Over this quarter, I would say that I have fulfilled all the learning outcomes for the course University Writing Program 1. This was the first writing course I took that challenged previous writing experience and added more tools to my toolbox as a writer. The main thing I learned in this course was getting better with expressing ideas. Ideas are crucial to getting your point across and through this course, I feel as if I have become more versed in using words to communicate the point I am trying to get across.
Initially, my first concern when taking this class was revision. I previously took UWP 7 which exposed me to more writing opportunities that included revision by yourself and revision with the help of peer review. “In my opinion, my biggest weakness in the scope of writing is revision. I find myself good at being able to put ideas on a page, and slowly chip away at writing till I have a full draft” (Garcia 1). Before college, I was a pretty subpar writer. Writing was very drab and had little to no style to it. Coming to college taught me better writing skills and better revision. It’s funny that I mentioned being good at just getting words down on the page, but the difference from then and now is that I am more well-rounded in my ideas specific to a prompt. For instance, the first reference journal was about composition goals and the fifth about personal biases. Comparing the writing style in both, there is an obvious progression from first to fifth:
“I end up rereading through my draft and changing a word here or there, but no major revisions come afterwards” (Garcia RJ1).
“Whenever I had any writing assignment, I would always gear it towards the teacher, even when the contents inside might interest another target audience better than the teacher” (Garcia RJ5).
Looking at an excerpt from the first reference journal to one from the fifth, I personally see a shift in writing style. The first journal feels very “matter of factly” while the fifth is more eloquent in the way that it displays the tone and style. This change is going to be beneficial to me since there will be many more opportunities in my life to use my writing skills in the future, and having good control over tone and style will work to my favor. Learning this connects to rhetorical concepts because purpose, audience, and context all can be shown with the tone and style of the author in tandem with the genre they write in.
The development of my writing style relates to processes. This specifically scopes into my personal journey of becoming more stylized in my writing. For example, this quote from my Academic Research Paper has been revised two to three times:
“Three bits of background information to know before reading my paper is to know what study music is, what the theoretical positive side effects of study music are, and that everyone is different in terms of what helps them study” (Garcia 2).
I had to change and revise this sentence multiple times because I felt like it was weak and did not get the point across well enough. The revision gives the reader a sense of the big umbrella questions I came into the method section in my study with and the intentions I had. Processes include revision due to peers or instructor feedback, which was a motivating factor to change this sentence. This is just one of the countless examples where I have kept an open mind with others and myself to better my writing.
For the fifth reflection journal we were asked to confront our biases and how to spot them. Identifying these biases is an example of knowledge of conventions. This includes getting familiar with different genres and discourse communities. As mentioned earlier in the paper, I think that learning how to use tone is included in knowledge of conventions since a writer wants to use different tones for different genres or situations. Overall, I would say that this is my weakest field since I have very little practice with knowledge of conventions. This course has helped expose me to the idea of what it means to “practice conventions across a variety of modes, genres, and discourse communities”.
Research is by far the most accelerated learning outcome that I have grasped. Research is a very broad topic but in the context of UWP 1, research is used to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize prior knowledge. Through our academic research paper, I have learned deeply about primary and secondary research and how to use that to prove or disprove my point in an academic manner.
The excerpt above is part of my academic research paper where I am discussing my results to the first question I posed, backed by secondary research. Using secondary research on top of your own research is constructive in that it shows the audience your credibility, or your ethos. An audience is more likely to lend an ear if they see that you put time and effort into your work and are not just making up words onto a page. An important discovery with research is finding out who your target audience is. With UWP 1, the target audience might not always be the teacher, which is what this course stresses. Knowing that your writing is not just meant for a singular teacher who will grade your work, can give writers the freedom to appeal to other audiences, and not just to one person.
Although I did not use this learning outcome much, I have a decent grasp on what metacognition is. I would argue that this very essay is an example of metacognition as it forces me to reflect on previous writings and rhetorical situations specific to this course. This learning outcome is important because it pulls from all the other four learning outcomes and combines them into one. Over time, I slowly got the hang of what metacognition is, since it is a big topic to cover straight off the bat. Regardless, I am confident that I can replicate metacognition in the future in different scenarios to the extent that I learned from this course.
The academic research paper and other assignments for UWP 1 have opened my eyes to how I might use my writing from this class for the future. As of now, I am studying electrical engineering, and I know I am going to be asked to do more research or write proposals during my time here at UC Davis or elsewhere. If anyone wants to become more familiar with concepts such as rhetorical concepts, processes, knowledge of conventions, research, or metacognition, the University Writing Program 1 is the right fit. Being a part of UWP 1 and getting familiar with all the learning outcomes associated with this class has helped me become a better and more knowledgeable writer.
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