Nathan Mai

Matt Wilson

Writing 2 Section 2000

7 December 2016
Cover Letter
Dear Matt,
I came into this class with the expectations of following a curriculum similar to ones in
high school where we would read books, learn mechanics, write argumentative essays on the
books. However, I was completely wrong. The teachings and the content that I learned
throughout the course was unexpectedly different.
What Ive learned about writing is that there is way more to writing than just answering a
prompt. In high school, whenever I wrote an essay, I was very one-track minded about writing,
and had only thought about writing to answer a prompt. Obviously, there are the basics of
grammar, punctuation, and syntax that I had to think about. I never really thought about things
like conventions, audience, simplicity, or information flow. In this course, I feel like I have been
taught that every paragraph is just as important as the ones before and after it. I never weighed
the importance of the introduction and conclusion on the same level as the body paragraphs.
This course made me come to the realization that if Im going to be writing an academic essay,
such as our writing projects, that I need to at least make it interesting or beneficial in a way to the
audience, which is why the problem model and the so what? conclusion is important to
incorporate into essays.
Besides that, the most important process that I learned in this course was the revision
process. Before coming into this class, my revision processed involved grammar, punctuation,
and syntax editing. In high school, I was never encouraged to rewrite large portions of my essay

or even rewriting the entire essay. The reading in this class about shitty first drafts made me
realize that regardless of how much grammar polishing I do to an essay, it wont change the fact
that the content of the draft is the same. Becoming aware of how bad my first draft is forces me
to reconsider multiple aspects of my paper. The importance of reverse outlining and peer-editing
has immensely helped me in navigating the rewriting process of my papers. Feedback from
peers helped me find what was missing and what was wrong because it is often hard for me to
read my own paper from someone elses perspective. The fact that I know what I want to say in
my papers make it hard for me to know if my audience understands what I am trying to say.
The first writing project that I chose to fix was WP1. The thesis statement was the most
glaring issue in that it was written to be a compare/contrast type of thesis which you mentioned
was very risky. The thesis was also written so it seemed like I favored one genre over another, so
I changed it so that I would be able to address both genres equally without bias. With the thesis
being changed, I had to rework my analysis as well. As you mentioned in comments, I really
focused on more of the contents and meanings of the conventions, so I fixed my analysis to focus
more on what the conventions are doing for the audience and the genre.
My organization also changed with WP1. Previously, I had followed the typical five
paragraph structure and filled each paragraph with multiple conventions. I fixed that in my
portfolio by choosing the most important conventions and assigning them to one paragraph each
so that each paragraph only really encompassed one argument.
I decided to also fix my WP2 which involves changes similar to WP1. Again I had to
rework my thesis to be more specific to the disciplines rather than a broader observational thesis.
I mostly kept the same evidence that I used previously in WP2, but my analysis focused more on
the discourse communities and what those discourse communities did for the audience and

objectives for the discipline. With my organization, I decided to organize my WP2 similar to my
WP1 re-write. The paragraphs are separated by topics and each half of the paper only focuses on
one discipline. I did this with the intention of keeping a better flow when going from one
argument to another.
The most helpful thing when it came to revising was peer-review notes and your
comments on WPs. Your comments helped identify what my problems were and the questions
you asked helped me rethink about every aspect of my WPs. Those comments helped me when
it came down to peer editing, as I could ask my reviewers to look at the more specific problems
in my WPs.
Overall, I think my portfolio displays my improvement in revising and rewriting. There
was A LOT of writing in this class, but it helped me realize the writing is a long process that
never ends. From one draft to another, little parts of the draft can be fixed or all parts of the draft
can be fixed. My revisions should display my progress in understanding how conventions are
related to a genre and to an audience and how disciplines have their own discourse communities
and objectives. With my rewrites, I should also display a better understanding of how rhetoric
works within genres and disciplines and that rhetoric relates back to my thesis. Several rewrites
of our PBs and WPs caused me to become more aware of my sentence choices which is reflected
in a more concise and detailed rewrite.
This class overall has given me a new perspective on writing. At first writing about
genres and such did not seem beneficial or applicable to any other writings. However, I hope to
take these new ideas of conventions, audience, conciseness, simplicity, flow, etc. and apply them
into my future writings. As a statistical science major, rather than writing my papers to my
future professors, I will attempt to make my papers interesting and beneficial with the off chance

that someone other my professor will find my paper and read it. Ultimately, this course taught
me to become more aware of my choices and how those choices can affect my paper.

Sincerely,
Nathan Mai