Dear Professor Valentina,

It is quite a hard process of revision but it is also interesting and gives me a sense of achievement

when I read my revised papers, to see them much better than before. The feeling is pretty

wonderful. I think one of the most important things I learn is that as a good author, you need to

show great respect for your audience and think from their aspects. If I just write in my own

without listening to opinions from my audience, me will never find where to improve. This is

quite obvious when I participated in the peers revision. After I read their comments, and thought

from their perspectives, I found lots of thing from my perspective would never be own simply

from my perspective. For example, I used to think my analysis were quite enough, but from

readers’ feedback, I knew that I made the mistake of assuming their background knowledge was

the same as me and I should include more detailed reasoning to present such background

knowledge to audience. I also learnt to organize my paper in more clear logic to make it clear for

most readers. Fromm their comments, I knew how they reader my paper and I could adjust my

paper in the way that would be clear for them to understand. If I only revise my paper from my

angel, I will never find where I am wrong. So I want to appreciate all my peers who give me

valuable suggestions to help me improve my writing skills. In the future, I want to learn more

about how to choose word accurately to express my ideas clearly. The concision of sentence

structures is also what I want to focus on.

For my portfolio, I choose to revise my WP2 and WP3. WP2 is the worst one with several

serious problems in writing including missing of thesis and arguments, too long length of

paragraphs, wrong citation format and expression confusion of sentences. So I want to revise it

as the revision process will help me correct these problems and make my writing habits better.

WP3 is not that worse, but I find I did make some repetitive ideas and some creative thoughts of
my translation didn’t state clearly in my paper. So I also want to revise it to fully express my

understanding of genre and apply my knowledge to help me make this translation. Several issues

I made revision are thesis and arguments, the organization of paragraphs, evidence and analysis

and quotation format. I added clear thesis in the introduction paragraph and I also made the

position of main arguments in each paragraph to the beginning sentences in the paragraph to

make readers easy to see. Such revision makes my ideas and paper easier to understand. I also

changed the organization of paragraphs. I separated long paragraphs with two shorter paragraphs

with different subordinate ideas to lessen the chance audience will get lost when reading long

paragraphs. I also revised my analysis part. I used to make the analysis too general without

specific examples and evidence. So I made more quotations and changed my expression in

analysis to make my points more convincing. At last, I changed the verb of present tense into the

verb of past tense when I quoted and I also learnt to make correct and concise quotation format

when the number of authors is over three. Another thing I revise to make coherent reference style

when I referred to different articles. I refer to them by all mention their authors’ names instead of

using “the first” or “the second” to refer to. I revised my papers basing on feedback from peers

and your comments and discussions with you. Besides, the knowledge I learnt form this class

helped a lot. The genre implications make me not limited to rules but to think from audience to

adjust my writing style. The analysis strategies help me to both analyze other authors’ articles

and write my analysis for evidence for my own papers. The ideas in readings also give me

broader vision to construct my paper. After completing my final portfolio, I find my writing

skills improve a lot. I can quote evidence to support my opinions adeptly and can also revise my

paper from various aspects to make my paper clear and have deeper meanings.
In the end, I really appreciate learning writing from you. You solved lots of my confusion and

gave me confidence in improving my writing skills. I believe in the future, what I have learnt in

this class will help me to write my academic papers. At that time, I will always recall what genre

is and how to analyze and write in balance of the perspectives of audience and my own.

Sincerely,

Bowen Duanmu