Dear Professor Tumen,

I hope this letter finds you well. I would like to share the insights that I have gained from this course,
as well as thank you for all that you have taught me.

During the process of writing and revising the WPs this quarter, I learned that the most
productive revisions take time, genre translations solidify knowledge better than most other academic
assignments, and revision is a more involved process than simply editing. Firstly, I learned from
experience that quality revisions take time1. For example: after not looking at my WP1 for a month, I
felt like I could change so much more than I had previously thought. For the WP1, my original article
was just over a page long, and in retrospect, my WP1 feels like I was too attached to paraphrasing the
article. For this project, I was also focusing a lot on the idea of threshold concepts, and I wanted to
simplify my original article to create something that would convey the threshold concept to a
younger audience2. The threshold concept in the original article was about the “Anthropocene” and
how humans have caused detrimental ecological and climatic changes to the planet. This is a
necessary threshold concept for young children to come to terms with if we want any change to
happen with climate policy in the future: this fact is what inspired me to choose the children's book
genre.

While working on my WP2, I feel like I gained a different skill set than in my WP1. I learned
how to read articles and create dialogue between them. Through this assignment, I was able to
synthesize the various arguments of the six articles that I found and create a playful discourse
amongst them3. This was a very creative project, but I feel like this skill set of creating dialogue
between academic articles will come in handy when I am writing less creative papers for my other
classes. Also, I learned how to use the search engine to find articles that are related to each other.
Through both the WP1 and the WP2, I learned that revision is fundamental to any kind of work. I
entered the mindset of viewing my work in constant flux - I was constantly reordering paragraphs,
refining the flow, and restructuring sentences4. Before taking Writing 2, I thought that making
revisions was equivalent to editing, but I now know that there is a distinct difference between them.

In the future, I would like to know more about applying all of these concepts to various
academic writing projects. For example: I want to try applying my newfound skills to create an
engaging science paper or art history paper. I would also like to try synthesizing and incorporating
research data into academic papers - it would have been interesting to do a project with scientific data

1
Browning, Randi. “Randi’s Revision Strategies.” University of California, Santa Barbara.
2
Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (n.d.). Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold
Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge.
3
Johns, Ann M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and
Diversity.” Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge, New York:
Cambridge UP, 1997. 51-70. Print.
4
Browning, Randi. “Randi’s Revision Strategies.” University of California, Santa Barbara.
and genre translation in this class. All in all, I really enjoyed taking this class, and I feel like I learned
a lot through the various writing projects that we did.

While taking this class, I noticed my personal writing style evolve in unexpected ways. At
first, I didn’t see the purpose of all of the small writing activities. I used to think that these
assignments were hard and pointless, but now I feel like I can write about anything, given a direction
and some time. Through all of the weekly activities, I was able to hone in on my short free-write
writing skills, and then through PBs and WPs, I could build on these short free writes to make my
work more cohesive. The reading by Peter Elbow really resonated with me, and I started applying
this strategy to my writing. I now believe that my personal writing style hinges heavily on
free-writing first, and then refining my work with second order thinking5. First, I write down
whatever my first reaction to the prompt is - this gives me a chance to express my creativity and for
my brain to spew whatever I am thinking onto paper. After extensive practice in this class, this comes
somewhat easily to me and my unrevised writing already has somewhat of a flow. After this first
order of writing, I like to refine and reorder my thoughts by logical order, and then I work on
sentence structure and check that everything is in active voice6. Through this class, I learned that I am
first and foremost a creative thinker and writer, and then I refine my writing in order to fit a certain
genre and formality.

While revising both Writing Projects, I took your suggestions and also made revisions of my
own. Firstly, in regards to the WP1, I made some revisions to the formatting of text and images in the
story book pages. For example, on pages 11 and 12, I reduced the amount of text, added numbers,
and used dividing lines to make the page layout more coherent. On pages 4, 7, and 8, I alternated
between various text colors to differentiate between dialogue and text, which makes reading simpler
for a younger audience. I also added a lot of speech bubbles - this makes more sense in terms of a
conversation. Examples of these speech bubbles can be seen on pages 5, 6, 9, and 10. On page 9,
specifically, I combined, simplified, and reduced the text of two different pages into one. This page
used to look a lot less organized - Nitrogen Monoxide’s words were not in a speech bubble, the text
was too small, and too complicated for a young reader. Although there is still a lot of text now, I
think it is all crucial for understanding the book. To give the storybook a bit more of a hand-made
feel, I hand drew the lettering on the front and back pages. I also feel that the book has a very
collage-like feel, which makes it seem cozy and welcoming. Finally, I reduced the page count to 13
pages, and I simplified the jargon even more - for instance, on page 8, the birds used to say “we are
going extinct,” but now they say “we are dying,” which makes more sense to a younger child.

