Brenton Spiro Mrs.

Leslie Wolcott ENC 1101 (12pm) 27 April 2012

ENC 1101 Reflective Letter to Mrs. Wolcott:

Dear Mrs. Wolcott,

Ive have really took pleasure in being a part of your class. Since this was my first year attending the University of Central Florida I feel like myself and my writing started off a bit stunted, but your teaching style and the lessons and assignments that you pushed me into doing definitely allowed for me to sprout and achieve growth in my academic attitude and my writing ability. If before my behavior as a student and writer resembled a childs, your class has helped me reach maturity and develop into a better writer and student. One must climb many mountains before they see the light of the dawn. Before starting English 1101 this semester, I was not a bad writer; in fact, I would have considered myself to be pretty good when it came to writing. However, what I didnt realize was how misinformed I was. In my opinion, a good writer makes lemonade out of lemons no matter how sour or erroneous the information they are being taught is. It took exposure to the new information that I received from writing assignments like reading journals and your essay process to realize that while I was not wrong in my application of the lessons that I learned about prior to English 1101; the information I was obtaining definitely had some holes in it. In retrospect, I had no idea about the amount of work I had to do to be the informed and enlightened writer that I am now; I had no idea that I

would have to challenge my mind to climb over mountainous obstacles in order to see the dawn of a better writing style.

Reflection of General Learning:

This course started off with some basic guidelines as to what we could expect to see and do throughout the semester; reading journals being a major component. The central purpose of the reading journals was to review the research and ideas developed by several well-known writing investigators and scholars. From the very beginning of the course I was being introduced to several new concepts as a result of being assigned to read articles such as Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott. Although I had previously been exposed to the idea that a rough draft is basically an outline for the final draft that is to come never before in my reading had there been such emphasis on how not only is the first draft or rough draft an outline, but it is also supposed to be a shitty outline or one developed without adherence to the specific guidelines that are to be employed in the final draft. Anne Lamotts article taught me that the central purpose behind a first draft is to just get your ideas out there to allow fluidity of writing, and nothing else. After receiving a proper introduction to the book as a result of being assigned to do reading journals for articles like Shitty First Drafts, and the Introduction to Conversation, which set the preliminary groundwork for the type of reading we expect to see throughout the book, we hit the ground running and delved right into the coursework and reading material for Unit 1; where we focused on the concepts of rhetorical situations and analysis. Within this unit we were able to focus on rhetorical analysis, its constituents, and how it could apply to both writing and reading. For me to formerly display what I learned from the articles that I feel helped the most with my overall understanding of the units central topic I developed a table that shows what I learned from each of the units individual readings:

Article:
Backpacks vs. Briefcases by Laura Bolin Carroll

What I Learned:
It was in this article that I was first exposed to rhetoric, which Carroll expresses as being expressed in both written and auditory forms. She covers the constituents of the rhetoric method with her own identifications; exigence being the conditions that summon a response from viewers, audience being those who the discourse is meant for, and the constraints which are the standards the rhetorician is supposed to follow. She also covers the use of persuasion via logos, ethos, and pathos. In this article I was introduced to the concept of rhetorical reading and constructing my own meaning out of text by means of rhetorical analysis; this is done by considering who has written the piece, who the audience is, the rhetorical context, and the discourses history.

Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Constructions of Meaning by Christina Haas and Linda Flower The Rhetorical Situation by Lloyd F. Bitzer

This article showed me the meaning behind a rhetorical situation and how it connects to rhetoric discourse: it dictates the exigence, draws in an audience who influence change, and controls what the possible constraints are.

Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents by Keith Grant-Davie

This article allowed for me to expand on my definition and knowledge of the meaning of a rhetorical situation presented by Bitzer. Grant-Davie states that a rhetorical situation is a situation where a speaker or writer uses rhetoric to effect a change. He also says it is made up of an exigence, rhetors, audience, and constraints.

After developing a strong idea of the definition and application of a rhetorical situation, rhetorical analysis, and the constituents, we carried onto Unit 2 where we were able to learn about various writing processes and their use within writing environments. One of this class main objectives was to provide the means by which we as students and writers could be producers of discourse rather than consumers and this unit was very instrumental in my achievement of this goal. By reading articles developed by researchers such as Mike Rose and Sondra Perl I was able to gain insight about how I composed my writing process and I was therefore able to improve my composition because of it. This table conveys what I learned from what I consider to be some of the most influential articles on my writing process: Article:
Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language by Mike Rose The Composing Processes of Unskilled

What I Learned:
In this article I was introduced to two separate forms of plans and rules identified as being heuristics or rules of thumb that allow for flexibility within writing and algorithms which he defined as being rules that create specific results and often hinder a writers ability to compose. After reading this article I realized that I often overuse algorithms and developed a study in which I attempted to decrease my over-usage as a result. In this article I was able to read about a study where, in an attempt to create a system that expressed writers writing in a systematic and replicable manner, the researcher, Sondra Perl, was able to look at

College Writers by Sondra Perl

the writing processes of five unskilled college writers. One of the deductions that I took from the study because of my identification with it was how student writers often employ the writing methods taught to them by their instructors that hinder their ability to write fluidly.

