was more feedback made it easier to revise as I knew exactly what to
address. I found peer review to be more helpful for this project than the others. They offered very
insightful comments on my genre pieces that helped me improve them greatly.
With this writing project, I am most proud of my childrens story. I revised it multiple
times in order to teach the lesson of revision in the most effective way so that children actually
take something from it. Although there are still flaws to my story, I believe that I was able to
successfully teach the concept of revision through my story. I am proud of how creative and
authentic this piece turned out to be.
I feel I could improve my flyer on academic writing even further if I had more time. I
originally included a rubric on this flyer, however, it included a lot more writing than a normal
flyer would. I attempted to follow the conventions of a flyer more closely and presented the
concepts that were included in the rubric, in the form of questions directed at the potential
applicant. Although I revised it multiple times, I think it can still be drastically improved to fit
the genre of a flyer.
My work in this portfolio reflects all the major concepts I learned in class this quarter.
Some of the major concepts that we touched on were revision, how to write within specific
genres and what qualifies as good academic writing. I was able to take these concepts and use
them within my writing. I also used these specific concepts to discuss in my writing project three
because I felt that they were important to demonstrate to others.
Coming into this class, I was not a fan of revision. I would sit at the computer for hours,
stuck on one part until I felt it was perfect. I would write my essays one time and never look
back at them. This class has changed this completely. I have embraced the idea of first order and
second order thinking. I allow myself to just write and go with whatever I have. Then I go back

and revise multiple times in order to make it the best I can. This skill has helped me
tremendously so that I do not sit at my computer stuck and completely stressed.
Sincerely,

Darien Perez