Goal 1: Register Awareness.

Apply strategies for analyzing texts’ audiences,

purposes, and contexts as a means of developing awareness of registers of

academic and non-academic writing.

1A) Recognize and explain shifts in register (e.g., academic, conversational) in

terms of language choices (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, and the connections

between them).

1B) Shape a text’s register to make it appropriate for the intended audience,

purpose, and context.

My first goal in this course is Register Awareness. During the

implementation of Unit 1, I was asked to read a few articles and watch at least one

video related to English and the issues surrounding it to help complete the weekly

assigned exercises. There are only 2 types of homework: answering reading

questions that were submitted after finishing within 1 or 2 days of assignment and

writing a big project that has a grace period of about 1 week. Through the latter, I

have achieved 2 learning outcomes 1A and 1B as intended.

I will talk about 1B first. My Project 1 Part 1 was to rewrite one of the

readings in the form of a text that was more accessible to people. I chose Dr.

Finegan and to write as tweets instead of a blog post. While I can't clearly

remember why I chose Dr. Finegan, maybe because it was the first reading that
appeared and the other readings weren't uploaded to D2L yet so I started working

on Project 1 right away, but I'm completely sure why I chose 15 tweets instead of 1

blog post. Tweets are fun and my mind immediately started to pave the path I was

going to take when I first saw this option. And certainly, I already knew how to

reshape the text's register to make it more relevant for the given context, audience,

and purpose. Dr. Finegan's tone is obviously very professional in this text.

Therefore, for the intended audience, people from different social classes and

professions, and the purpose is to convey the message of Dr. Finegan but with an

informal approach, I picked up the tone of well-known, or infamously notorious,

social media influencers with limited knowledge and often act before they think. A

stereotype that anyone can meet on social networking forums. For this rewrite, I

read through some of these people's tweets, and I knew what I needed to do. I had

put many personal emotions and experiences into this rewrite to impersonate these

influencers, as well as to avoid the dry and professional tone of the original author.

Also, phrases that shouldn't appear in educational articles, I also included them in

my work. Take for example the phrase “my brain can't explode because of this”.

Obviously, this is something you would never come across in a document written

by a professor. Or like “yep” and “jaw dropping”. These are two phrases that you

can only encounter in daily communication between you and someone who you

feel really comfortable when talking to and certainly are not recommended to use
in writing. All these examples are intended to bring the feeling of friendliness,

freshness, and crude humor to the readers. Most people tend to shy away from

reading long texts, so for the context of tweets shared on social media, I shorten it

as much as possible, but at the same time ensure the succinct and concise of the

sentence.

As for 1A, recognizing and accounting for changes in language usage , I also

have a paragraph that clearly explains the transition from Dr. Finegan to my style.

My Explanation for the rewrite, aka Project 1 Part 2, clearly shows that the

character I incarnated goes through 3 stages of awareness. When I started reading

about prescriptivists and descriptivists, I thought they were the complete opposite

of each other. Two opposite polars. Like fire and water. But because I want to

bring laughter to the audiences, I compare them with 2 neighbors who can't meet

eye to eye on all matters. Or like the attempt to compare the logic behind the belief

of descriptivists with mathematics, where two negatives equal one positive. Or like

the “let him/her cook” example in the eleventh tweet. My character has one post

that is criminally and exceptionally long, just to explain to the audiences that one

can be descriptive and prescriptive at the same time.

Goal 2: Academic Literacy Practices. Use strategies for developing academic

literacy practices typical to US universities.

2C) Develop an idea using explanations, examples, and/or details.

2D) Summarize a text using conventional summary language and formatting (e.g.,

third person, reporting verbs, and citation).

2G) Understand and apply concepts of intellectual copyright and plagiarism as

practiced when writing at the University of Arizona.

The second finish line that I have reached is Academic Literacy Practices.

Like my first goal, I find that completing Project 2 helps me achieve 3 learning

outcomes including 2C, 2D, and 2G. Personally, I find that this trilogy will be very

helpful in my daily life, more specifically in reading comprehension, recognizing

the main ideas that the authors want to convey and appreciating the works of

authors in terms of copyright problems.

