Dear Neil,

Welcome to Sabrina Geddes Writing Portfolio! In my portfolio, it holds two writing

projects that were completed and revised to the best of my ability in writing 2. I feel I have

evolved in my knowledge of writing while these projects evolved throughout the class. The class

provided me with many writing skills attained from the projects and readings to help me bring

out the best final drafts presented to you in the portfolio. These two projects consist of WP1 a

genre translation from an academic article to an interactive Yelp page discussing the impact

African American have towards the box office through production reviews. Along with the WP2

presenting a Reddit thread conversation within a discourse community of writers and students

discussing and debating about improving their structure in their writing.

For WP1, initially, I struggled with the genre analysis, yet, inspired by peers' examples, I

refined my approach for the second draft. After the teacher feedback, I made further revisions

for my final draft. In my yelp page, in each review, the problem and its negative consequences

were not clear enough to identify the overall purpose of the argument in the academic article. I

went back to each individual review to make sure they were relevant issues that matched the

original message of the article. I also added an “About” section before the reviews to help

describe and ensure clarity to what the production was about and what was overall said in most

of the reviews.

In some of the reviews the tones were inconsistent, so while I was editing the clarity of

the overall issue, I fixed the inconsistency of tones by changing the level of anger or frustration

they had to a more neutral emotion towards the production. The star rates did not fit their

experiences seeing that I only put five stars in all the reviews. I fixed this by matching the star

rates to the reviews, putting some two stars, three stars, and no five stars. While revising, I

added a footer on the bottom of my Yelp page. My genre translation is aided by the footer that

most websites contain for contacts, navigational aids, and other secondary site content. For my

Reflective essay the main point in my first paragraph was a little confusing. Hence, I went back
and spelled it out more clearly for the reader. My reflective essay was poorly structured,

consisting of lengthy paragraphs discussing the three most important rhetorical decisions I

made. So I separated the rhetorical choices in better formed paragraphs while making extra

fixations towards my punctuation and grammar.

For writing Project 2, in my opinion, I identified the major points of agreement and

disagreement within the conversation effectively. The conversation included an academic article

about fixing a writer's structure through the practice of imitating other professional writers. I

translated it as a Reddit thread of writers and students figuring out how to improve the structure

in their writing with the overall question being “How can I improve my structure?”. So I could

then suggest the process of imitation through the comments made by the authors, stating their

contribution towards imitation. However, the overall original question, before revising and the

teacher's feedback, was asking how a writer could improve their writing skills through

improvement of structure and contextualization. Which did not match the thread under it.

Meaning that most of the comments did not mention “structure of contextualization. So I

changed the overall question to a more simpler and accurate question that reflects more to the

subject matter of the conversation. Along with going through each comment and making them

more accurate towards the new question in hand.

Additionally, while going back to the comments, I made sure the sentences in each

comment were structured shorter to make it more of a comment than an academic paragraph.

Some comments were deleted and added. One of the comments mentioned plagiarism, but that

was only for the sake of the genre translation and not the conversation, thus I deleted the

comment. The distinction between invention and innovation said by one of the authors was

admired, so I wrote a little more about how imitation makes a student more inventive in their

writing by adding a couple comments. In addition to revision, I added a bibliography at the

bottom of every author’s academic article mentioned. Overall the main changes included
clarifying the purpose of the article and incorporating it in the conversation. Along with sentence

changes and making the conversation even more interactive.

Focusing on my growth as a writer, some of the readings and the projects, specifically

WP2, impacted my learning this quarter and was the main influence in the lessons I learned

about writing. While writing, I tend to write longer paragraphs and sentences adding

unnecessary longer phrases in between the main points of my writing. In some of my first drafts,

I would usually get peer review feedback about my overly prolonged sentences and lengthy

paragraphs. Even in my reflective essay for WP1, my paragraphs were way too lengthy. This

would further cause lack of clarity of my main points in my writing.

WP2 was a great project for me to better my structure in sentences and paragraphs and

clarify the purpose of any argument I write about. For my conversation, I purposely chose to

write about improving structure so I could gather facts when I read the articles and generally

gain writing skills myself. And to further refine those long sentences and paragraphs I usually

would write. Now, I would find myself rereading my sentences and paragraphs out loud,

gradually shortening them and deleting repetitive and unnecessary phrases. Another way I

improved this weakness was the readings provided to us like “Understanding Style”, Joe

Glaser. Reading this I created a smoother flow and clear logical connections in my WP2 when I

used extra details like prepositional phrases, and clauses to tightly wrap my main points, making

my writing more concise and impactful (Glaser, 43). For my strengths, I want to say I can be

very accommodating to go past my weaknesses and really improve from WP1 to WP2.

Walking into writing 2, I was expecting vigours grading rubrics and no time for revising

other drafts. But Writing two helped me accept having multiple drafts of the same paper.

Personally, I hate rereading my work, let alone having drafts of my essays. My original process

before Writing 2 and the readings provided, like Peter Elbow’s “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking

by Teaching Writing,” I would write a paragraph and each time I did, I would reread each

paragraph to refine it before moving on to the next paragraph. I would then lose the thought or
main point of the next paragraph making an inconsistency in the argument and flow. But with

Elbows approach I can freely write all the way through to then revise for my second order of

thinking (Elbow,1). I accepted having a first bad draft instead of just writing one perfect draft with

good grammar and punctuations. Ann Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts” also hindered my thoughts of

bad drafts with freewriting. If I had more time in writing 2 I would focus on accepting bad first

drafts and learn to love rereading my work.

All in all, this class gave me a lot of comfort in the writing and reading world. Most of the

writing classes I took here in UCSB cannot compare to how much I have learned in this writing

class and I will forever be grateful for that. The supportive environment, receiving insightful

feedback from my peers and the instructor, and the engaging assignments all made the class

special and significant in my writing Journey. Thank you for the experience and have a great

spring break!

Best Regards,

Sabrina Gedde
 Work cited

Elbow, Peter. “Reaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing.” College English,

vol. 47, no. 5, 1985, pp. 531–47

Glaser, Joe. “Understanding Style: Practical Ways to Improve Your Writing.” Oxford

University Press, 1999, pp. 42-110

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

New York: Pantheon, 1994, pp. 22-27