How Do I Write? by Dominieq Ransom

In this article rather than focusing on the content I was more impacted by the formatting. This article allowed for me to really see the Swales CARS Method for Research put into application and was essential in my understanding of how to apply it to my writing.

Subsequent to my exposure of the writing process and its application, the class moved on to Unit 3 which covered the concepts intertextuality and discourse communities. While reading the texts about each concept there were an array of definitions and details added to each term as the reading progressed. Consequent to reading about and developing an understanding of intertextuality and discourse communities I was able to use my newly attained knowledge to generate an essay in which my comprehension of both of these terms heavily impacted the type of material I was able to develop with my essay. This table expresses what I learned within this unit from the articles that I felt were the most efficient in helping me grasp the concepts intertextuality and discourse communities: Articles:
Intertexuality: How Texts Rely on Other Texts by Charles Bazerman Intertextuality and the Discourse Community by James E. Porter

What I Learned:
In this article I was first introduced to the concept of intertexuality which Bazerman defined as being the relationship text has to other texts surrounding it. Bazerman also covers some examples of intertexuality being texts that draw on previous texts explicitly and implicitly and also the ways in which intertexuality is presented such as with quotations or without. In this article I was familiarized with Porters refined definition of intertexuality being the concept that all texts contain bits of other texts and that there cannot be a text that does not take ideas from other texts. I was also introduced to the connection between intertextuality and discourse communities whereas all writers based their writing off a written code that they learn within their discourse community or writing community which can be thought of as intertextuality.

The Concept of Discourse Community by John Swales Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics by James Paul Gee

Within this article I was able to make a clear distinction between what a discourse community is versus other communities that are not as focused in on a specific discourse. Swales offered six defining characteristics that enabled me to determine whether or not a given community of people was a discourse community; i.e. the community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. In this article I was presented with a different type of community with a different definition than those covered earlier in the unit, where Gee discussed the concept of Discourse which he defined as being the ways of being in the world; forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, etc. Gee states that a Discourse is a social structure developed by enculturation. He also raises the idea of Primary Discourse, or the Discourse we are born into, and Secondary Discourse, the Discourses we join later in life. He also talks about how Secondary Discourses can either be Dominant or Non-Dominant, depending on if social goods are offered as a result of membership.

This English course was the first time I was really asked to consistently create writing entries about the material I was reading throughout a semester. Never did I think that along the way, amidst reading about and being taught new writing perspectives and research, would my ability to compose writing become so much easier not only when doing my periodic reading journals but also within my essays. As a result of consistently being asked to write in such a casual manner in the reading journals I believe I was more able to take advantage of what potential I had to offer in my essay composition process. From the workshops and peer letters to the multiple drafts we were asked to do over an extended period of time I feel like the purpose of this course was achieved; to make me into a writer who does not just use writing submitted by others but whom also creates his own writing with a unique style and approach.

Rhetorical Analysis Unit and Final Draft Revision:

With an introduction to research composed by various researchers such as Anne Lamott and Lloyd Bitzer came the onset of a completely different writing perspective. In the time period leading up to my first essay, the wheels of change were slowly but surely starting to spin. Not only was my previous knowledge concerning writing and reading augmented and expanded but the way in which I applied this knowledge to my writing began to change as well. I started my transformative journey from being just an idol user and reader of information to putting the reading into action and allowing my writing to expand to new horizons. After reading Lamotts passage about Shitty Drafts and acknowledging that I needed to apply the central points to my writing, I was introduced to the idea of rhetorical reading and analysis. The passage by Christina Haas and Linda Flower titled Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Constructions of Meaning definitely helped me in my pursuit to develop my own meaning of an assigned reading and it also assisted me in putting what I read into action. It was because of this article that from the point I read it on I have been able to construct my own meaning of the readings I do.

