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Justin Block
Lynda Haas
Writing 39B
8 June 2014
Reflection Essay
Writing is not one of my strongest subjects in life. Even though I have been properly
taught to write, I still have trouble forming complete, detailed, and thoughtful sentences. Prior to
taking this class, I was stressed I could have a bad grade and horrible experience for this class.
However, the experience of this class was the complete opposite to my original thoughts. I have
learned more about writing in this class than my English courses at high school. While exploring
Writing 39B, I have learned more techniques for public speaking, analyzing academic texts, and
relating books to modern-day media through cinematography.
The first essay that introduced me to analyzing genre and their conventions through
scholarly texts is the Literature Review Essay. We first started reading Sherlock Holmes stories
so we can get an idea of the detective genres classical conventions. Then we read scholarly
texts to understand the detective genres history and Victorian Britain through Conan Doyles
The Sign of Four. While reading George Doves The Different Story, it was difficult for me to
comprehend Doves thesis, because I am not accustomed to their academic writing style. After
the class discussion on each scholarly text, I have learned more about analyzing genre and
Victorian Britain through Doyles stories. These scholarly texts have amplified my curiosity
for reading, because I have not experienced reading anything complex to my current status. My
curiosity is towards reading more different genres and discovering each of their unique
conventions, such as the monster for the horror genre. Most of the scholarly authors, such as
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Leroy Panek and John McBratney, taught me the origin of genres come from historical and
cultural context. For example the origin of the detective genre comes from the late Victorian
Era, because Conan Doyles stories mention cultural context that resemble the late Victorian Era,
such as an ineffective police, clothes, and drinking tea. The idea of historical context would help
me understand the viewpoint of many authors, and can make analyzing texts easier. I decided to
use my Literature Review Essay as my one paragraph revision, because one of the paragraphs
does not have enough explanations and conversation between the scholarly texts. The paragraph
I chose is talking about the character of the police force, such as injustice and nave, through
Conan Doyles stories. The paragraph originally lacked flow, because some of the quotes were
placed in the wrong areas that did not connect to the previous sentence. The strong points of my
revised paragraph are: smooth flow, structure, improved topic sentence, and transitions. When I
started reading some of the texts again, I saw more excerpts from the texts to use in my
conversation between the authors. After experiencing difficulties in the Literature Review
Essay, I needed to relax and work on an essay that I enjoy, which was the Rhetorical Analysis
Essay.
During the second half of the class, my classmates and I were introduced to
cinematography, so we can be able to use its elements for analyzing media scenes for our
Rhetorical Analysis Essay. It was unexpected to learn about lighting, editing, and framing of
movies in a writing class, but it relates to presenting detective conventions in the modern-day
era. I started to be open to the teachings of cinematography so I can understand how media is
an image representation of books. When something is foreign to me, I take great interest and
motivation to learn more about it. The Rhetorical Analysis Essay focuses on showing either
changes or adaptions to the detective genre conventions in modern-day media, such as Stephen
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Moffatts Sherlock and Guy Ricthies Sherlock. I chose to fully revise this essay for my full-
length final draft, because my second scene was not consistent with my thesis, and my
introduction does not appeal to the readers. My introduction paragraph can be revised by adding
more scholarly sources and making first impression to hook the reader into the essay. I forced
myself to move my magazine source into the conclusion even though it does not flow with the
paragraph. My greatest strengths for this final draft essay is an introduction that that captures the
audience, and the essay structure. In my introduction, I included quotes from scholarly sources
and gave a popular example, which is The Chronicles of Narnia, of what I was going to talk
about in my essay. Another strength is the content of my paragraph, and the scene analysis I
provide that supports my thesis. The greatest weakness of my final draft is sentence structure,
because my sentence can sometimes not provide detail or disrupt some of the paragraph flow. If
I had more time, I would look for quotes from the Sherlock Holmes 21
st
Century source and
another online magazine to help support my thesis. The Rhetorical Analysis essay is the first
essay in my student life that interests me. Generally, when I write essays I have little motivation
to work on it. However, when I was working on the Rhetorical Analysis Essay, I was
persistent to write it. The primary reason I was interested in this essay was because I was able
to incorporate movies and TV shows in the essay as examples. My creativity is shown in my
final draft when I used excellent scenes as my examples and an attractive introduction. I used
The Chronicles of Narnia as a popular example and represented the scholarly texts in my
introduction to mesmerize the audience. After learning more about detective genre, our class
decided to share its interesting qualities to another class through the RIP Seminar.
