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Natalie Wong
Dr. Lynda Haas
WR 39C
25 August 2015
Reflection Essay

When I first registered for Writing 39C, I knew the course was going to be demanding in
preparing students for upper division scholarly writing; however, I knew this class would further
develop my writing ability, as there is always room to grow. Writing 39C is an intensive writing
course designed to introduce students to the world of exploring and writing scholarly pieces. In
this class, the three major assignments include the Historical Conversations Project (HCP) essay,
the Advocacy Project (AP) essay, and the Social Media Campaign (SMC). All of them involve
the use of academic databases and the application of multimodal elements to form strong
arguments. Each component of this course require students to lay the foundation of their
arguments based on scientific evidence and scholarly conversation by utilizing contextual
rhetoric of appealing to the audiences sense of ethos and logos. In addition to urging the further
practice of credible and extensive research to promote better arguments, this class has been a
significant proponent of the eight Habits of Mind (curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity,
persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition) through the inclusion of multiple
attributes in every assignment.


As mentioned, every assignment played a role in developing the eight Habits of Mind,
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and one in particular stood out to me on Connect. The Power of Process exercise involved
critical reading and skim reading practices, where it provided tips such as reading the first and
last sentences of each paragraph, as well as focusing on important vocabulary to use as keywords
for further research, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Power of Process. Connect.

By specifying ideas to expect and look out for while reading, I was able to get engaged with the
text and learned how to focus on only highlighting and annotating important ideas and excerpts
that will further my understanding of the text. In addition, the steps that involved summarizing
the main ideas in the After Reading section allowed me to practice my metacognition by
allowing me to reflect and see if I understood the information I had retained. The whole Power of
Process has taught me how to pay attention and look for specific details or phrases in order for
me to fully comprehend and retain what I read. As finding sources to defend an argument


requires multiple sources, learning how to skim-read allowed me to quickly eliminate irrelevant
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studies and maximize efficiency by reducing the amount of time I spent on each potential source.
One source I decided to include in my HCP after skim reading was a book by James Serpell, a
Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In this source, he provides
archaeological and historical evidence to explain the history behind the dogs evolution,
behavior, and interaction with humans. I determined that this source was important to utilize in
paper because he not only explains the process of dog domestication, but he also includes a
historical perspective, which is an important component of the HCP.
Prior to this course, I saw writing as a linear process that only involved researching,
writing, revising, and submission of a paper. However, the writing process of our first major
assignment, the HCP, demonstrated how important the reiterative process of researched based
texts was in reinforcing our knowledge and developing a strong argument. This class introduced
the online catalogue ANTPAC of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to me, which allows
students to access and utilize for research and for Writing 39C. Through the process of
researching, I learned the importance of specific keywords and following the breadcrumbs in
researching for scholarly articles. Since the HCP was a review of literature to lay the scientific
foundation upon which we were supposed to base our AP, I chose a topic I was curious about. I
was intrigued by canines abilities to feel emotions and realized it was important for advocating
against the inhumane practice of puppy mills. However, I was unsure which studies would be the
most appropriate or the most effective for my argument against puppy mills that also emphasized
and included scientific and historical background. Beginning with keywords such as canine
and emotions, I found articles that were informative but ineffective in contribution to the
historical aspect of the scientific literature. After skim reading through a number of articles,


keywords like domesticated dog, canine cognition, and cognitive ethology showed Wong
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lot. I recognized that these were the most effective keywords to find scientific articles and
academic journals for my HCP and ultimately focused my review of literature on the studies of
canine cognition, canine cognitive ethology, and the history of their domestication.
Ultimately, the academic journals and scientific articles I discovered through the UCI
library catalogue heavily influenced the direction of my HCP. It provided me with immense
interest of learning about canines cognitive ability and their emotions, which I decided to
include in my HCP along with the relation they have with the process of dog domestication;
subsequently shaping my argument for the AP of needing to end puppy mills. Although, my first
draft of the HCP reviewed and summarized the scientific articles I found, one revision priority
was evident, the organization of the paper lacked cohesiveness and purpose, as mentioned by Dr.
Haas in her review of my draft. I approached this needed modification with persistence by
including significant revisions to the structure and focus of my introduction with the addition of
credibility and historical background. In the introduction paragraph of the HCP draft, I quoted
two very well known scientists, James Serpell and Dr. Marc Bekoff, without introducing them
with background information. In addition I lacked historical information about the subject of
cognitive ethology and the idea of speciesism, which I learned is an important component is
strengthening my credibility towards the reader. Therefore, in order to establish my credibility to
the reader, I went back to reorganize the paragraph so that it will flow better with the addition of
basic background information such as the institution in association with each scientist and their
focus of research. Additionally, the anthropomorphism paragraph of Alexandra Horowitz and
Julie Hechts criticism of anthropomorphism in the field of cognitive ethology was not effective
in its contribution to building the foundation for my AP; I revised that section to utilize the