In my WP2, I revised the sentence structure of the longer comments, added more tangents,
and removed the quotes that I was previously using. My revisions of sentence structure and quote
removal can be seen in the first and second comments in the thread, as well as in the large
paragraph-like comment by paul_lynch123. Although I think the revisions I made in these comments

5
Elbow, Peter. “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking.” New York: Oxford U Press. 1986.
6
Elbow, Peter. “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking.” New York: Oxford U Press. 1986.
were important, I think my WP2 revisions shine in the Reddit tangents. Some of the new comments I
added were about standardized testing and kids, and I feel like they make the Reddit thread more
playful and funny. Finally, I added another Redditer called “convomoderator” to be the neutral figure
asking the original question that started the thread. Also, I studied the Reddit functions more, and
formatted this reddit thread better than the previous one.

I believe that the strongest feature of my writing is organization and flow, as well as
interpreting sources quickly and creating a cohesive piece of writing that synthesizes the information
presented in them. Before this class, I always dreaded completing academic writing assignments and
I disliked reading articles and trying to figure out their most salient points7. But the projects that you
assigned were fun and interactive, and I feel much more comfortable writing academic papers now.
My portfolio reflects this shift in my mindset in a myriad of ways. First of all, in my WP1, the
organization of information, use of genre, and synthesis of information create flow within “Sam and
the Six Voices.” I really appreciated the freedom of creativity that you provided in this class, because
it allowed me to become more adventurous with my writing. In my WP1, I interpreted an academic
article into a children’s book with characters. I used various facts and parts of the environment as
characters in my story, which I thought was interactive and creative, as well as informative for a child
reader8. In my WP2, I had to work even harder to synthesize the main points of all of my chosen
articles, which was challenging, yet rewarding. I was able to create a Reddit thread that displayed my
newfound knowledge of seamlessly building a conversation between articles, which was extremely
satisfying. I am able to organize my writing with ease, and I know how to create flow and structure. I
used to use essay writing as a way to learn the information that I was writing about, but all of the
genre translations have taught me to internalize the information before embarking upon a writing
project about it9. Before this class, I dreaded academic writing projects, but now I find myself
looking forward to them and I feel confident in my skills to tackle any prompt.

As I approach writing assignments in my future classes, I will take away three things with me
from this course. Firstly, I will utilize freewriting to kickstart my brainstorming process for any given
project. This allows me to “follow my gut instinct” about a prompt and write down any initial
thoughts. Secondly, freewriting goes hand-in-hand with second-order thinking, which is revising the
first-order thoughts into a more coherent piece of writing.10 Revising takes a lot more focus and
intellectual involvement than simply editing, which is what I would do in the past. Finally, I will
understand the material fully before writing projects that require prior research. I practiced this with
genre translations, and I feel confident doing this in my future writing endeavors. I believe that these

7
Dirk, K. (n.d.). Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1.
8
Dirk, K. (n.d.). Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1.
9
Dirk, K. (n.d.). Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1.
10
Elbow, Peter. “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking.” New York: Oxford U Press. 1986.
three skills - freewriting to brainstorm, revising instead of editing, and internalizing information from
my sources - will benefit me greatly in my future writing projects.

I entered this course thinking that I would learn maybe a fraction of all that I did, but I now feel
much more equipped to tackle any writing assignment that is to come in my years at college.
Professor Tumen, thank you so much for all you have taught me!

Sincerely,

Anna Turysheva
Works Cited

Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (n.d.). Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold

Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge.

Dirk, K. (n.d.). Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1.

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.”

Elbow, Peter. “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking.” New York: Oxford U Press. 1986.

Johns, Ann M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and
Diversity.” Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge, New York:
Cambridge UP, 1997. 51-70. Print.

Browning, Randi. “Randi’s Revision Strategies.” University of California, Santa Barbara.