Contreras 1 Soledad Contreras March 11, 2014 Writing 37 Intensive Writing Professor Haas Final Reflection Essay Coming

into this class has been both an exciting and nerve-wracking experience. Writing 37 is the first writing class I take in college, so I wasnt sure what to expect and my nerves were due to the fact that writing hasnt always been my strongest topic. From the first day of class until now, I have improved tremendously in writing. This class has specifically furthered developed my curiosity, openness, creativity, responsibility, flexibility and metacognition,-which are the Habits of the Mind we learned about during this course. When I was informed that our theme was going to be the Mystery Genre, I wasnt very excited because I had never engaged in a mystery novel or watched mystery movies for fun. I didnt know much about this genre, in fact, I had only heard of Sherlock Holmes a couple of times. To learn about the Genre Convention, we discussed the Four Stages of Genre Development which are: Primitive, Classical, Parodic, and Revisionist. We mainly focused on the Classical and Revisionist stages. The Classical stage the genre is at its peak and is extremely popular amongst the population, the conventions of the genre receive their fullest expression and the audience knows what to expect. We see this I Conan Doyles short novels, The Sign of the Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, which are the books we analyzed during this course to help us understand the mystery genre. Revisionist stage focuses on genre films that reinforces the genre conventions established in the classical stage or changes it to suit the new audience, or in other words the

Contreras 2 rhetorical situation. To study this we were introduced to modern day mystery films like Sherlock Holmes films, Psych, BBC Sherlock, Elementary, and House MD and were responsible for analyzing the changes of in the genre conventions established by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Victorian Era. My group and I chose the Sherlock Holmes films. To be able to understand the rhetorical situation of the mystery genre Conan Doyle wrote about, We did research and presented on the context of the Victorian Era, where it all began. The first essay we had to write in this class was about Conan Doyle. We were asked to either write an analysis of the Cultural or Historical Context in Conan Doyle, or an analysis of a mystery genre convention present in Conan Doyles novels. I chose to write about the specific convention of the three characteristics a detective must possess, which are observation, knowledge and deduction. I learned that Conan Doyle was the author that established most of the genre conventions for writing mysteries. From writing Textual Analysis I learned that it is very difficult to analyze without taking things apart and completely focusing on one part of the text at a time. It is like getting a piece of chicken and completely tearing it apart until you have single thin pieces that you are able to observe every detail of it. Analyzing has been really hard for me because I am good at explaining the overall picture but I have never been the best at analyzing when it comes to a text. I also learned that when writing academic essays, or any type of essay, we always have to be aware of our audience, that way the tone of our paper is adequate for the readers. Before this class I never paid attention to this concept of the rhetorical situation and now I realize it is a very important aspect of writing academic essays.

Contreras 3 This is the essay I decided not to fully revise because being the first essay I write in a very long time. I chose to revise the first paragraph because I consider the introduction to be one of the most important parts of and essays and also because I need more practice forming a thesis statement, which is what determines if an essay will be worth reading or not. The strengths of this revised paragraph will be the outside resources I use to guide the reader into the topic of this essay and the thesis. My Conan Doyle essay needed a lot of revision and it gave me practice for the second analytical essay we wrote which is put together much better and needs less revising. To continue, the second essay we wrote in this class was about the modern-day texts. We were responsible for analyzing the changes between a conventions present in the Conan Doyles stories and also present in the modern day texts. I chose to write about the Convention of the sidekick because it in the Conan Doyles novels, I observed how the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson is more professional and serious, where as in the modern day films, Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, we can easily observe how the relationship has changed to express more love, friendship, comedy and an unexplainable bond between two men that makes the viewer see them as brothers. I thought this was a very important revision of the sidekick convention because todays audiences like to see strong feelings and bonds between protagonists. From our focus of analyzing genre, I learned that it is very important to keep in mind what genre one is analyzing to be able to detect genre conventions and thus be able to see things one wouldnt be able to detect