information on anthropomorphism to further emphasize historical human-canine relationship
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formed through domestication, effectively tying together the different reviews of scientific
literature. Since the first draft needed revision for clarity, the revision process involved a lot of
flexibility with finding and including more information into the review. Although, I first
stumbled through the process of writing the HCP, my recognition and persistence of executing
this new procedure of writing developed my openness towards a new method.
As I began my process of developing my AP, researching sources for evidence and
formulating an argument for the AP was not difficult; but, I had a difficult time deciding the
different sources I wanted to include from my HCP into the AP. From the conclusion of my
HCP, I created a solid foundation by concluding that puppy mill facilities should be stopped
because of their unethical practices and simply ignore the cognitive abilities and emotions of
canines. In addition, I recognized that humans have interfered with the dogs natural evolution,
providing the shared history between humans and canines via domestication, thus we are
responsible for them as a species, and ethically should not treat them as inanimate objects. As
mentioned in my week nine blog post, I cited the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS)
to argue that the puppy mills are a business of exploitation by providing statistics and facts from
the website. In addition, I quoted Clay Shirky from his Ted Talk, because I realized the
importance and impact social media has on our society in bringing awareness of an issue to
public, and how it can be utilized by anyone with access to the Internet.
As a class, we participated in social media campaigns in order to practice our digital
rhetoric and spread awareness of an advocacy issue of our choice as different groups. Since we
were addressing our audience through social media, we were required to effectively convey our
arguments by utilizing rhetoric appropriate to our social media platforms, such as through hash


tags, click bait - an eye catching link that attracts attention and encourages people to read
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descriptions, and utilizing the proper multimodal elements in the different platforms. For my
groups advocacy, Refurbished Pets, we used our Twitter and Instagram accounts to raise
awareness of adoptable pets that people often overlook. As discussed in my seventh blog post, I
learned how important the role of social media is in advocating a certain issue by allowing it to
be spread at the quickest rate possible. In addition, using different hash tags such as,
#giveasecondchance and #rescue, allowed us to engage with other social media users by
providing facts and statistics about adoptable pets such as adoption rates. Since all posts are
arguments are restricted to character count on social media, our messages had to be appealing
and intriguing with the least words possible. We relied on click baits and rhetoric appeals to
captivate the attention of users. Our most responsive post appeal to pathos and included an
intriguing headline and an appealing video, displayed in Figure 2. This post demonstrated that
appealing to emotions will more likely elicit a response by social media users in comparison to
appealing to credibility and logic.


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Figure 2. Twitter Post for SMC.

From our social media campaign, we concluded that Twitter was far more responsive than
Instagram: 70.3% to 29.7% respectively, which suggested that users preferred to simply pass the
conversation on than actually add to the different posts. Furthermore, this project required
responsibility and flexibility between the group members. Since the class was online, it was
hard for everyone to contribute and work together at the same time, because everyone was on a
different schedule. In addition, I was able to exercise my creativity by creating an informative
and persuasive infographic for the group through Piktochart, as shown in Figure 3. The
infographic provided statistics and facts for the viewer, and provided different options for one to
start making a difference in a dogs life. This infographic was simple yet able to introduce the
issue to the viewer.


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Figure 3. Infographic for the SMC.

I believe that this course allowed me to constantly practice my metacognition. Our blog
posts required me to go back, reflect, and evaluate my learning progress each week. By doing so
on a regular basis, I was able to see my slight areas of improvements through the comments,
thought processes, and discussions on my work. It also enabled me to take responsibility for the
actions I made on different assignments depending on how I approached them. Another
component of this course that involved the application of metacognition was peer review. It
provided the practice of openness by seeing different perspectives of writing and being aware of
the different ways I can organize or revise my papers. For instance, from peer reviewing one
HCP draft, I noticed that sources were not introduced the way we learned with the basic
background information and focus of research. By commenting on the draft, it made me go
through my paper to look for the same mistakes.


While I improved in many areas in my writing, such as introducing my essay withWong 9
credibility and organizing it in a way to have the paper flow easily, I believe the most important
skill that I learned through Writing 39C was simply to utilize my resources via the UCI library
catalogue. Prior to taking this course, I was unaware of this vital resource, with access to
databases filled with scientific articles and academic journals on a variety of topics. If I had
known about this tool earlier, my research progress for my Psychology and Behavior research
papers in my first quarter would have gone smoother. Now that I have learned how to quickly
find sources by using specific keywords like I had for the HCP, I know this will greatly benefit
me in the future for any writing assignments outside of Writing 39C.