Another example of how my reading was put into action within this unit definitely came from the peer workshops and letters. Not only was I able to put the suggestions given to me by my peers letters into action, but I was also able to employ what I had learned from the articles when I wrote out my letter to them. Lloyd Bitzer and Keith Grant-Davies research about rhetorical analysis, put into application, really helped me to fulfill my obligation of making the best revisions possible for my peers essays. Learning about the exigence, audience, constraints, and modes of persuasion allowed for me to really see the meaning behind the words within my peers writing and to help them expand on that meaning. It turned out that understanding rhetorical analysis and the rhetorical constituents was not only central to composing the essay, but reviewing and improving upon it as well. For my revision of the final draft of the Rhetorical Analysis paper I referred back to the articles I covered in Unit 1, the workshop guide, my peer letters, and the grading rubric for the essay. In response to these documents I generated a new approach to my essay that I did not make use of before. As a result of going over these materials I decided to reconfigure my thesis statement. In my final draft I asked a question that I believe could not be answered my means of rhetorically analyzing the political ad alone, so in my revision of my final draft I made sure to ask a more condensed question in my thesis statement that could be answered and satisfied by rhetorical analysis of the political ad alone. In response to a suggestion made by one of my peers who said that my essay would be more effective if I divided it into smaller subsections, I redid the formatting of my essay and used the CARS Model of Research. I also made sure to go further on my rhetorical analysis and delve into each individual feature of the video that could be analyzed.

Writing Process Unit and Final Draft Revision:

The Writing Process Unit and the assignments we did within the unit were central to my understanding of the ways I compose and the approaches I could potentially take to improve the defects

of my writing. From Mike Rose to Sondra Perl I was given insight about the methods, techniques, and rules used by students and constructed my own meaning of the text based off of these. In Mike Roses Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language I was able to read about a study in which the plans and rules of ten college student writers were analyzed. The studys research was conducted so the investigators would be able to see which rules and plans facilitated writing and which ones hindered it. Mike Rose identified the rules that hindered a writer as being algorithms since they were rules that created specific results. In retrospect of reading this article, I remember making a strong connection with the students who used algorithms and thinking that my application of these rules could be a major hindrance in my ability to pursue my full potential in writing. Sondra Perls The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers really affected me too. The students taking part in the study and I shared a couple of commonalities but the chief similarity was that we both use writing methods taught to us by our instructors that hinder our ability to write fluidly. It was because I read this article that I was able to make the connection to Mike Roses study and deduce that I make use of algorithms because that is what my teachers taught me is right. The first time around before composing my Writing Process essay I did not make the connection between Mike Roses and Sondra Perls study, however; eventually I formulated an idea of what each meant to me and discovered the interconnectedness between what the articles were saying and how they both applied to my writing. I believe it was a result of going over my reading journals and my final draft essay again that I was able to draw the conclusion that both of these researchers deductions came together to generate the exigence of my essay which was my usage of algorithms. The second time around, in my revision of my final draft, I made sure to include how Sondra Perl was part of the Conversation of my essay, and how her research article was part of what influenced my essay. After using a peer letter that expressed how I should create a clearer thesis statement, along with the grading rubric from my Writing Process essay, as my inspiration, I decided to make my thesis more

clear by redeveloping my study. In order to enhance the argument that I made for my thesis which was, can I lower my usage of algorithms if my environment is free of any factors that I perceive to be pressuring me into using rigid rules, I decided to reconstruct my data table to include a section to identify the environment so that I had as much information as possible to determine if the environmental context of a given situation influenced my usage of algorithms. Another detail that caused for differentiation between my final draft and its revision is that in the revision I made sure to document the controlled environments I was in, as opposed to just naturalistic environments, so I could further expand on the amount of data I had regarding the independent variable or the pressures presented by the environment; which are more often found in controlled environments from what I have witnessed. As a result of having a larger amount of data I was able to generate a more developed and supported argument within my essay.

Discourse Communities Unit and Final Draft Revision:

By the time I reached the Discourse Communities Unit I had really developed into a better writer by means of putting all the information I retrieved from the research articles into action, however; it was within this unit that I realized there were still concepts that I had not yet seen or understood. With the assistance supplied to me by the research articles composed by Charles Bazerman and James E. Porter I was able to identify the concept of intertextuality or the idea that all texts have a relationship with, are based off, and contain bits of other texts. It was also because of Porter that I was able to characterize a discourse community or as he defined it, a writing community. Two other researchers further augmented my knowledge and understanding of discourse communities: one being John Swales and the other James Paul Gee. When comparing the two researchers, James E. Porter and John Swales definitions of discourse communities differ since John Swales definition includes six defining characteristics for a discourse community which a writing community,

