Jackson Beaufort 1

Jackson Beaufort

Prof. Lynn Raymond

UWRT

01 December 2020

E-portfolio Reflection Letter

Dear WRDS Faculty,

During my first semester as a college student, I was given the opportunity to take UWRT

1104. I knew the class wasn’t going to be easy and that I would have to put forth a good

amount of work for the class. I went in thinking I was a pretty good writer. I never had a

problem coming up with what I want to write about, or how to organize my paper, or even how

to do research. Little did I know that I had just scratched the surface. During this past semester,

I increased my ability to think, read, write, research, communicate, and present through this

class. I truly believe that even after this class I will be able to steadily increase my ability to

write as time goes on.

One thing I learned was how to do research and turn that into a well-written paper.

Being able to do research also helped me understand the important information I need to

gather while reading as well. While reading, picking up important information is crucial to

critical reading and research gathering. When writing, being able to research something then

immediately turn around and write a well-written paper isn’t easy. I learned quickly how to

represent my research by using my research in my writing prompts. In Writing prompt 6 I put

my research skills to the test. Writing prompt 6 gave us the assignment to research my family’s

country of origin. At first, I was a little nervous. I was unsure where to start or how much
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information I should find. After I got started it became much easier. I was able to gather so

much information that I didn’t even use all of it. After that, I organized my information and

turned it into usable data. This totally changed how I would format and write my assignment

because of the nature of my now organized data. Once I started writing I had no problem with

the assignment. I did well on Writing Prompt 6 because of my critical researching skills. When I

was younger and would write I always ended up ranting or not being able to follow my outline.

My information would be all over the place and I struggled with keeping my grade up in my

English classes. My University Writing class has definitely taught me a lot about how to research

for an assignment. This class also taught me how to take my research and organize it to be used

correctly in an assignment. Being able to research and represent facts is very important when

writing. But it’s not the only thing you need. If you can't change it up every once and a while to

prove that you can write in different styles you start to stop improving. That’s why being a

flexible writer is so important to me.

In Studio 6 I learned a lot about how to be a flexible writer. A big part of that was

learning the different things you can change when writing (tone, mood, word choice, topic, etc).

The assignment given with Studio 6 was to “ Look Into the Past''. We chose one ancestor who

has passed away and wrote about their life and what they did. I wrote about my grandfather

who grew up in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and eventually became the town mayor for a suburb

right outside of Pittsburgh. I took this assignment and wrote from my grandfather’s point of

view. I was able to write about what He saw and experienced in Pittsburgh while He was

growing up. While writing this story about my grandfather I learned more about how to show
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my tone through my writing. I would even say that studio 6 was one of my best. I definitely

showed that I can meet expectations. Even Prof. Raymond said my Studio 6 was “written [well]

and has passion and emotion”. Totally different from her comments on my other Studios or

Writing prompts. I often found myself writing informational assignments and once I read them

back they lacked emotion and enthusiasm. Sometimes it is hard to display emotion through text

but, when given the opportunity to write a story there was a different outcome. I was totally

able to show emotion and enthusiasm as well as keep an organized story going. I had to adapt

to writing stories because I have been writing informational assignments for most of my life.

Learning how to write a story well definitely improved my overall writing skill and I thank UWRT

for that. Part of the reason I was able to improve was because of my adaptation to writing with

emotion. Using tone, mood, and word choice are all very important while writing.

In Writing prompt 4 I was prompted to ask three relatives the same question and write

all of the answers down. I wrote three similar stories all from my father and his two brothers’

point of view. All the stories were a little bit different but because of each person’s position in

the story, I had to display a lot of different tones. On top of that, the layout of the story written

was different for each person. The story, in short, is about how one day my dad (8) and one of

his older brothers (9) went into the woods one day to hang out. They ran into a group of middle

school kids and got into a bit of a fight. My dad’s older brother got beat up but they didn’t

touch my dad. My dad has a third brother who is ten years older than him. The oldest brother

was a senior in high school at the time. He knew the kids that beat up his little brothers because

those kids had older siblings who were sophomores at my dad’s oldest brother’s school. The
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oldest brother confronted the middle schoolers’ siblings after school one day and my dad and

his brother never had trouble with them again. All three of the stories I wrote were different,

although they had similar plot lines. I was able to use tone and shift of voice to write each story

from the appropriate point of view. This totally changed the story because each person was

feeling very different emotions during the altercation. My father was scared, his brother was

brave, and the oldest brother was mad. Being able to show the emotion of each character

without directly telling the reader solely relies on the attributes of the writing. Tone, word

choice, jargon, and the shift of voice were all used in my writing to help display the emotions of

the characters. UWRT helped me learn how to use all these different things while I am writing. I

have known that they all existed for a while, but UWRT taught me how to correctly use them in

writing.

When you write, one of the most important aspects you need to include is word choice.

Word choice can totally change an assignment or paper. Along with word choice comes

language. Language is very important because it expresses emotion through writing, symbols,

and gestures. The way something is worded or written can totally change the meaning. This is

because language allows us to ponder. While wondering about what the true meaning of

something is we often find answers we never considered. This is because of our ability to use

language. Language is not only social but also cultural, biological, and political. It’s political

because it’s bound up in relationships where power is negotiated. It is very interesting to me

that something that is used just to negotiate can be conceded a political aspect even though

language has no politics that directly align with it. Without language, the world would be

nowhere. Language also holds culture. This is because language changes from culture to culture
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and every language is spoken differently by different groups within that language. People from

the south speak with an accent, that accent holds some of their culture. When writing the way

you use word choice and language proves tons of information about the character. It helps the

reader theorise about the character and find where the character is from, who they will align

with in the story, or even tell you about their character traits. What I learned about language

and word choice is just one thing but UWRT taught me a bunch of different things.

Overall I learned a lot in UWRT. Although this class has been very different from the

English classes I’ve taken before I feel as though it has been extremely beneficial to my overall

writing capability. I learned how to research, write, and think critically. I also learned the steps I

have to take to manage my time and complete all the required assignments in a timely fashion

but still get the assignment done well. UWRT also taught me how to show emotion through my

writing by using different writing tactics like word choice, tone, a shift in voice, and displaying

intense feelings through sentence structure. Interviewing, citing sources, and how to ask good

interview questions are some other things I learned in this class. Finally, I just want to thank the

WRDS Faculty for helping me learn how to write. With everything that’s going on in the world

right now, it can be hard to focus especially on zoom. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to

teach. Thank you for all your effort you guys put forth.

Yours truly,

Jackson Beaufort