Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 6

Ling 1

Zihan (Johnson) Ling

Prof. Greg

Writing 39B / Portfolio Introduction

14 Dec 2018

Portfolio Introduction

This quarter, I take Writing 39B, a lower-division writing class at UCI. The class is

basically designed to help students to learn about critical reading and rhetorical analysis. In my

section, professor Greg led us to learn about the horror genre. We have two major assignments:

rhetorical analysis and the RIP project. To be honest, before this quarter, I was unfamiliar with

horror genre. I never read any horror fiction and I hardly watched horror genre. I used to have a

stereotype that horror genre is boring because it merely entertains the audience by horrifying the

audience. However, after 10-week study of the horror genre, my understanding about the horror

genre had totally changed. Now, I think that horror genre is not only an entertaining genre, but

also an effective way for writers to reveal social, culture, or ecological problems so that to affect

the nowadays world.

In the drafting process, I make a great progress in writing the thesis statement.

Previously, in the introduction part of an essay, I usually just provided some background about

the texts and then followed by a thesis sentence that concluded the central message of the whole

essay. For example, in the first draft of my Rhetorical Analysis, I wrote a thesis sentence that “in

fact, the monster is the abnormal environment, of which McCarthy uses incomplete sentences,

imagery, and ideological contrast to show the serious impact on human beings” (Ling, 1).

However, in the lecture, professor Greg taught me that the thesis statement is a paragraph instead

of a sentence. In other words, I should briefly mention all the arguments I made throughout the

essay. Therefore, I deleted all the unnecessary background description such as “reviews of The
Ling 2

Road diverse remarkably in terms of different perspectives. Some scholars regard The Road as

an environmental fiction and analyze it via the theories of environmental science. Some scholars

focus on the social injustice issues in this book” (Ling, 1). In addition, I also deleted the list of

elements that I wrote in the thesis sentence and discussed them separately in the thesis statement.

For example, in the final draft of the Rhetorical Analysis, I wrote,

By using multiple rhetorical devices, McCarthy portrays the abnormal world as the

monster, which is impure. For the abnormal environment, McCarthy uses the ghost as a

metaphor to show that how the ghost of environment haunts people and takes away

people’s hope. McCarthy tries to appeal that people should hold their faiths to deal with

the uncertain world.

As a result, my thesis statement has been improved significantly because all the arguments are

stated and logically connected to each other. In other words, by reading my thesis statement,

audience may know what I am going to discuss in the essay.

Furthermore, I have learned the strong paragraph principle, which helps me to improve

my body paragraphs. The strong paragraph principle means that one paragraph only deals with

one idea at a time and there is a strong topic sentence in the beginning of the paragraph to

conclude the idea that will be demonstrated. Because of the principle, I know how to construct

my body paragraph. Sometimes, I may still write a body paragraph with an idea and some sub-

ideas. However, when I think of the principle, I change the paragraphing. I want to persuade my

audience only one point in a single paragraph so that it is easier for the audience to understand

the point.

In the revising process, I have learned how to utilize the resource to improve my works.

In the Short Passage Presentation, we were supposed to analyze a short passage of The Road

with our teammates. Our group was assigned to analyze the passage that the man is arguing
Ling 3

against his wife. At first, I was confused about the dialogue of the wife that “a person who had

no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost” (McCarthy, 59). I didn’t

know why the wife mentions “some passable ghost” (McCarthy, 59). I wrote that the passable

ghost refers to the wife herself who is haunting the man. However, after I reread the passage, I

found that it’s not logical if the ghost referrs to the wife. Thus, in order to get the logical

argument, I discussed the dialogue with Maya, one of my teammate.

Maya reminded me that the reason why the wife is such passive because she has lost her hope. In

other words, she regards everything meaningless and vicious. Because of the conversation with

Maya, I noticed that the ghost actually refers to the boy because the wife thinks that the man is
Ling 4

also hopeless hence he pushed her to born the boy, which is like “cobble together some passable

ghost” (McCarthy, 59).

I also went to the professor’s office hour to get some suggestions for my works. This

quarter, I went to the office hour about 6 times and I found it really helpful in improving my

works. When I was revising the first draft of my Rhetorical Analysis, I was confused about the

assignment requirements. According to the feedback of the first draft, my essay was disordered

and too cliché. In fact, in the first draft, I focused on the rhetorical devices that McCarthy uses,

such as the word choice, the language style, and the dialogue motif. However, in the office hour,

professor Greg pointed out that I should consider the relationships between texts and the

rhetorical situations. He left me some questions: What is the monster of the story? What is the

metaphor of the monster? What is the message behind the text? What is the complication of the

message? And, how the message affects the nowadays world? After that, I spent much time to

reread some parts of The Road and think about the questions. Finally, I found the answers

through the texts and I decided to arrange my arguments along with these questions.

In the future, I will still have some writing classes to take, such as Writing 39C and

upper-division writing class. However, the approaches to study a rhetorical situation, which I

have learned in Writing 39B, are beneficial to my writing career. In brief, according to the

learning process this quarter, when I first get into a genre, I will get an overview of the genre in

different mediums, such as movies, music and short stories. Then, I will get a closer look to the

genre by reading some academic essays and fictions. Furthermore, I will analyze the rhetorical

features or conventions of the genre. For each feature I analyze, I will try to imitate the feature

by creating an example as practice. After I get familiar with the genre, it is time for me to apply

what I have learned about the genre to a project. I believe in the future, I will have chances to
Ling 5

study an unfamiliar genre. At that time, the approaches will help me to study more efficiently

and orderly.

In addition, I have improved my communication skills by practicing group presentations

and group projects, which are also critical for my future writing situations. In Writing 39B, we

had lots of group presentations and a group project. Before this quarter, I never did any group

presentation. Therefore, in the first group presentation, the monster presentation, I was nervous. I

spent several hours to memorize my words but I still could not clearly express my ideas in front

of my classmates. Also, I did not know how to make the transition from my part to my

teammate’s part so that the language flow of the presentation is better. Thus, I decided to

communicate more with my teammates. Via the communication, I knew the ideas that my

teammates would like to convey and also clarified my ideas. Consequently, our group

presentation became much better and I felt more comfortable in doing the presentation in public.

The communication skills that I have improved in this quarter will help me to deal with the

group assignments in the future classes.


Ling 6

Works Cited

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. Picador, 2010.

Ling, Zihan. “Rhetorical Analysis First Draft”, Oct. 2018, UCI.

Ling, Zihan. “Rhetorical Analysis Final Draft”, Nov. 2018, UCI.

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi