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Prof. Greg
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
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
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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.
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
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,
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
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
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also hopeless hence he pushed her to born the boy, which is like “cobble together some passable
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.
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
Works Cited