UWP 001

Silva Perla

Reflection Essay

Its Not Just Grammar

Dear Sophia,

I am very glad to say that taking UWP 001 for this quarter was very helpful because this

class didnt just focus on specific writing techniques instead it helped me how to approach all

writing fields. It gave me a better view of the significance of finding the purpose, genres, and

audience of written texts by paying attention to what writing does in our society. Being the first

generation from my family and living with a family in which the primary language is Spanish is

very difficult to understand the concept of how English works. For this reason, in my portfolio

reflection essay I will be discussing of how I met the learning outcomes and also the skills that I

will carry on in my future courses.

I find this class very interesting but also beneficial because the main purpose of this class

is to experience and self-reflect while Im writing. For example, as a poorly writer taking my

time on the cover memos, reflective journals, and also doing peer reviews, I found it very

beneficial because it definitely helped me to know the importance of writing a successful essay

rather than not focusing of grammar instead I would focus on the content which is purpose,

audience, genre, and also the format in consideration. At first, I thought that writing cover

memos was not useful and it was a waste of time but throughout this quarter I found the

importance of a cover memo. Having a cover memo for each piece of writing I would go back

and read it thoroughly by trying to identify the purpose, the strengths and weaknesses of my

written work. In this case, every time I would go back and read my cover memo it helped me to
improve on my metacognition process. In simple terms, I find metacognition process very

beneficial because It helped me to improve my writing.

The literacy narrative is a great example of how I formed literacy and the cognition that I

currently have. This project (literacy narrative) includes descriptive details of literacy from my

past which the past makes up who I am as of right now. The literacy place narrative reflects on

my past such as my literacy history and the relation to the significant place that I decided to

choose was school but also home. This writing assignment shows step by step of how I learned

the three main components of English which is speaking, reading, and writing.

Rhetorical knowledge is very important in understanding and analyzing writing. It is very

important to take in consideration with the audience, purpose, and genre. The audience that I

decided to choose for my literacy narrative are to any fellow students because not all students are

perfect in knowing English once they started Kindergarten. I know that some students may

experience some few problems how to write, speak, or even speaking English correctly. The

rhetorical concept that I decided to focus in my literacy narrative project is that I committed to

include as many descriptive details as I can to show pathos because I really wanted my audience

to know that being a Spanish speaker and learning English was a very difficult process to

experience.

I find that the learning outcome of process was very important due to the feedback that I

received from my peer reviews and also receiving your feedback was very useful. From

receiving your feedback, you gave me a well detailed advice which is to include a single main

idea because it seems like all my ideas were wandering around. I understand that its such a

difficult process to include multiple ideas. I understand that theres not a problem of including

multiple main ideas but the problem for my literacy narrative essay is that it carries two different
themes which carries different messages. In this case, I decided to discuss the difference of

learning English from being home and also from attending school. To be specific, my paper is

mostly a step by step process in how and what grade level I learned English. The reason I

decided to rewrite my literacy place narrative all over again because I didnt find it very

engaging and I find it very confusing because I had different ideas wandering around. Last of all,

project one helped me on the process of self-reflective and writing because of the feedback that I

received.

After clearly observing my own experiences of literacy using the genre of personal essay,

it helped me a better review on the third project which is the discourse community project. The

discourse community research project gave me a better view to use more resources such as

finding primary and secondary resources. This writing project lead me to extensive writing fields

and also including different genres. From the discourse community I had a better understanding

of the importance of genres. At first, I was a little lost when I was working on my literacy place

narrative but once I worked on my rough draft for the discourse community, I had a better

understanding of genres. While I was doing extensive research for my secondary resources I

decided to choose two genres for the medical discourse community which is medical staff

writing in acronyms and also medical staff properly using medical charts. In my opinion, the

goal of this discourse community is to make an argument that includes primary and secondary

resources which I included in the methods and results section. The primary resource was an

interview that I conducted with an LVN and her responses helped me to support my argument. In

addition, the secondary resources also helped my paper to add on information for my argument

and also to add on information from the interview that I conducted.

 Once, I received the feedback of the discourse community from my my peer reviews I

was really emotional happy because I didnt receive any negative feedback. The only problem

that I was suppose to work on was to reflect back on the prompt and highlight the genre. On the

other hand, from attending to your conference I found out that it is reasonable to not include

what my genres are because the reader knows that my discourse community is about genres. In

addition, the main problem that I had was organization but also fixing some few errors such as

start with my introduction by including first: 1) what is my discourse community, 2) What a

discourse community is, and 3) I had to move the internship information that I included in my

introduction into the method category. In this case, the revision that I did for the medical

discourse community is that in the introduction I carefully introduced what my discourse

community is and after the brief explanation I decided to include a quote from Erik Borg article

about the term of discourse community and after that I included my argument. The last revision

that I did for project three is that I actually added a conclusion that had the so/ what portion. For

example, I included that each three communication forms have its own role but all three forms

are working for the same goal. Also, in the conclusion, I included a few questions so that It could

be imply for further research. I also included in my conclusion a short response of what I learned

from medical discourse community based in hospital environment. From the discourse

community project from using rhetorical analysis and having self-reflective such as in the cover

memos and also learning different conventions it helped me with my metacognition learning.

If I had more time to work on my portfolio I would definitely go back to my research

portion which is the discourse community and actually interview a doctor instead of a nurse. I

feel that having information from a doctor, my paper seems more reliable and more interesting

that it will definitely grab my readers attention. Also, if I had more time I would include
interesting secondary sources because I feel that the secondary sources that I included were more

like repetitive rather than including interesting quote each time I would include in my research

paper.

Last of all, the assignment that Ive done for this class taught me that all the activities that

Ive done in class is to be successful by writing different genres of articles in different situations.

There are genres everywhere in our society. Therefore, this course will definitely help me in my

future course because if Im writing a paper for another class I always have to take in

consideration about the purpose, audience, genre, and perhaps the format. Effectively working on

the rhetorical analysis, using self-reflective process, and learning different conventions, I can use

the metacognition tool in which it can help me for my future classes.

Sophia, thank you so much for this class it was pleasure of all the things that I learned. At

first grammar was my fear but you opened my eyes with the significance of finding the purpose,

genres, and the audience in written texts. Thank you so much Sophia for all the hard word that

you dedicated in class and also in office hours.

Thank you so much,

Perla Romero Silva