Adela Lopez

Writing 2 ACE
May 30, 2016
Dear Professor Johnson,
I would just like to let you know that I enjoyed being in your class for these two past
quarters and Id also like to thank you for all your help. I learned so many things that helped me
improve my writing skills in these two classes and also recognize my weaknesses so that I can
work on them an improve them.
For this Final Course Portfolio, I have decided to use both our writing project number
two and writing project number three. Writing project number two was the assignment where we
had to choose a course and find the literacy practices that the course uses. These literacy
practices were determined based on interviews conducted, observations of lectures and course
related articles. The third writing project we did was translating from one genre to another taking
in account all the conventions of both the original works and that of which the original is being
translated to. In addition to the genre translation, we had to explain why we did the changes we
did in order to fit the conventions of the new other genre.
For the second assignment, I chose to write about Chemistry. I decided to do this course
because since entering as a freshman, I have struggled in this course. I thought that learning more
about the uses of the literacy practices and their purpose would be more helpful for me to better
understand not necessarily the course material, but the purposes behind each literacy practices
used in the course. Also, I decide to revise this assignment and include it in my portfolio because
it was a very challenging assignment. I knew I could have done better in the assignment, and I
thought that this would be the perfect time to revise it and improve it. Overall, I was very pleased
with what I did because it is essentially the first time I write this type of papers and I feel that I
did a decent job. I can say that I am very proud of what I did in the process of getting this paper
done by collecting all of the information that I needed like observations, searching for related
articles and conducting an interview. With this assignment I learned very useful information not
only about chemistry but also how to get ready for an interview or what type of things to look at
when doing observations. This assignment taught me so many things together.
For the third assignment, I chose to translate the movie Finding Nemo to a newspaper
article. This assignment was actually very fun to do but it was a little hard as well. Doing this
assignment required a good understanding of the different conventions of each genre in order to
successfully do the translation. I believe that the most challenging thing about this assignment
was explaining my reasons as of why and how I did the translation. This process required me to
have a very clear understanding of the conventions of both genres in order to add, delete or
change information to fit the new conventions and explain the reasons behind each decision. I
chose to include this assignment in the portfolio because, as I mentioned before, it was very fun
to do at first and going over it and revising it was fun as well. Also, because I feel that out of all
of the other assignments we had, this was my best one and I wanted to do even more with it and
make it even better.
After taking these two writing courses, Writing 1 ACE and Writing 2 ACE, I have
definitely grown as a writer. At the beginning of the winter quarter, I was very skeptic about my
abilities to write effectively because Ive always had trouble writing. Although, with all of the
activities and assignments we had for Writing 1 ACE, I felt that my writing skills did improve.

Then, coming back in this Writing 2 ACE class was again a little challenging because I knew that
we were going to get assignments that required more work and insight into it. But, as always, the
readings assigned for homework were very useful because they provided a lot of information and
advice on how to go about with our assignments.
For example, the reading Ten Ways to Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musing for College
Students by Shelley Reid was one of the most useful readings for me this quarter. This reading
was very useful because it gives a lot of advices when writing an essay. The main idea of this
reading was to always focus on your audience and purpose (22). The reason why I liked this
reading so much was because I enjoyed reading it, and because the information presented in the
reading was very useful not only for the first assignment but also for the other two assignments
we had.
Another reading assigned for this course that was very useful for me was Navigating
Genres by Kerry Dirk. This reading talked about how each genre has its own conventions and in
order to write something in a particular genre we must fit those particular conventions (Dirk).
This reading was one of the readings that helped me a lot with the third assignment. This is
because it helped me clear up what exactly is a genre and it taught me how to identify the
conventions of any genre. This was particularly important for the third assignment because I had
to identify and understand the conventions of the movie I chose to translate but most importantly
the conventions of the article so that I can meet the conventions they call for.
Another reading that helped me out a lot was Introduction to Primary Research by
Dana Lynn Driscoll. This reading in particular served as a guide for the second writing
assignment we had for this course. As I said, this was the first time I had to write a research
paper and this reading helped guide me through it. It provides lots of information on how to do
observations and what to look for, how to get ready for an interview, how to stay organize for it
and how to come up with the questions to ask in order to get the best and useful information we
can out of the interview. Also, it provided information on what to look for during our
observations to collect useful information. Lastly, it provided information on how to analyze all
the gathered information which was one of the most important steps for this assignment.
Definitely, this reading was essential to my success in the second writing assignment.
In this course in particular I learned the importance to fully understand what you are
writing about and all the conventions of every genre we wrote about because it was essential for
our success in our essays. To be honest, at the beginning of this quarter I was a little confuse on
what exactly the word genre and conventions meant but after writing all of these three essays
whose main focus was on genre I can now say that I have a good understanding of what a
genre is and how each genre has their own conventions. The readings and the assignments we did
in this class all contributed to my understanding of what genre is.
This quarter, especially I applied this concept in my other classes and I was very
successful. I learned that it is essential to fully understand the concepts before we can actually
apply them. For example, in my PSTAT 5A course, it can be very easy to memorize formulas and
apply them on tests and get a decent grade. Although, if you understand why a formula is used
and how it is being used in a particular problem, you will most likely be able to recognize similar
problems and solve those problems in a similar matter. Actually understanding why, you do
something and applying it has, in fact, a better outcome than just memorizing information.
Additionally, in my Chem 1C class, it is essential to fully understand the concepts taught in class
and use all the resource offered to us in order to be successful. I have used the information I
gathered and learned from the writing project two for this class and it has definitely helped me

