Chauhan&1

Priya Chauhan
TA Zack de Piero
Writing 2: MW 3-4:50
June 5, 2015
Metacognitive Reflection
When I signed up for Writing 2, I was absolutely dreading taking the class. I used to hate
writing because I felt that I never was able to form a good argument; in Writing 2 terms, I didnt
consider myself to have sharp first-order thinking. However, after the first couple of weeks, I
really started liking the way the class was formatted. In the beginning of the quarter, you asked
us what our goal for this class was. Everyone answered with interesting adjectives; however, I
choose to keep mine simple. I said my goal for this class was to simply become a better writer.
All of the assignments, from the blog posts to the WPs, helped strengthen my first-order
thinking, which in result has indeed made me become a better writer.
The blog posts, although tedious, are what really strengthened my first-order writing. My
high school teacher would always tell me that practicing my writing skills would make me a
better writer; in my head, I always replied, Who is actually going to spend the time to practice
writing essays? However, these project builders forced me to do just that: practice. In the blogs,
the content mattered more than the organization, which is why I let my thoughts flow freely. The
project builders answered questions about the writing projects and helped me figure out a good
way to set up them up. For example, for WP1, your blog had a video called, Genre Analysis of
the Rhetorical Situation. I not only used the questions laid out in the video for my PBs, but also
my WP1. These questions were useful because they laid out exactly what questions needed to be
answered within my WP. Of all of the PBs, the first one was my favorite because I got to choose

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one of my favorite genresfashion blogs. I never thought about how the techniques they use
intrigue readers, like me, into wanting to buy more clothing that we dont need. Learning more
about the different conventions they used, I became more interested in how different conventions
are used everywhere in writing.
For writing project 1, I started off by talking to my roommate about different genres I
could work with for this assignment. I learned that by bouncing ideas back and forth with her, I
started to find better and more intricate topics; with this process, I found the topic of social media
advertising. After doing so, I created an outline of how my paper would flow. I started with the
introduction, then body paragraphs of each website, the differences and similarities between the
websites, and then a conclusion. This outline worked for me because it laid out exactly what I
wanted to talk about. After creating the outline, I wrote down detailed bullets of what
conventions I found in each advertisement. This is the way that I came up with my three main
conventions of caption length, how to write the captions, and targeting specific audiences. At the
time, I felt like my paper was well written, however, I felt like it could have used a stronger
argument; I ended up revising this and making it better for the portfolio.
In class, we did a highlighter activity with our writing project 1 drafts. I found this
activity immensely helpful, and most likely something I will be using in my future classes to
help strengthen my papers. I liked this activity because it pointed out what was lacking from my
paper and what I did well on in my paper. For example, in my draft, I left out the course readings
from my writing. At first, it did not even occur to me that the reading would enhance my paper
and make the argument stronger. The activity also pointed out how my paper could have been
viewed as unbalanced. To illustrate, my Instagram analysis outweighed my Pinterest analysis,
which signaled that I needed to add more that specific paragraph.

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Writing the WP2 was where I started to hate writing, once again. For this paper, I choose
to stick with the topic of advertising and compare two scholarly articles with one non-scholarly
article. Although I understood the prompt, I felt like my paper did not really show it. My paper
focused more on analyzing the second-order thinking than the first-order thinking. By doing this,
I did not show that I comprehended what the entire lesson was on. I could have done a better job
with this one by going into more depth with the first-order thinking and pointing out differences
within the papers there. I did not like this paper because I did not the fact we had to choose to
two scholarly articles to analyze. Many scholarly articles are boring and not tailored for the
average audience. The articles all used jargon that I did not quite understand; however, I ended
up researching a lot of the terms in order to write a better WP2. If the writing prompt entailed
analyzing two non-scholarly pieces and one scholarly piece I think more of the students would
do a better job of analyzing which one was effective. Although I did not like writing this paper, I
saw the value in it once I received the comments back on it. All of the comments you left me
really helped me better my WP3; for example, in my remixes, I did not just reformat where the
commas, hyphens, and dashes went, but I changed the entire format of it.
WP3 was my favorite writing project we did in this class. This particular one was a lot
more fun and allowed for more creativity. I choose a scholarly piece about eating disorders and
then remixed it into a parental blog and a teenage forum. In order to ensure that I was correctly
transforming the blogs, I researched and looked at a lot of the forums that already existed. These
gave me a template and I was able to point out conventions used in them and apply it to my
writing pieces. Although I received a good grade on this, I decided to add the extra mile for my
writing portfolio because I enjoyed writing this one. In order to do so, I created live forums and
blogs on my weebly website where people can write and comment.

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I strongly believe that my writing got much better with all of the comments you left me in
my WPs. None of my teachers had ever left as many comments as you did on my papers; most of
them just wrote a short summary of what I did well at the endnot of what I could improve on.
With those comments, I was able to take them and apply it to each of my next writing pieces. For
example, on my WP2 you left me a comment that addressed a regarding the layout and structure
of my essay. I used that advice to re-form my WP1 for my portfolio. I think with a layout that
goes idea by idea makes for a more effective paper because each concept becomes clearer.
My favorite tips I learned in the class were learning how to use hyphens, dashes, and the
oxford comma in my writing. All of these tips were incorporated into all of my writing pieces
and will continue to be used in all of my papers. My writing gains a more scholarly impression
by using these tips. My favorite trick that I learned was using a ___ within my writing. I would
often get stuck in my writing and just stay staring at my computer screen for a long period of
time, which is counter-productive. By using the blank space, I am able to move on and get more
done; when I am ready to come back to it, I usually have an easier time putting something there.
Although at first I was skeptical of why we were learning all about genre awareness I
think that this concept has value and can be applied to different kinds of writing. By
understanding writing as a genre, I was able to learn about rhetoric and different abstract
principles within writing. Learning genre awareness allowed me to examine different genres
point out its conventions and replicate the genres characteristics in my own writing. For
example, for WP3 without having any of the prior WPs or lessons we had in class, I would not
have been to create two different genre pieces without struggling.
In my future writing, I strongly believe what I have learned in this class will immensely
help me. Although my second-order thinking was strong, my first-order is what really developed

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in this class. I learned how to develop my arguments more thoughtfully and know that a good
thesis entails being arguablenot just stating what the paper was about. These skills that I have
learned, including the tips and tricks to the writing process, will all help me further enhance my
writing in the rest of my college career. By sharpening my first-order thinking, I will be able to
write better papers from here on out.