One of the most exciting and memorable events that helped me become a better team
member was the RIP seminar. The RIP seminar is when we introduce the detective genre to
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another class. We split the RIP seminar into three groups: a Power point presentation, a video,
and a play. My group focused on producing a play to give a live demonstration of a detective
story. Our story was about two best friends fighting over a girl, but one of them is killed, but the
crime looks like it was an act of suicide. Holmes must play as the hero and solve the case. I
played as a victim, who was framed for being a murderer. Our group spent about an hour to
come up with a foundation idea and then add more details to it. After brainstorming for an hour,
we came to solid script to use, but over time we made changes continuously to keep the play
consistent. I helped with planning the script and adding some input into my action scene with
Chieh, such as holding him up in the air or punching my face. I felt that our play was performed
smoothly. There is hardly anything negative to say about it, because it was engaging to the
audience and covered the unique conventions of the detective genre. Overall, our classs
presentation was standard, because the video was lacking sound and the power point presentation
did not have an engaging tone with the audience. Besides tone, the power point presentation also
lacked pictures on each slide, so it was not capturing the audiences attention. From the other
class, I learned more about the mystery genre conventions, such as the character of the monster.
The monster is described as someone who surpasses human qualities and extraordinary. The
viewpoint of the novel can give different feelings of suspense, such as the first-person gives
more suspense than from a third person-perspective, or the camera. The experience from the RIP
Seminar has given me an opportunity to reflect on some of my Habits of Mind.
Some of the Habits of Mind I learned through the RIP Seminar are: Responsibility,
Engagement, and Flexibility. While my group was consistently changing some parts of the
script, it was my responsibility to see these changes and adapt to them, such as remembering
different lines. We also planned practice runs to incorporate action into our play. If I missed this
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practice then I would struggle doing the performance and forget what to do next. My schedule
was flexible when my group was trying to find a date and time to do practices. There were not
any problems between my schedule and the practice rehearsals. When Professor Haas asked me
to perform a short introduction to the detective genre, I did not hesitate to say no, because this is
a good opportunity for me to practice my oral skills. I was easily flexible to say yes to the
opportunity Professor Haas given me. I was also engaging in my group by giving some of my
input into making the foundation setting for the script. I took the idea of modern-day culture,
such as romance and jealousy, and incorporate into our script, since modern-day audience are
attracted to things that are different than the Victorian audience. I wanted to take all the ideas
and techniques my classmates and I learned and present them to the other class, so they can get
an idea of the fun, engaging activities in our class.
Before taking Writing 39B I saw myself as a middle-school writer still learning the basics
of grammar. However, Writing 39B has taught me more lessons on writing and analyzing
academic texts. One important lesson I learned is the thesis of a text is not necessarily the first
sentence you read, it may be at the end of the paragraph. Another important lesson I learned is
taking notes of academic texts and categorizing them into certain ideas so I can get a better
understanding of the authors viewpoint. This class taught me the techniques of peer review,
such as determining the flow and using proper citations. I will continue to read each writing
critically to get a basis knowledge of it. After taking this class my writing skills have improved,
and it is closer to the level of college writing. For my literature review, I had a standard
foundation, but it lacked explanation and conversation. For my Rhetorical Analysis paper, I was
drifting away from my thesis. After making necessary revisions, my writing has improved to
meet standard college material.