First, developing an idea with different examples and interpretations (2C). This is

most clearly shown through Project 2, when I talk about issues surrounding

English teaching in Vietnam in particular. There, I told my personal English

learning story from day one, which is grade 1, to the present. And from that, I

gained the ability to express my hatred for the absurdities in this way of teaching

English, and also learnt what obstacles made learning English in Vietnam a burden

rather than an interesting subject. Or when I mentioned the times when I had to

repeat what I said in a very shy way to the other person because my English was
bad and unclear. It showed my concern as to why my English was this terrible, but

at the same time proved that native English is always an exemplary model that

every learner should look up to. All these examples and details lead to the claim, or

personal point, which I want to prove. However, I must also admit that I am not

quite satisfied with what I have flaunted in this. Sometimes, after re-reading my

work, I find that the examples and claim don't really have a tight knot. There is still

some laxity as some examples don't really have a strong connection to the claim.

There is still superfluity of details that shouldn't have been included, but I decided

to keep them just to satisfy, or worsen, my ego. This is something that I have also

noticed since the first assignments when taking this course, but I can't control it

yet. If I try to restrain it, I would get a feeling of my creativity being suppressed.

Obviously this isn't true, it's just a measure of moderation to avoid rambling, but I

always navigate my mind thinking it's a negative and evil feeling. Hopefully the

beast within me will be tamed one day.

Secondly, also in Project 2, I also did an “excellent job” summarizing a long

text (2D). This is not something that is too sublime and I believe that anybody can

master this skill just after practicing through 6 to 7 texts. In Project 2, there is a

“chapter” where I want to show the different perspectives of global citizens about

speaking English. I listed 4 studies by 4 different authors and groups of authors,

but I left a whole passage for Sung (2013) alone because this is still the only
reading that I have full access to. In this paragraph, I outlined all the essential and

crucial details of that article, such as the number of participants, the background of

the participants, the purpose of the study, the results of the study… Of course, I

had to clearly list the authors and the years of composing of every study to avoid

the crime of plagiarism.

Speaking of plagiarism, through consulting many sources and editing

according to the APA documentation style required by this project, my knowledge

of intellectual copyright and plagiarism issues has been significantly improved and

clearly demonstrated (2G). One thing in Vietnam is that copyright is still an

extremely painful issue and has not been properly resolved. Literary works, music,

movies and more are always available on pirated websites. Although many

websites have been taken down by the government, like the Hydra monster in

Greek mythology, if a head is cut off, two more shall take its place. Now, back to

the learning outcome. In the same “chapter” above, I mentioned the results of their

research through summarizing a whole text or just mentioning the research results

in 1 or 2 sentences. In addition, some original quotes from the research were

copied and pasted directly into my work, but I carefully put it in double quotation

marks, along with the page number that originally contains the sentence. And of

course, I had to list the names of the authors and the year they were composed
according to APA documentation style as a must. And also URL links that directly

take readers to the research.

Goal 3: Reflection and Revision. Understand composing processes as flexible and

collaborative, drawing upon multiple strategies and informed by reflection.

3A) Participate in collaborative writing practices, including peer review, as a

means of improving their own writing.

3C) Evaluate and act on peer and instructor feedback to revise their texts.

On this arduous and challenging journey, I have received a lot of

enthusiastic help from my friends and instructor. And through that, I have met the

2 learning outcomes 3A and 3C of the third goal: Reflection and Revision.

In fact, I didn’t actively talk to other students in my class about homework.

But that does not mean that other people didn’t come to me to exchange. I vaguely

remembered that throughout this course about 3 people viewed my draft. They

viewed and provided constructive comments, and in most of these discussions I

agreed with their suggestions and changes (3A). In addition, there was another

person who often asked me about the Projects. I remember this case more and

more clearly. She regularly sent me her drafts in the hope that I could check for

grammar mistakes, and suggest ways to work out ideas to meet the word count

requirement of the homework. While she clearly got a lot of benefits, I have to
admit that reading her post also made me realize a few things. Specifically, the

way she chose and used words is really elegant, classy, noble and professional.

When I compared it to my own, I had noticed that the language I used was a bit

tough and dry, partly because I wanted to be as objective as possible. But

personally, that was enough to make me admire and make up for her work for not

being long enough. Then I gave her some ideas for developing her work, and I

borrowed some of her words to apply to my work.

Before we students submit the final draft on D2L, we always have the

opportunity to discuss with the instructor directly to improve our work (3C). I

really took advantage of these many opportunities to be able to make my work

both meet the requirements set forth and readable to the friends around me. And

indeed, thanks to the dedication and enthusiasm of my instructor, I have reaped the

sweet fruits today. His guidance was very clear, coherent, and thorough.

