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Liz Lu
Writing 39B
Professor Haas
2
nd
June 2014
The Final Reflection Essay
By reviewing all the blogs I have written fro 39B, I could see my improvement not
only as a writer but also as a communicator. Before this quarter, I had written several
academic essays for my major classes. However, I did not realize that those essays are not
strictly meeting the academic standard until I received feedback from Professor Haas about
the very first essay we had written for this class, the literary review essay. This essay is the
first obstacle I had met in 39B because its prompt is quite different from those of what I
had write in both 39A and Academic Writing program. It requests writers to focus on the
critics that literary scholars have addressed to Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes series and
then put those scholars who hold similar or opposite opinions in conversations. After a
whole quarters learning of academic requirement of writing, I learned why it is important
to provide pure and credible scholarly resources to an essay and to eliminate personal
thoughts upon the topic. By increase objective analysis of a topic, I could make a literary
review more convincible to the readers; and by correctly citing the sources, I could avoid
unintentional plagiarism. For example, my controlling idea of the literary was why Watson
is important as both an average man and a narrator to the Sherlock Holmes series. After
learning the rule of literary review, I updated the controlling idea to how the literary
scholars evaluate Watsons impact as both an average man and a narrator to the Sherlock
Holmes series.
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During the review process, I learned a lot from both Professors and peer reviewers
comments. They reminded me which parts of the essays I already did well and which parts
I should be working on harder. In the rhetorical analysis essay, I discus how Stephen
Moffatts television series Sherlock and Guy Ritchies Sherlock Holmes films both confirm
Holmes heroic characters that present in Conan Doyles original works through a more
objective narrating perspective. For this essay, I received a relatively harsh feedback from a peer
reviewer, but I appreciated the effort that he has put into because through an online comment I
could learn more about my readers real concern than through a face-to-face communication
which might turn to an embarrassing situation if a partners feedback was too harsh. By
accepting comments I practice a habit of mind that featured by Openness, which refers to a
willingness to consider different way of thinking. Through a whole quarters practice, both from
accepting comments on weekly blogs and on essays, I learned to appreciate others opinions and
learn from their ways of thinking.
Before this quarter I read and watched Sherlock Holmes stories only as recreation and
have never thought in depth about the detective genre. When I started to analyze them from both
literary and rhetorical perspective, I gradually lost my interest for Sherlock Holmes. This
phenomenon can be explained by a mental adjustment theory, which indicates that when I
changed the ultimate goal from entertaining to learning, watching Sherlock became a rough
process. A habit of mind that I developed to cope with this obstacle is engagement. After a whole
quarters practicing, I learned to invest time into what I am learning not only for my own interest
but also for the benefit that I would receive from the whole learning process. And I would adapt
this strategy of learning to my future reading and writing situation whenever I feel a loosing of
interest.
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I would choose the rhetorical analysis essay to fully revise because it reflects my
passion about Sherlock Holmes. For the final draft of this essay, the greatest strength I have
is a detailed description, which include both camera scale and sound editing of Holmes pre-
practicing of a fighting scene from Guy Ritchies Sherlock Holmes films. However, the greatest
weakness I have is also in this paragraph because I claimed that the fighting scene confirms the
recreational convention of the story by decreasing the dangerousness of the adventure and
assuring Holmes would always win. However, I did not check with literary scholar George N.
Doves critics about the classic Sherlock Holmes stories. This convention is actually
emphasizing the feature of a detective story that invites its readers to play the game along with
the detective and to solve the puzzle. As a result for the revision of this essay, I would stay on the
thought of how a fighting scene with a visualizing of Holmes thinking process works for its
audiences. And I will also be minimizing the part about the recreational value which may
confuse my readers previously. If I could have more time to edit this essay, I would put more
effort to work on the first body paragraph where I describe a scene of Holmes examining a
victims body. In this scene, the director uses an eye-line matching cinematic technique to follow
Holmes thinking process. It provides audiences a more objective version of evidence than
Watson has provided in the classic Conan Doyles texts. Professor Haas commented on this
paragraph that also my controlling idea of this paragraph is clear when compares to the fighting
scene paragraph, but I still need a deeper and richer analysis of the scene like what body part of
the victim the camera focus on and what words are shown on the screen, and how these
cinematic techniques assist Stephen Moffatt to convey the genius of Holmes. The habit of mind I
developed through revising my rhetorical analysis essay is Metacognition. This habit refers to
an ability to reflect on my own learning process, and to allocate where I am in the process of
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becoming a better writer, reader, and overall communicator. By revising my own writing with
the assistance form professor Haas comments, I recognize both my strength and weakness as a
writer, and will be working harder on the area I feel insufficient.
For literature review essay, I will choose one paragraph to revise for the final portfolio. I
am choosing the forth paragraph, in which literary scholars discuss about the importance of
Watson as the narrator. Firstly the topic sentence of the paragraph need to be changed from why
I think Watson is important as a narrator to a literary scholars claim of Watsons importance as
a narrator. I should be choosing an excerpt from Conan Doyles text to lead the paragraph and
then mentioning how several scholars discuss about this topic. Furthermore, in order to put the
two scholars more closely in conversation, I should use some sentence like Panek agrees with
Konnikovas point when he writes. Finally, since it is the first draft of the literature review
essay, the whole paragraph is full grammar mistakes. I should carefully read through the
paragraph to check grammar errors and correctness of the using of MLA format.
Through working with my classmates for preparing group projects, I developed several
habits of mind that could not only assist me in the 39B but also other academic area that I will
face in future. These habits of mind are responsibility and flexibility. Before this quarter I had
barely working within group. When I was only responsible for my own work, I might delay as
long as I could. However, doing presentation with my teammate force me to finish ahead, so we
could have more time for reanalyzing and adjusting. For the RIP seminar, my job was collecting
visual excerpts of the Sherlock series. In order to save more time for my teammates to edit the
video, I searched the important clips as soon as I could because I know it was my responsibility
to assist the editors of our group. Furthermore, through working with teammates, I also learned
to be flexible. When eight people worked together, it was inevitable that we would have some
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disagreement. However, I learned to listen to other peoples opinions through this process,
became more flexible about my own opinion, and learned to make compromise when my
teammates had greater ideas.
During the RIP seminar, our group was responsible for presenting how some modern
versions Sherlock Holmes confirm or twist the classical detective genre. My job was collecting
excerpts form the BBC Sherlock episodes that represent Watsons average intellect, his
relationship with Holmes, and some physical power-up that influenced by modern action genre.
However, beside his relationship with Holmes, Watsons characters have not changed a lot in the
BBC version, so I searched in depth through the whole series to find clips that evidence the
modern interpreting of Watson and explained why these updates appeal to the contemporary
audiences. Although there were still some aspects that we should improve, our classs
presentation went very well in generally, and I could tell that everyone has put a great effort into
his or her group work. The most valuable thing I saw from the other class is the enthusiasm that
they have toward the horror genre. They explained elements like monsters and uncanny in an
interesting and engaging way that not scares the audiences at all. And the most important part
that our class should learn from is how they invited the audience to participate in guessing the
horror story plot. It would make the presentation more engaging. However, the most important
problem the other class has is that their presentation was relatively disorganized. I learned a lot
about horror genre from their presentation, but I still could not tell which groups were
responsible for which aspects of the genre. It was like a plate of scramble egg, which has every
thing good but disorganized and spread out.
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Through a whole quarters working, I learned not only the knowledge about the detective
genre, but also helpful habits of mind that will continually assist me for my future academic
career.