or what Porter referred as being a discourse community, does not always adhere to. I learned that Swales six defining characteristics were that the community has to share a common public goal, has to have mechanisms of intercommunication, it has to possess one or more genres, it has to have a specific lexis or unique terminology, and it has to have a threshold level of members with expertise in the discourse. James Paul Gee got even more specific with his development of the term Discourse; which is basically an offshoot of a discourse community. Gee defined Discourses broadly as being ways of being in the world that are developed by means of enculturation. Gee also stated that there are two ways to classify Discourses: one being Primary and the other Secondary Discourses. He stated that people are born into their Primary Discourse and join their Secondary Discourses later in life. He also states that there are two distinct Secondary Discourses: Dominant and Non-dominant. Although I framed my Discourse Community essay based off of the research of both Swales and Gee, because my revisionary work only makes use of texts, which Swales defined better in his research article, I only used him as a reference. I developed my revision of my final draft of the Discourse Community essay based off of a suggestion given to me in one of my peers letters that expressed how I should make use of the texts of the discourse community I researched. I also based it off the grading rubric for the Discourse Community essay which said the same thing. Since a discourse community must utilize genres, which are categories of text, to fit the definition of a discourse community, it makes sense that texts are so important to an outsiders understanding of specific discourse community. Within my revisionary work I sought to identify, analyze, and explain the use of a couple of different texts of the UCF Philosophical Society that I studied for my Discourse Community essay in order to enhance the overall argument that the UCF club truly is a discourse community. In essence I basically presented the argument that the UCF Philosophical Society is certainly a discourse community, in a different genre; changing the formatting from an essay to pictures of texts and summaries of the significance of how each helps to identify the club as a discourse community.

Grade Suggestion:
I believe it would be a lie to say that I deserve anything less than an A for my portfolio grade. This is because I made sure to abide by all the specifications described in a successful portfolio as implied by the portfolio grading rubric:

Reflection: My reflection makes sure to demonstrate my understanding that you, my teacher, Mrs. Leslie Wolcott, make up my primary target audience. By means of formatting this as a letter, describing everything you taught me, and even arguing that I deserve an A on this portfolio signifies my understanding of who makes up my audience. Although it can be suggested, because of the content of my portfolio, that the secondary audience could possibly be anyone who is part of the UCF academic

population ranging anywhere from another teacher who seeks to see what you are teaching in your course to a future student who wants to see what is covered within your ENC 1101 in a given semester. This reflection also clearly and elaborately discusses everything I have learned throughout the school year: all the major knowledge I acquired throughout the semester in each individual unit, each distinct set of knowledge that I withdrew from the articles and from the reading journals (which are displayed in a well-developed and clean table system), and what I learned from taking part in your unique writing composition process (rough drafts workshops - peer letters - final drafts). Also I am clearly making a grade suggestion by arguing why I deserve an A of this portfolio since I am presenting how I abide by every given piece of criteria mentioned of the grading rubric.

Revision: As I discussed throughout this reflection I have made substantial revisions to all three of my papers, and I made sure to demonstrate this as clearly as possible by discussing the ways in which I revised my final drafts: For the rhetorical analysis essay I reformatted the essay completely using the Swales CARS Model of Research. I also reconstructed my thesis statement and redeveloped my essay in response. Along with these I went into further detail about the features of the video to make sure my rhetorical analysis was flawless.

For the writing process essay I redid the data portion of the essay whereas I made sure to add a column where I discussed the characteristics of my environment which I didnt do before. I also made sure to include both controlled and naturalistic environments within my data set; to make certain I had as much information as possible in determining

if the environment affected my use of algorithms. Furthermore, I made sure to include Sondra Perl and her research within my study which I did not do before my revision.

For my discourse community essay I changed the genre where instead of making my revision an essay I used examples of specific texts and then discussed how they supported the argument that the UCF Philosophical Society is a discourse community.

Journal: In my digital portfolio I made sure to make a page used exclusively for showing why I chose the six journal entries. I also provided long and detailed paragraphs about what I learned from each of these journals and then did the same within this reflection. I also made sure to state how the journal process as a whole positively affected my writing abilities within this reflection.

Completion: This portfolio includes every bit of information it is supposed to including the rough drafts, final drafts, and the revisions along with some extra documents. Also, I took part in the workshop where we reviewed one of our essays along with the conference that you conducted with me.

Design: I believe that the overall design I have used in my digital portfolio is both creative and organized. From the home page you can easily navigate through the Table of Contents tabs on the left side of the page, and you are also able to get a detailed summary of what is presented on each page. I had a common theme within my portfolio being the Dawn of an Enlightened Writer and I made sure

to keep this theme in mind when developing the content in my portfolio and in the manner in which it is presented.

Overall it would be a shame to cast darkness onto the spirit of an enlightened writer who experienced the dawn of a better writing ability. All in all, thanks for being an outstanding teacher and allowing for me to reach my full potential.

Sincerely, Brenton Spiro