Hello Professor Michele,

No one will ever escape the necessity of writing. Even entering a major dealing with

math and electronics like electrical engineering does not mean that a person will not need

writing skills. I questioned myself before, "why do I have to take writing courses as an

engineer?" I started from UWP22 as a poor writer to WLD 57 as a "barely good enough" writer

at UC Davis, and I understood that writing is an important part of the college; it is used on a

daily basis. As engineer, my writing sometimes is a method of scientific explanation and can

even be a kind of description. As a student, I use many forms of writing, such as emails,

academic papers, business letters, and published works, to communicate with different people,

and I also use them to keep track of everything that has to be done for my assigned assignments.

However, in this summer, you brought me valuable writing experiences, and these experiences

contribute to my improvement of writing enormously.

Considering about learning goals of UWP 1, the "Process" is the new material that I

learned from this class in the first place. Under this skill, I practiced reading, researching,

composing as a social process, and revising and editing multiple drafts based on feedback from

peers and you. In fact, I joined lots of peer review activities before, and I did not take them

seriously because I only concentrated on instructors' comments. However, in UWP 1, you asked

us to take much time on revising and editing our drafts based on peers' comments, and you gave

additional comments afterward. Because I wanted to have a better vision of my draft before you

read it, I first time read peers' comments seriously. I noticed that peers' comments are more

useful than I expected, and I found a way to understand my audiences as a friend rather than

writing for instructors. Likewise, when I read peers' papers, I felt like I am communicating with
friends, and I not only learned different writing styles through reading but also realized what

different readers want from me through revising. The awareness of the "Process" skill, to a large

extent, gave me the directions and comprehended of my essays in this class and will continue

influencing my writing skills in the future.

This summer, I had two main assignments whose topics are the most interesting that I

have ever had, and Wikipedia Entry and Podcast assignment explore two my "first times" in

different writing genres.

Firstly, the Wikipedia Entry is a kind of research paper. I did this type of writing before,

but the topics were always assigned, so I felt bored while writing such a long essay that needed

much time searching for resources and arranging them in a complicated essay. Nevertheless, this

time, you asked me to compose the topic by myself, which evoked my enthusiasm and interests,

because I could work on my preferable field. After reflecting for a while, I decided to work on

the area that is related to my home country, and I chose Chinese bike-sharing system. While

doing this assignment, besides to the academic research article itself, it is more important to learn

how to design an efficient format and cite proper references. Contrasting with the research paper,

I learned that Wikipedia must be a credible document which only introduces neutral facts

without personal opinions. Also, because I have to cite resources in numbers with brackets rather

than inserting authors' name and dates with brackets within the context, I learned how to cite

internal hyperlinks. Additionally, by studying captions, I learned how to describe pictures and

figures using concise and vivid sentences. As a result, I think this assignment has taught me how

to write objective and scientific papers, so this can be a vital tool I can use in future writing tasks

in the engineering field.

 Otherwise, Podcast brought me a novel writing experience. In the class, we spent twenty

minutes on observing a place on campus, and I had a valuable experience through that twenty

minutes because I noticed observation is a meaningful and efficient primary method. I used to

think observation probably takes places at experiment laboratory, and scientific experiments

usually have a predictable and obvious phenomenon. But by observing the public and social

phenomenon, I noticed that peoples behaviors, feelings, smells, lights, and atmosphere are hard

to identify and explain in words because surrounding situations just happen randomly. Secondly,

after I finished writing, I have to record an audio file of my story. I sometimes listen to others

telling stories through the radio in my car, and this assignment makes me feel like I was one of

them. Now, I have a chance to write my own story and tell it to others, which is exciting to me.

Moreover, besides to writing skills, a good learning process always have to make

reflecting conclusion, so writing weekly learning journal gave me a good habit of study. In the

class, we studied skills, and you asked us to write learning journals about what we have learned

after the class. Since I have down it for a month, I found it is helpful because these journals help

me store knowledge. If I say my brain is like a computer, the learning journal is like a hard disk

drive. When my memories are not able to contain all of the things I have learned through a day,

learning journals have me record details down so that it increases the efficiency of study.

Therefore, I like to keep doing it for my other courses in the future.

A summer section is short, but I truly have learned lots of practical writing and learning

skills from you in UWP 1. I still have too many things want to say, such as making an analysis of

reliable resources, free writing and barnstorming before writing, leaving papers behind before

revision, and telling narrative stories, but it would make my cover letter too long. I think the
most important thing is "doing" rather than "saying," so I decide to end here. Thank you for your

patience and listening!

Sincerely,

Xinyu Han