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Ashly Dominguez
Writing 2
Speiser Winter 2017
March 22, 2017
Metacognitive Essay

Coming to UCSB, I knew I would have to take college writing courses to fulfill my

school requirements. In all honesty, I was not so happy about taking a writing course so I put it

off until my second year. Writing 2 is the first writing course Ive taken so far at UCSB.

Surprisingly, this writing class was not what I expected. Although there was a lot of assignments

due, I enjoyed this course for many reasons. Apart from the humor Professor Speiser brought to

class each day, I also felt that I learned a lot about myself. This course made me realize that I am

a better writer than I thought I was. I was so used to seeing negative comments in my paper

(from High School) that it took me by surprise when I would receive positive and encouraging

comments from peers and Speiser in my rough drafts and final papers. I also learned that I have

developed a specific writing process when writing an assignment. I remember an activity from

the beginning of the Writing 2 course where Speiser had us students write down our process of

writing and it really made me realize how I write. Not only did it made me evaluate myself but it

also made me grow on myself as a writer. I was able to come up with a more effective writing

process from reading other peers process of writing. In this course, we were also able to help

others with their own papers by peer reviewing them in class. As a reviser, I felt that I also grew

from seeing how my peers responded to my mistakes because as I revised more papers, I was

able to give more helpful feedback. As mentioned, before taking this class, I would receive

negative comments on my papers from peers in High School, and so I thought that was the

proper way to edit papers, by telling people what they need to work on. However, from taking

this course, I learned that peer editing papers is not only about mentioning improvements, but

also by encouraging your peers and making them feel good about strong points they included in
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their papers. This course also challenged us to reflect on our thinking skills and understand why

we think certain ways. This was one of the things that really stood out from this course because it

was unique to teach this way in comparison to other courses. People dont really think about their

thinking process and so I have never really thought about it myself before taking this course.

Furthermore, this course has helped me grow as a thinker because it has made me aware to the

type of thinker I am. I have learned how people put certain types of writing pieces together by

analyzing their thinking process and coming to conclusions about why they proceeded that way.

By doing so, I was able to apply this knowledge to myself when writing my essays. The

reflective cover letters also helped me really process what I was doing in each writing

assignment and why I made those decisions as a writer. They also helped me think about what

was really being targeted in each assignment and helped me reflect on my knowledge of

important concepts.

I feel that I was able to achieved all the course objectives from this class. I have learned

about important terms that were essential to my writing projects. Writing Projects 1 allowed me

to gain knowledge on genre analysis and think about why writers of certain genres think the way

they do in order to put together a successful piece of writing. For my specific assignment in

WP1, I presented a juxtaposition between realistic blogs and romantic tragedy films on their

different portrayals of heartbreak. This juxtaposition helped me understand the thinking process

of blog creators and movie producers. From this project, I was able to learn how writers target a

genre from different viewpoints and it helped me understand the concept of genre analysis. For

WP2 I analyzed informational text and did additional research in order to compare a topic from

different academic viewpoints. Specifically, I explain how biology approaches dance initiation in

a more sophisticated, organized manner than spiritual history. In this assignment, I was able to
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further explore the concept of genre conventions and discourse communities. I also was required

to evaluate sources to collect data on my topic. In order to help complete this challenging

assignment, I brainstormed in order to create an outline for my paper before writing it. My peers

comments also helped me improve my syntax and analysis in this assignment. WP3 was a more

liberal assignment because it required a more creative side. This project was fun to complete, but

it was also challenging to transform a new genre using the text in an original piece. This writing

project allowed me to put all the knowledge learned in this course and apply it to the assignment.

I needed to analyze the types of genres chosen and perform genre conventions to transform the

new genre. The assigned writing projects helped really understand and in some cases enact the

important concepts this course set out for us to learn. In my portfolio revisions, I was able to

apply all the knowledge from this course and improve my writing. I was not able to really grasp

these concepts from the beginning because I developed a better understanding of these concepts

as the course came to an end. Therefore, in my revisions, there is a better understanding of these

terms shown in my writing.

I understand that even though I have become a better writer, I am still not the best writer.

I hope to learn more about being an effective writer through other writing courses at UCSB. I

hope that they help me improve my writing skills just as this writing 2 course did. I hope to learn

about more ways to cite papers such as Chicago citation style. This course has taught me a lot.

Not only was I able to improve my writing in this course, but I was also able to improve my

writing in other courses such as my Biology Lab class that required me to write a research paper.

The skills I gained from doing research on biological text in this course and the APA format I

learned about helped me immensely when coming to writing the research paper. I am proud to

say that I not only learned a lot from this course but also enjoyed it while it lasted.