Contreras 4 otherwise. I can now more easily be able to analyze while reading and writing in the future instead of just viewing the overall picture. This second modern day essay is the one I decided to fully revise because I was surprisingly very interested in the movies and I was able to closely analyze a scene, thus making this my stronger essay. The greatest strengths of this essay are the introduction and the paragraph where I am comparing Conan Doyles sidekick convention with the modern-day text sidekick convention. The greatest weaknesses I would say is the paragraph where I am asked to analyze a specific scene where this convention is at play. I believe this is the most difficult part of the essay because we had to analyze every aspect of the scene like the lighting, sound effects, music, focus, angles and so on. If I had more time to work on this essay I would definitely focus on the scene analysis because this is what this class was mostly about and something I should get more practice on to further improve my analysis skills. Besides doing individual activities like writing analytical essays in this course, a lot of our work was done in groups. At the beginning of this course we chose groups. My group consisted of Linda, Lizette, and Bella. The first group project we did was a presentation on Scientific discoveries and Criminology and Religion during the Victorian Era and we worked well together, especially because our communication was very good and also because I learned that if we split up the work load equally it becomes simpler to finish efficiently without having conflict. From the first presentation I learned to never read of the screen when presenting, to make eye contact and to speak loud and clear and at a good paste. Our second presentation was about a genre convention of mystery. We chose to present about the convention of clues. From this

Contreras 5 collaboration my creativity sparked because I was able to come up with an interactive activity which was to bring puzzles to the class and a symbol of putting clues together. Form this group presentation I learned that we must support each other and listen to each others id eas and comments because two brains is better than one. Collaboration also means listening to each other to improve. We did peer reviews, where two of our classmates would read our essays and write critique it to make it better. I learned that one should make good comments on someones paper so that you can receive the same in return and thus improve ones essays. I also learned that after reading other ways people write their essays, one is able to reflect on their essay and improve it that way. Throughout this course we also completed weekly connect grammar and language assignments. I didnt realize how incorrectly we can speak and write until I started doing these modules. After reviewing the data in my module I was able to conclude that I had the most trouble with Critical Reading: Paraphrasing and summarizing to understand a text. This is one of the most important aspects of this class and today I can say that summarizing is giving a brief explanation of a passage in your own words stating the main points, while paraphrasing is precisely giving a restatement of everything in your own words. Usually the length of a paraphrase is the same if not longer than the original passage and the summary is much shorter. I also had a lot of trouble with the module of Subordination and Coordination because I had never heard of these terms before and I really didnt know anything, so when he Focus round came around, I thought it did a very well job on explaining the differences and therefore I

Contreras 6 now know that subordination and coordination are ways of combining phrases clauses and words. These two I would say is where I had the most growth because I learned the most. . I still need help in the area of fused run on sentences because I tend to do that a lot. Overall these modules were completely worth my time and I have gained more confidence when it comes to communicating, which is such an important aspect of any career and life. The last thing we did in this class was the RIP Seminar, which was an overview of all the things we learned about our theme which was the mystery genre. During the RIP Seminar, my main role was to play Mrs. Hudson, who was the apartment manager where Holmes and Watson lived. My other part was to apply the blood on the people who were going to be playing the dead victims, so I applied red finger paint on Lizs shirt before we arrived so that it could dry before the seminar and I applied blood on Johns face right after he presented. I was also responsible for make-up so I took my make-up kit if anyone needed it but we only ended up needing the blood. For the preparation of the RIP Seminar thus far I have helped with the power-point presentation by gathering some pictures of the modern day Sherlock Holmes films. I especially gathered pictures for the movie. Sherlock Holmes: A game of Shadows. I have also helped with the script for scene two with Linda and Liz. I was especially in charge of the dialogue between Holmes and Emma Stone as she is introduced into the mystery because that was the part I played. Overall the RIP seminar was a great experience and, everyone did an amazing job. It was not only funny and engaging, but everyone worked as a group and it was noticeable that we worked well together.

Contreras 7 To conclude, writing 37 has taught me many skills that will come in handy in many of my future courses. I am now a better writer because from now on I will consider the rhetorical situation before writing an essay. Also, I am more aware of the genres and will continue to recognize different conventions which will make me a better analytical person. One of the greatest areas of growth have been in my communication skills and presentation skills. I am now more confident when standing in front of a crowd and the connect of models have increased my language and grammar. The way I work within a team Is also an important aspect that I learned that will help me in my future endeavors. I must continue to further practice writing analysis because I can only improve from now on with practice. Overall this class was not only intellectually stimulating, but also fun and I go a lot out of it thanks to Professor Linda Hass.