Catharine Cea

Writing 2
De Piero
June 9, 2016
Metacognitive Reflection
Throughout most of my years in school, I had mixed feelings about my English classes. I
loved the reading, but dreaded the writing. People would tell me that I was a decent writer and
that I should stop worrying about it, but I was an extremely self-conscious person and always felt
like I could express myself better when speaking rather than writing. So, I came into Writing 2
expecting to learn the same things I did in high school and to come out of it still feeling the same
way about my writing. What I did not realize was how much I would actually learn. I learned
that writing is all around us and when you try writing in all sorts of different genres that you
would not have expected, it can actually be fun.
In the first week, we learned about a variety of genres and the common conventions that
define them. Like most, I came in with the impression that genres were broad categories such as
novels, short stories, poems, research papers, etc. But, as I wrote in my first thlog, After the
explanation that Zack gave about the Russian nesting dolls, I know that in order to accurately
understand and identify the conventions and characteristics of a genre we have to be as specific
as we can be. I was able to implement this in my PB1A where I wrote about the genre of
Elizabethan-era comedy plays and their conventions. I had a lot of fun writing this because I was
able to take a deeper look at some of my favorite plays and realized that the commonalities
between them that I was already familiar with are what actually define them as a genre.

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I was able to practice working with genres even more when I wrote my first WP. I chose
to base my project on movie reviews and discussed their conventions by looking at three reviews
of the Disney movie Zootopia. As I wrote my paper, I had a difficult time coming up with a
thesis statement that could drive my argument, and by my final draft I still did not have a great
one. Zack commented on my paper I need more of a specific, driving thesis statement, CC.
What, exactly, are you going to be arguing here? And what specific points are you going to use to
make that case? I had gotten by in high school by writing pretty generic thesis statements that
answered whatever question was asked in the prompt, but this was something completely
different. This prompt did not have a specific question that needed to be answered, so it was up
to me to figure out my own argument.
I also struggled with coming up with a good hook for my WP1. In elementary school, we
were taught that beginning with a question was a good way to get the audience interested. But
when I reached high school, I was told that you cannot use first or second person in academic
writing, which eliminated most of the questions that I was taught to use as my attention-grabbers.
Ever since, I began my papers with general statements that were not very interesting, but at least
they were a way to get started. When Zack commented Yawwwwwn. Get me revved up about
reading this piece, CC! I <3 movies! I realized that I was trying so hard to follow the rules
that I forgot to make my writing interesting for my audience to read.
I also had not noticed that the structure of my paper might be difficult for my readers to
understand. I wrote in my journal that I learned that Even if what Im saying makes sense to me,
I need to pay close attention to ensure that everything makes sense to my readers too. I had
never thought that my organization might not make sense to anyone because I had not realized

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that since others think differently than I do, they might not understand the reasoning behind my
thinking and structure. I feel like I was able to improve the clarity of my points in WP2 because I
kept Zacks comments about organization and structure in mind throughout the rest of my
writing in the course after WP1.
Next, we learned about how people in different disciplines can see the same thing and
think of it differently. I thought that the activity we did with the murder scenario was really
helpful in understanding this concept. After participating in the activity, I wrote in my thlog that
I thought it was interesting that even between similar genres, such as a two news reports, the
style and the content of the pieces were very different. Before this class, I would have
considered both of the news reports to be part of the same genre, so I had not even thought that
they might consist of different conventions and make use of different parts of the same
information.
In preparation for our WP2s, we also learned that moves are any choice that a writer
makes within their papers in order to achieve a specific purpose. At first, I did not really
understand exactly what moves were, and I definitely did not understand how to make use of
them in my own writing. But, once we talked more about moves and Zack showed us
examples and videos about them I finally understand how to identify them within writing. In one
of the journals, I wrote that Conventions are common features of a genre, whereas moves are
choices that each specific author decides to use in their own writing. In order to write in a
specific genre, you dont have to make use of all of the conventions, so choosing to use certain
conventions and not others is a move within itself. I think this was the point when I really
began to connect conventions, moves, and genres just in time for WP2.

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For my WP2 I chose to look at three articles about the controversy over Song of the South
and which moves the authors used and decisions they made in order to get their points across to
their audiences. This time around, I managed to fix my own structural issues and write a bit
clearer for my audience I think. However, I still had trouble coming up with a super specific
thesis statement that would drive my paper and Zack commented I need a lot more direction
here, CC. What moves? What evidence? What rhetorical features? How/why are they different,
and why is that important? I know a lot of us had a problem with the thesis for this project
because of the fact that the prompt had a lot of different parts to it without having an overarching
question we could answer that would address all of the small issues. Knowing that I really need
to work on the specificity of my argument, I will keep practicing so that I can keep improving
my thesis statements in future writing.
One of the other issues I had in my WP2 was the length of my analysis of the importance
between the differences and similarities in the scholarly and non-scholarly articles. I ended up
getting a lot of comments about how I could expand my argument and how I needed to think
about why the points I was making were important. I have never been very good at providing
analysis, but I have been practicing throughout this course and I hope I can keep getting better at
it. The other main problem with my WP2 was the fact that my introduction was very long. I
usually have a very difficult time writing an introduction that is long enough, not one that takes
up over a page of my paper. For the draft in my portfolio I managed to cut it down to just under a
page long, but I found this very difficult because I had a hard time deciding which background
information was really necessary for the audience to know in order to understand the articles I
was discussing.

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Before starting on WP3, we watched a series of videos showing various artists discussing
their painting techniques and demonstrating what elements they like to focus on in their art. I had
thought these clips were pretty interesting to watch, but I did not entirely understand what they
had to do with our next project until later. Bob Ross and the Disney artists in these videos
explained to their audiences what they felt was important to portray in their art. Even though
they were all painting trees, each one found something unique that they wanted to emphasize in
each of their versions. This relates to what we would have to do in our WP3s because we had to
make choices about what information from our original articles we thought was most important
to include in our papers.
For my WP3 I chose to transform an article about Star Wars and the fact that some people
believe Jediism is a religion into an article on a blogging website and a religious brochure.
This project gave me the chance to apply what we learned throughout the course about different
genres and moves because I had to consciously decide to make use of certain moves based
on each of the two genres I was writing. I found this project pretty fun because I got to be silly
with it and it actually ended up turning out better than I was expecting it to. Zack even
commented The Jediism brochure was pretty hysterical; the Join others who have felt the pull
of the force line just almost made me choke on my gum because I laughed so hard. I think WP3
was a turning point for me because I ended up really enjoying the topic I chose and realized that
writing can be fun and does not have to be boring and tedious all the time, like I had previously
thought.
Writing 2 was definitely not the class I was expecting it to be, but that actually ended up
being a good thing. I enjoyed the class more than I anticipated and learned more than I thought I

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would. I had never thought that I would be able to not dread writing as much as I had for most of
my life, and I find it absolutely fascinating that writing can be found everywhere. I can no longer
read something without thinking of the genre it belongs to or trying to identify whatever
moves the author is making. I have gained an entirely new view of the world, and I know that
the skills I have gained from this class will be useful in my future writing, not only throughout
the rest of my college years but also in my life later on.