Conversations to gain a deeper understanding of students' original ideas always

created a very friendly, intellectual, and enlightening aura. And that is just in class.

When it is not possible to meet face-to-face, my instructor was willing to talk to

students through social networks to help students improve. It can be seen that

whether directly or separated by anything, my instructor always puts a lot of effort,

time, and energy into raising students to reach their highest potential. I recall a

time when my instructor helped me in class. It was the first draft of Project 1. One
thing he discovered was that I had a big misunderstanding about prescriptivists. I

was very scared and shocked. But luckily, he was very tactful, subtle, and clearly

explained that this error is also often easy to appear, in part because of what Dr.

Finegan's writing about them being not entirely true, which leads to a

misunderstanding by readers like me. In addition, my instructor also suggested to

me which aspects of Dr. Finegan's article should be intepreted to get the highest

score.

Goal 4: Academic Language and Conventions. Develop written academic

language and genre conventions in English.

4A) Identify and use common academic phrases for functions such as organizing

ideas, expanding on ideas, providing examples, expressing personal views,

attributing ideas, and making claims or sharing a thesis.

4B) Apply conventional formatting features (e.g., (capitalization, punctuation,

titles, margins, fonts, and other features of document layout) to their writing.

4D) Incorporate variety in grammar and vocabulary into their writing.

Finally, the medal at the end of the road. Academic Language and

Conventions, the fourth learning outcome. Before taking this course, my use of

academic phrases was limited and rarely appeared, and the way I laid out my

works was crude and unappealing. And through this semester, and especially
through Project 2, I have made significant improvements in this area,

demonstrating that the sub learning outcomes 4A, 4B, and 4D have been

successfully achieved.

Firstly, 4A. When comparing this course with the latest one in the past, it

can be seen that there are stark differences. In this course, the freedom of personal

comments is unrestricted and enthusiastically encouraged as much as possible so

that writers can have the opportunity to express their feelings and personal views,

and to build bonds between writers and readers. When listing real-world examples,

specifically data from various studies, I used the phrases “On the one hand” and

“On the other hand”. This pair of words represents two streams of conflicting

personal opinions, which I take advantage of when expressing the perspectives of

English learners from many different countries. As far as I know through IELTS

training centers, these are the two golden phrases in writing tests because of their

ease of remembering and the quality of being highly advanced at the same time.

Personally, I also used this duo very often while studying at these institutions. In

addition, I also used some medium-level words but with a twist of meaning, like

the word “filter” to refer to the fierceness and harsh reality of English education in

Vietnam, even though the word itself has the original meaning of something that

removes dregs from liquids. The reason I chose the word “filter” is because the
English education system above and this device have a similarity - removing things

that should not be there.

Secondly, 4B. Formatting is a very important thing in this semester.

Actually, in Project 1, I also did apply the APA documentation style as requested,

but after completing Project 2, I can use this style more accurately. Font size 12,

double space, 1-inch margin, quotations and references, and many other small

details that contribute to this style. It feels like everything just comes together.

After Project 2, I found that my work looked professional and well-organized, and

matched the medical records of psychiatric patients you might see in the movies.

And ultimately, 4D. I really put a lot of effort into Project 2, feeling as if it

really is the “pièce de résistance” of mine. For example, the words “nucleus” and

“crux”. Normally, I would use the words “most important factor” and “problem”

respectively. But I felt that wasn't enough, felt I was using it too often, and felt that

it was time to change and bring in new ones. So I suddenly remembered YouTube

videos in which these words were used. I vaguely remembered them, and of course

I would only use them if the meanings were almost completely identical. “A will of

steel” is another example. A phrase that I thought was only in my mother tongue,

but it turns out that there is also an English counterpart of it. Or the word “abhor”. I

wanted a word that expressed extreme hate against my process of practicing for the
IELTS test, but I knew that “hate” or “detest” were not enough, so I searched for a

new word via Google. Interspersed with academic phrases are phrases that are less

intellectual and aren’t as deep. Like “a total mess”, it sounds very popular and

normal. Also, not all sentences are the same length. There are some lengthy

sentences that contain many clauses, the latter clause serves as an explanation for

the former clause. There are some short sentences, containing only 1 clause, to

create pauses, rhythms, and solid claims that are easy to remember.