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Yichu Wang
Writing 39B
Professor Lynda Haas
6/7/2014June 7 2014

Final Reflection Essay

Looking back through this quarter, I learned a lot from Writing 39B class. I
got a chance to get close totake a closer look at Sherlock Holmes stories through
different medias including text, TV and film. Before taking this class I, I had been
interested in detective stories, but I never got a chance to read and analyze them
thoroughly. Luckily, I found the theme of Dr. Haass 39B course is detective genre,
and this motivated me to put my best effort into this class. In the past ten weeksI, I
learned about classic conventions of detective stories created by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, and how it could affect the impression that the story leaves to the audiences. I
learned how to read critically and write efficiently. Ive writtenI wrote the my first
literature review essay for this class. Through the entire process of writing,
reorganizing and revising the literature reviewessay, I think I got an idea of how it is
different from a usual essay, and how to write this new form of writing. For the
second essay I did for this class, I looked back to all different kinds of Sherlock
Holmes stories texts tthat Ive done this quarter, and compared and contrasted them.
The detective stories are getting more interesting and attractive to the audience as
time passing by. Sherlock Holmes and other main characters in the stories has been
upgraded a lot to fit 21
st
centurys audiences. Throughout this quarter, I worked with
two different groups and have doneto finish various presentations in front of the
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whole classand projects. My ability of teamwork and leadership got obvious
improved a lotimprovement through this course. Also, this class brought me many
new friends, which makes it more enjoyable, and it also helped me to build up
friendship with my classmates. Additionally, by writing blogs every week, I gradually
have built up a good habit of writing clearly and checking my grammar errors.
Writing 39B class mainly focused on analyzing detective genre and
contextconventions. It builds provides me a different situation environment of reading
and writing. Unlike the readings I did before, I have to read detailpay attentions to the
little detail in the texts and take necessary notes to ensure I can have remeber enough
examples and quotes to be used in my essays later. I have needed to think
criticallyAlso, I learnt to write critically through WR 39B class. For example, in order
to prove how classic convention has been changed or unchangedremained the same, I
have toneed to provide the examples from different time periods. In writing
situationanother word, this time I am not only analyzing or commenting on a single
literature work, but I am comparing and contracting different works, even from
different media. So this requires better transaction between paragraphs, and stronger
relatione between different works, and accurate language to summarize. .
For the final draft, I will be fully revising the second Rhetorical Analysis essay.
Because the prompt interests me more than the literature review essaywas easier for
me to write, and I believe I have much more space to improve in the second onethis
one than in the first literature review essay. Because I didnt fully follow the prompt
in the first draft of RA essay because I, and chose too many scenes in the
essayfrom ,Sherlock, I want to have agive myself chance to complete it till my
satisfaction. The greatest strength of my essay is that this essay is attractive to the
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audiences by analyzing Watson in different medias. will not be boring to the
audience. It brings all the Sherlock Holmes materials together to show a real and
energetic main characters Sherlock to the audience. If I had more time to work on this
essay, I would make following changes. First, cCut some of the examples, and choose
the two most representative and important scenes from the TV series and the film.
Then build the essay mainly focuses on these two scenes. I think I had too many
scenes in the first draft of essay, which made the essay confusing and unclear. To
follow the prompt to make this revision better, I have to give up some of the examples.
AlsoSecond, the quotes and scenes I picked from Conan Doyle texts were not very
specific. I have to make explain them as detailed as possible in order to make them
supportive enough for the ideas I want to express. Third, aAnother weakness of my
essay is that some sentences were repeated and wordy. I would cut delete all wordy
phrases phrases, and try to find more accurate word selections to make the expression
direct and clear. Additionally, because I need to when I include examples from
scholarly texts in order to give a wider comparison, I need to give the scholars a brief
introduction when I mention them in my essay for the first time. Last but not least, I
think one of my biggest weaknesses of my essays is that I usually make many small
grammar errors unintentionally. So I need tomust try my best to avoid these mistakes
whene I revise it. I probably need to ask people around me to check my grammar as
well.
For the essay that I did not fully revise, which is the first literature review essay, I
will be revising the second body paragraph of my literature review essay,. bBecause
this paragraph is talking about how classic detective convention has been used shown
in Sherlock Holmess stories, I believe there areis many details can be added on to it
to make this paragraph more accurate and useful to the readers. After revised, this
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essay will give the reader a clearer idea of how classic convention works in Sherlock
Holmes series. . The older version of this essay jumped into examples of convention
changing directly, I believe I also need to deliver the readers a rough idea of classical
convention before jumping into examples, in this waythen they will have a better
understanding of what I am talking about. Another strength of this paragraph after
editing is that there will be more examples to explain the sub points of this paragraph.,
t These examples will make surewill ensure the audiences are able to fully get the idea.
