Dear Michele,

My skills as a writer has shown improvement throughout the quarter of UWP 1Y. From

the first project, the Living Picture Narrative, to the last project, the Podcast Project, this course

has taught me many valuable lessons to become a better writer. You will be reading about the

improvements I made this quarter in processes and rhetorical knowledge through my Living

Picture Narrative and Podcast Project.

One of the most important lessons I learned in this class was to trust the writing process. Photo from
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Circular-Writing-Process-Chart-3304077

Living Picture Narrative

Since the Living Picture Narrative was the first project of the quarter, it’s the project that

I learned the basics of writing. Many of the skills that I learned from this project were used in all

my other projects for this class. These skills included making an outline and trusting the revision
process. I always had trouble starting

papers, but making an outline helped me

get my thoughts onto paper and organize

my ideas. Then, investing time into the

revision process allowed me to be more

relaxed when writing my first and Making an outline helped improve the organization of my projects.
Photo from https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-outline/

second draft. When I am less worried about making mistakes, I am able to write more.

To begin, we had to do a brainstorming assignment that involved brainstorming ideas,

picking an idea, and writing about it. I wrote freely for this assignment because I knew it didn’t

have to be part of the final paper. However, I ended up using every idea from that assignment

with more details. All I had to do was make an outline and put those ideas in an order that made

sense. After that, I just had to make adjustments based on revisions.

During the revision process, I put a lot of consideration into my peer review and your

comments. After looking at the peer review comments, I noticed that some of my paragraphs had

multiple main ideas. I chose to either expand on those main ideas in a separate paragraph or

delete them from my paper when I felt that it wouldn’t be a strong paragraph. When I read your

comments, I realized that I said the word “would”

way too many times. I even said it twice in one

sentence. I went through my paper and tried to

create more active sentences by replacing the word

For all my projects, I had to invest time into revision to improve as a
writer. Photo from https://www.thinkogram.com/2016/02/16/the- “would.” I believe this made my paper
revision-movement/
much stronger. Before taking this class, I never put much thought or effort into revision, but I’ve

realized that it clearly makes a significant difference.

Podcast Project

The Podcast Project displays my ability to talk to a specific audience. There was a

specific audience for all the projects, but I didn’t focus on an audience until this project. Because

it’s a podcast, this paper was more like a

conversation. When having a conversation,

you need to know who you are talking to

because people talk differently based on who

the audience is. Since I picked my audience

For my Podcast Project, I enhanced my skills for talking to a
target audience. Photo from
to be “parents in Davis,” I presented my https://bohringer.com/uncategorized/bullseye-define-target-
audience.html
research talking about what I thought parents would like to hear.

I learned about the importance of an audience through peer reviews. When I read the

comments from my peer reviews, I was surprised to see that nobody was able to identify who my

target audience was. When I went back and read my paper, I saw why they had trouble. My

paper was very vague and even made me question who I wanted my audience to be. This lead to

me changing my audience from “people who like going to the park” to “parents in Davis”. This

step wouldn’t have happened without the revision process. My paper had made sense when I first

wrote it, but was unclear to me when I read it from a different perspective.

After a quarter of writing week after week, I was satisfied with my improvements as a

writer. I can’t say that I love writing, but I can say that I no longer hate writing. It’s a long

process, but it’s worth it if you are writing something that you care about. Two of the skills that I

improved as a writer are processes and rhetorical knowledge. While my time in this class is

ended, I will be using the skills I learned for years in the future.