improve my performance in my chemistry class. Based on the information I obtained from the
student, I was not only able to write my research paper but also learned many strategies that I
have applied in this course which have been very successful.
Every writer has their strengths and weakness and I am not an exception. My biggest
weakness as a writer I would say is grammar. I have always had trouble recognizing where I
need to put commas, especially when my sentences include a conjunction. This problem was
very relevant in all of the essays we wrote in this class. You can see this problem in my first
writing project because I had many grammatical errors but I was able to improve them by the
third writing project. Little by little, I learned how to recognize when and where the commas go.
I have tried very hard to improve this and I know I have because I had less grammar errors in my
last essay compared to the first ones that we wrote. One thing that helped me improve this is
reading my essays out loud. Usually, one can tell when we need a comma when you stop and
take a breath in the middle of the sentence. Also, one thing that I learned is that you put a comma
before a conjunction if the sentences before and after the conjunction are independent sentences.
These are some of the strategies I used throughout this course in order to improve my grammar
errors. Although, I do believe I need to keep working on this because up until now, I still have
trouble recognizing when to put the commas.
One strength that I have as a writer is that I like to have a good understanding of what I
am writing about and what is being required of me when I write my essays. I think this is one of
the most important things that has helped me write my essays for this quarter because having a
clear understanding of what is being asked for us to do makes it a lot easier to come up with a
good or decent essay. Another strength that I now have is staying on topic in my essays. I had
always had trouble staying on topic with my essays since high school and during Writing 1 ACE
but beginning this quarter I can say that I became better at it. getting better at this helped me with
the second writing project because it was easier for me to stay on topic when I first wrote the
essay.
As a writer, we all have our strengths and weakness but it is important to be aware of
them in order to improve what needs to be improve. Knowing this, also helps to look out for our
common errors in our assignments and fix them. Also, learning how to recognize our own errors
makes us even better writers.
There are many things that I will continue to work on such as my grammar and improve
my vocabulary. I usually write my essays very simple without any fancy words. I believe that I
can improve my vocabulary so that I dont find myself using one word over and over in an essay.
Also, because that way I would have a greater variety of words to choose from when writing my
essays. Another thing I would like to work on is writing research papers. I know that later on I
will find myself doing things as such or at least I hope so, therefore, I really do want to learn how
to write them so that I dont struggle too much later on.
Overall, this class was a very fun and interesting class to take because it taught me many
useful things that I can and will definitely use in my other future courses. Thank you for all your
patience with all of us and for taking time in reading our essays and giving us very useful
feedback to improve our writing skills. I had a great time in these two courses with you.
Sincerely,
Adela Lopez

Works cited

Dirk, Kerry. Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing. 2010. 249-262. Web
Driscoll, Dana Lynn. Introduction to Primary Research. Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing.
2011. 153-174. Web
Reid, Shelly. Ten Ways to Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing
Students. Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing. 2001. 3-23. Web