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Metacognitive Reflection

Tianhong Liu

Academic Writing 2

Professor Allison Bocchino

March 15, 2021


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At the end of the quarter, looking back to the journey I have taken in Academic Writing 2,

I genuinely feel the experience is an adventure. In this adventure, those readings and writings are

the barriers in my path. To overcome them, I spend much of my time sitting in my little living

room, staring at my computer, typing on my keyboard. Luckily, this journey has almost come to

its end, and I could finally rest for a while. However, the things that I learned from those

readings and writings are still in my mind. When I start to read and write, they wound influence

my decisions without any notice. The knowledge and habits that I learned from this course would

benefit my life.

This year, I became a sophomore, studying financial mathematics and statistics. While

my major is related to computation, I never doubt the importance of writing. In the first year, I

seldomly write or read any academic article. I thought my writing skill was just enough to handle

the task. However, after attending this course, I know how naive I was a year ago. First of all, I

knew nothing about the Chicago style, the MLA style, and why I should follow any of these

writing styles. More than that, I was confused about constructing an academic writing paper,

where to start it, and where to end it. One year ago, I didn't know that thesis is essential to an

article. When I read an article, I just read its contexts but neglected the other valuable part. It

seemed that I have more problems than I could imagined, and I could not list every one of them.

What I have learned from the course solved all the problems. I feel my approach to

thinking, reading, and writing evolved throughout this quarter and this course. For example, I

remembered one of the most important lessons in this course was reading like a writer. To read
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like a writer, I work to identify some of the choices the author made so that I can better

understand how such decisions might arise in my own writing.1 I always ask questions frequently

about the effects of certain parts of the writings and how they could be modified or used in other

places. The method of RLW is more efficient than my previous reading method in improving

writing skills but would be more time-consuming. However, this way of reading is a useful tool

that I could adopt for the rest of my life. Since then, whenever I read, I pay attention to the

authors' decisions, such as rhetorical devices and evidence. Every time I read, it was an

enhancement to my writing skill. That is how Bunn's article affects my approach to reading.

My approach to writing also changed by the things I learned. I found the way I wrote the

two WPs more effective than my previous writing method. When I started to write, I first

consider completing the project builder or the outline instead of writing directly. The outline

helps me understand the purpose of my paper, the evidence I need to use, the argument I tend to

make. Then, I used Elbow's writing method to complete my essay. First, I would use freewriting

and first-draft exploratory writing. After accomplishing the draft, I would use slow, thoughtful

rewriting to revise it. 2 This method enables me to preserve the first-order intuitive or creative

thinking first hand. It also makes me stick with the thesis constantly and avoid grammar,

evidence, and structure errors. Previously, I used to write my essay directly without any thinking

1 Bunn, Mike, “How to Read like a Writer,” Writing Places: Readings on Writings, Volume
2: pp. 3.

2 Elbow, Peter, “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing” Embracing

Contraries: Exploration in Learning and Teaching, New York: Oxford U Press, 1986: 58.
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or arrangement. After adopting the new method, I found my writing become more efficient than

before. It had certainly changed the way I write.

My approach to thinking also differs from the former way. If I didn't attend the course, I

would not consider the discourse community while reading or writing an article. The idea of the

discourse community is fascinating to me. Whenever I read or write, I know I am connecting

with people in my discourse community. Although we have not met before, through the

literature, we always associate with each other. Now, I consistently consider the features of

discourse communities: the common goals, the mechanism of intercommunication, the genre that

helps further the goal, and the specialized languages.3 I also learned the necessity to follow a

writing-style: since I am in the discourse community, there is the same mechanism of

intercommunication; to effectively communicate with others, I need to follow the rules. In these

terms, The notion of discourse community had influenced my thinking.

For the portfolio, I revised different aspects of my WP 1 and WP 2. In the revision of WP

1, I first added an argumentative thesis that was missing in the original version. I added it at the

end of the first paragraph. The thesis served as a roadmap of the paper and answered the prompt's

question. Then, I deleted my argument of the article's tone at the end of the first body paragraph

on page three since there was no evidence to support it. I also revised my footnote format: the

footnote should have page numbers and follow the punctuation and the quotation marks,

basically the very end of the sentence. What's more, I separated one of the paragraphs discussing

3 Melzer, Dan, “Understanding Discourse Communities,” Writing Spaces: Readings on

Writing, Volume 3: 102.

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rhetorical devices, evidence, and audience into two. I believed each paragraph should focus on

one point so that the audience would not be confused. When I made the change, I always

consider the question: who are the audiences the discourse community communicates with, and

how can I adjust my writing for these audiences?4 The paper should always be easy to read by

the audience, so adjustment is necessary. Guiding by this idea, I also cut off the redundancy in

the essay to avoid the complex sentence. For example, initially, I wrote, "the article is written by

authors who discuss climate change in the way of environmental studies." The revision turns out

to be like this: "the article is written by authors in the way of environmental studies." Cutting off

the unnecessary part in the sentence would make it more readable for the audience.

In the revision of WP 2, I made more changes in the structure of the essay. In WP 2, the

fourth paragraph describing how I translate the article into a timeline is too long to read, so I

separated it into three paragraphs. The first paragraph discusses the writing conventions I

followed in the translation. The second paragraph discusses the writing conventions that I bent in

the translation. The third paragraph focuses only on the use of jargon. The audience, then, would

find these paragraphs easy to follow. In addition to the change in paragraphs, I referenced

specifics. When I mentioned the timeline's writing conventions, I didn't provide examples that

support my argument. For example, I wrote, "Besides the time shaft, there are icons and photos."

This statement is not convincing since it lacks the support of evidence. To be more specific, I

added the following example: "in the video, the timeline contains a picture of Stonehenge, an

image of a pyramid, a portrait of Confucius, and many other pictures." The same issue happens

4 Melzer, Dan, “Understanding Discourse Community,” : 111.

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in the discussion of translation. I wrote, "I summarize the ideas of the article as concise as

possible, so the contexts in the timeline appear to be only a few words or phrases." This

argument didn't show how the translation connects back to the article. As a result, I added an

example describing how I deal with the original contexts in the article. These changes illustrated

the importance of evidence. Every time I make an argument, there should always be evidence

that supports it. Otherwise, readers would find the statement unconvincing.

In the future, I probably would not have to write essays like WP 1 and WP 2 since my

major is related to mathematics. However, I could foresee that writing is still necessary for the

future. The lab reports, the analysis, and the statistical statements all need writing skills. The

clarity of the lab report is also an important factor that influences the quality. No matter what I

write, I think it is always important to consider the discourse community. Only in this way could

I focus and further the common goal, choose the appropriate genre to express my ideas

effectively, and use specialized languages at the proper time.

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Bibliography

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing 2(2020): 71-86.

http:/writingspaces.org/esays

Elbow, Peter. “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing.” Embracing Contraries

Explorations in Learning and Teaching. New York: Oxford U Press. 1986: 54-63.

Melzer, Dan. “Understanding Discourse Community.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing 3

(2020): 100–115. https://doi.org/http://writingspaces.org/essays.