Dear Matt,

I would like to start off by saying thank you. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing 2 this past
quarter. Coming into the class I was a bit hesitant, as my friends who had previously taken the
course with other instructors mentioned their true misery, but to my pleasure, I fell into a class
that was engaging, interactive, and instructive.

Throughout the quarter I have learned more and more, not only about writing strategies, but
about myself and my own writing techniques. Working through WPs (the rough drafts, the final
drafts, the peer review comments) has left me with so much more experience and understanding
than any other writing class I have taken.

The terms genre, convention, rhetoric, audience, concision, sign-posts, etc. are all such vital
pieces of writing and up until now I feel like I truly never had a full grasp on those concepts. I
am now confident in what each of these terms mean and feel that my writing has greatly
improved over these past ten weeks because of my newfound knowledge of them. Concision has
been something I have needed to work on for the past couple years now, and I feel like now I
understand that elongating a sentence does not make my paper sound any better, in fact it
concision sounds cleaner and clearer.

Personally, I enjoyed the peer review process because it allowed me to come into contact with
my own writing, along with others. Ive learned that simply hearing your work read back to you
can make all the difference. The different ways of peer review, broadened my horizons on the
simple ways I can find flaws or hiccups in my writing. The readings for this course I found very
interesting as well (and Im not much of a reader). These specific readings tied in well with the
concepts we were learning/ discussing in class, which made writing the WPs a bit easier.

For my portfolio, I chose to revise WP2 and WP3. I chose to revise these two because I did not
feel too strong about them, and I wanted to prove to myself that I can strive for better. After
receiving the classs and your feedback, I went back to reread my papers and see where I could
have improved. As I looked to polish both of these drafts, I became confused with the prompts.
The original prompts and audiences were easier for me to understand compared to the ones for
the portfolio. That being said I came to class with my drafts and had one of my peers absolutely
take apart my paper and tell me what I was doing wrong. After a long class of discouraging
corrections, I came home to fix my paper. Tireless hours later, I came out with my second draft
(because we all know shitty first drafts). A day later I came back to it and found myself a bit
less confused (I think/ I hope), and began making minor changes and fixes to the second draft.

In WP2: I significantly revise the structure, content and overall perspective of my paper. The
audience change in this paper was the most confusing to me. I was unsure how to tie in the new
audience, with a thorough analysis, citing and explaining 4 sources, and all while staying within
4 pages max. I went a bit over to the fifth page for this, but I feel that this length was necessary.
The peer revision in class on Wednesday was very helpful to me for this particular prompt. I

walked in with a paper on a seemingly completely different prompt, because my audience was
still incorrect.

In WP3:I chose to edit my translation piece to a hand written, much darker, and much less formal
form than the original. Also for my metacognitive reflection essay, I tried to take a deeper
analysis of my decisions, while still providing explanations for my examples in the rest of the
paper.

I like my WP3 paper a bit better than my WP2. Originally I enjoyed WP2 much better than WP3,
but after the audience change messed me up and got me confused, I switched. My papers may
not be perfect, but as I have learned no paper ever is nor do they start perfect. I am most proud of
my self improvement. I know I have learned skills in this class that will last me throughout me
entire college career and that is what is most important. I would still like to improve on my
introductions/ thesis statements. One of my WPs came back with exceeded expectations in
both areas while another WP came back with did not meet expectations in the same boxes.
This inconsistency makes me not confident in my writing, and I hope to one day find that
consistency.

The work in this portfolio represents everything I have learned throughout the quarter. From my
first day of the class when the term genre was discussed and my eyes opened to the idea that
genres are everywhere to where I am now, typing this cover letter (acknowledging that it is its
own genre). The amount of revisions I have done to both of the first drafts of the papers is
significant, and I hope that I understood the prompt well enough to properly portray all of the
teachings I have learned this quarter into my papers. I have changed as a writer in the way that I
used to only write one draft in the past. Now I have learned that revisions and multiple drafts
over multiple days is the best way to write a paper. I have learned peer review processes that I
hope to take with me in the future along with better writing strategies. I understand the notions of
rhetoric, conventions, and other terms discussed in class. I plan on taking these skills with me
wherever I go after this and hope to bring these tactics to others. Peer review is definitely
something I plan on continuing doing.

Sincerely,
Tori Moreno