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Dear Matt,
Through the process of writing and revising the WPs this quarter, Ive learnt a lot about
the importance of drafting and revision in writing. As an international student, English
writing has always been a challenge for me. It was usually hard for me to start my writing
because I was always concerned too much about it and tried to have all my words perfect at
one sitting. However, after having read Lamotts Shitty First Draft, I realized that, instead
of struggling with writing a perfect first draft without editing, I should firstly try to get all the
ideas out of my head onto paper and then restructure it.
For restructuring my paper, Ive learnt a helpful technique in this class the reverse
outline. The reverse outline refers to the outline that is made after the writer reads his/her own
draft. For a good writing, each paragraph should contain one main point. The reverse outline
technique could help me check the organization of my paper, guiding me to restructure it in
order to make it flow better and be more comprehensible to the readers.
Revision is also a necessary process to write a good paper. There is no perfect writing
in the world, but we can make our writing close to perfection through repeated modifications.
Peer-reviewed process helped me a lot in revising my WPs drafts. Although I felt a little bit
embarrassed when I first heard my paper read by someone else, I soon realized the benefits of
it and got used to it. I can hardly find any problems in my paper when I read it by myself.
However, my peers could always find something I was missing when they read my paper
aloud. Having multiple people read a piece of work really contributed a lot to bettering the
paper.
In addition to drafting and revising, I also understand the concepts of conventions,
genre, rhetoric, and discourse community more thoroughly by working on my WPs. WP1
introduced me to the way of identifying two distinct genres by comparing their different
writing conventions and rhetorical features. WP2 let me know more about the conventions

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and rhetorical effects of writings for different disciplines. I was also introduced to the method
of searching for library resources during this process. WP3 allowed me to apply all my
knowledge of those concepts by translating an academic article into a non-academic genre.
For my final portfolio, I decided to revise my WP1 and WP3. I chose to revise these
Writing Projects mainly because I did better on these projects than on WP2. In WP2, I used
cloning as my topic and political science and psychology as two disciplines to be analyzed,
which were too professional for me to talk about. While the topics I chose for my WP1 and
WP3 were more interesting and familiar to me. I knew that it would be easier for me to edit
these paper and I had more confidence in making them better.
For my WP1, the most obvious change I made of it is the opening paragraph. When I
wrote my submission draft, I considered my audience as the public. Therefore, I used a lot of
sentences to introduce the topic I chose the food. However, in the final portfolio, the
audience was restricted to a Writing 2 student next quarter and I needed to explain to him the
idea of genre, conventions and rhetoric, so I included some general definitions of them to
present my audience with a sketchy picture of what these concepts are referred to.
The comments I received from you on my WP1 are most helpful. I realized that I wrote
a lot about the conventions of each genre I chose and their rhetoric techniques but my
interpretations of each genre were not clear enough. Although everybody knows those things,
for my WP1, I had to point them out. I explained to my audience what a recipe and a food
review look like more directly before I started my analysis of their writing conventions in the
revised WP1, making the concept of genre clearer.
For my WP3, in part one, I revised some grammatical errors and changed some words
to make it flow better and easier for children to understand. According to the feedback I
received from you and the rubric, I included more details of the choices I made while
translating in part two. I explained to my audience why I chose donkey and rabbit as the

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characters in my fable and how I made them affable. Moreover, I presented the readers more
directly with arguments from the academic article which I decided to translated into
dialogues.
For both WP1 and WP3, I did a lot of serious revisions on concision since they were
limited to three pages. I extracted all of the repetitive sentences and then either deleted them
or made them simpler and more comprehensible. A great challenge for me was that in
addition to cutting down my paper, I had to add more details of my analysis and to integrate
what I had learned from the class readings into the revised WPs in order to back up the
arguments I made. Although I think Ive achieved those goals, the process was indeed a
struggle.
Moreover, since English is not my native language, some sentences in my WPs might
dont read smoothly for American readers. Under the help of my partner who is a native
English speaker, I corrected the errors I made on grammar, syntax, mechanics and even
punctuation in both WP1 and WP3. I also rewrote the sentences that were awkward in my
drafts, and now I think Im able to convey my ideas to the audience more accurately.
My work in the portfolio reflects the main goals that were addressed in our course
syllabus. I learned a great deal about drafting, revision, information flow, structure and the
way of using reading materials. My understanding of genre and conventions was clearly
shown in the two revised WPs. I think the greatest change of me as a writer after this class is
my attitude towards writing. Before Writing 2, my writing assignments of other classes were
mainly based on analysis the contents of different texts and not focused on the art of writing.
But now I become more serious about writing and realize the importance of the process of
drafting and revising.
When I approach new writing projects in the future, I will refer back to the writing
skills that I learned in this class. Before writing, I will consider who my audience is, what my

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purpose is, and which writing genre I should use. During the process of revising, I will
always look at concision, stress and index, information flow, grammar and syntax of my
papers. I will remember that we all have shitty first draft, but we can improve it through our
multiple revisions.

Sincerely,
Zhuangni Lin

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