After revising, Conan Doyles texts in this essay will be more covered and related to
the theme. This will also make the texts more related to the readers of my essay.
Additionally, the final draft of this paragraph will avoid all grammar errors.
This classThese classes maybe the course Ive done the largest quantity ofmost
teamwork so far. This is the point I most lovelove the most about this course aboutDr.
Haass WR 39B. I got chance to know a lot of amazing people through collaboration,
and this dont usually happen to my other classes. I remember on the second day of
our class, everyone went up to the stage and gave a brief intro. Ive taken two writing
classes before WR 39B, but Dr. Haas is the first professor who let us did this. After
listening to all the intro made by my classmates, I found people that has the exact
same interests as mine, and two classmates who are from Henan like me. Through
group projects, we share our opinions with each other, and while we are working
together, we found the knowledge is more fun to learn by sharing opinions with each
other. Teamwork also brings me various habits of minds. The first oneFirst is
openness,openness; I have open opened my mind to think about unique ideas and
provide them to my group. The other way that group work brings me openness is that
I got to listen to many otherss opinions, sometime their ideas can really give
inspiration. provide my group useful ideas, and also open to share it with my group
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members. The second one is responsibility; I have to put my best effort to finish my
responsibilitparty in order to ensure our group project runs successfully. The third one
is flexibility, because everyone in the group has different schedule, it is really may be
very hard to make everyone decide a specific time and place to work together. So we
need flexibility to figure out a way to work togethersolution. We sometimes use txt
message or Facebook message to communicate; most likely we will split our
responsibility and do it togethethen put all our work together r in a Google Doc.
I didn't play any roles in the actual RIP Seminar, because myMy main
responsibility was to prepare the script of play for our actors in RIP Seminar, and
make main changes and edits to the script. I think our class's presentation RIP
Seminar went very well. Each group has its own advantages, but in general, all three
groups did an amazing job to delivery their main ideas. Firstly, I think our our classs
presentations are all very interesting and attractive to the audiences. Secondly, we
have various forms of presentation. For example, I like the video made by Andy's
group, it was interesting, clearrelative, and full of informationexplains their ideas .
specifically. Thirdly, all the three groups had really good contact with the audience. I
love the atmosphere at that night; that there were many moments people laughed
together or kept extreme silence. It makes the seminar a wonderful memory of 39B
class. The three things we could have done better in our group. The first is it would be
better that the actors remember the script more thoroughly.smoothly, aAlthough
some of the main character's script were really long and hard to remember. The
second is we could bring more specific stuffsuitable objects to make the scenes more
real. For example, we may bring a box looks like a bomb but not a bag we used at the
seminar. Third The third thing is that the actors may wear specific clothes that help
the audience to recognize them better. It was unbelievable that the other 39b's theme
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is horror movie, and they even have made their own horror movie on campus. The
first thing went well on their presentation is that their own movies are creative, and
the ideas are all came out from their groupout on their own. The second thing is they
have better contact with the audience. For example, there was one group asked the
audience using txt message to vote. Everyone's attention has been concentrated on the
screen. The third thing is that the other class had more people on the stage than our
class does, so it makes their groups look more united. There are also things they could
do better. Firstly, they should've included more knowledge that could be
deliverdelivering to the audience. Secondly, they didn't have a professional and
specific introduction like our class did before the seminar starts. Thirdly, their movie
could be done more professionally with high quality camera or more scary
background music. In the RIP Seminar I, I learned how to create and arrange a script
of play. Sometimes we need to reduce the conversations that are a not necessary, and
edit the script to make it more understandable to the audience. The time limit is really
important to a presentation. I learned a lot from my group members, they are all very
hard working people. They devote a lot of time to remembememorizer the script and
make the play looks perfect to the audiences. I developed three habits of mind in this
project. Responsibility - I have to do my work in order to make sure my group is on
the right track. If the script has problem, the play will have problems. Creativity-
while we were deciding which scene we would play, I found out we have to be
creative in order to attract the audiences' interest. Openness- I have to open our
mindmy mind to make the script not only delver the information we want to deliver,
but also accessible to the other class that didnt learn about Sherlock Holmes to make
the play deliver as much information as we can.
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In conclusion, I learned much more than I expected before in Writing 39B
class. I explored myself as a better reader and writer. I developed different habits of
mind such as responsibility, openness, and flexibility. I made many friends from my
classmates. Apart from all these above, I become more confident, outgoing, and love
to collaborate with others because Ive done may group presentations and projects in
this class. Among all these benefits, I need to keep working on my writing skill and
also pay attention to my grammar errors. This class opened my mind, and also brings
me happiness of teamwork. Through teamwork, I got many positive habits of mind
such as responsibility, openness, and flexibility. Writing 39B gives me improvement,
inspiration and encouragement through the past quarter.