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Elizabeth Tong Lynda Haas Writing 37 16 March 2014 The Final Reflection Essay Writing 37 has been a very engaging course focusing on analyzing and being able to thoroughly understand the meaning of the text. In this class we primarily focus on Conan Doyles stories and modern-day texts, covering our class mystery genre theme focusing on Sherlock Holmes. Throughout these ten weeks I have acquire many knowledgeable skills that improve my writing skills; for example, working on textual analysis, analyzing genres, collaborating with classmates, gaining constructive criticism and helpful grammar tips. I also became familiar with the eight habits of mind I evidently develop throughout this course: curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility and metacognition. Using my metacognition skill I can narrate my experience in this class presenting how I gradually improve my writing skills and how this course has also strengthen my communication skills. Within this ten week course I have develop the essential writing skills to write an academic essay, instilling knowledge and guidance on how to write a good textual analysis. The analyzer must go further than describing details; it is not enough to just identify and summarize your points. A good analyzer separates their points into parts and explains how they reach these conclusions by including examples and further explanations. From our class focus of analyzing genre I have learn its important to define the mystery genre and to mention other conventions before you analyze the specific convention you will be working with. Since we analyze genres

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weekly I became familiar with detecting conventions and writing a good textual analysis. These are two useful skills that will help me in my later writing courses here at UC Irvine. The essay I decided to fully revise is the Modern-Day Holmes Essay. I chose this essay because I think the convention of the sidekick character being updated in Elementary to a female in order to appeal to a new audience is very interesting. The strength of my final draft is that my essay will stand out to the readers because the convention I am working with shows the role of the sidekick has always been play by a male but this modern day text has significantly alter this familiar character into a female. I think the audience will find this shift in attitude toward women very entrancing. The greatest weakness of my final draft will have to be the amount of time I had to work on my paper. I have a lot of revisions to make to this essay since I plan to change the examples I originally wrote about, but I think the overall message in my paper will be easy for me to address. The paragraph I plan to revise in my Conan Doyle essay would be my conclusion. The reason I chose this paragraph is because the recent contributions and advancements to forensic science are impressive. The strength of this revised paragraph is that I articulate valid points clarifying my overall message of this paper.

Collaborations and interactions are two things that were emphasize in this course; consisting of group projects and peer reviews. During the beginning of this class working with a group did not seem like a difficult task but as the weeks went on the tasks became more tedious and time consuming. My responsibility skills definitely cultivated for me when having to complete group work. Regardless of how much work I had in my other classes I had to prioritize my time and make sure I complete my assigned task for my group because not fulfilling my task would not only jeopardize myself but also my group members. Another skill that has develop for me when working in groups was openness because I had to express my feelings and opinions,

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but also keep an open mind and be willing to consider new ways of thinking. I have always thought that sharing your ideas can be really intimidating because you dont want to sound foolish and having an open mind can be difficult when you are set on a certain point, but this is something I have greatly improve on throughout the course. My skill of openness also develop during the peer review process; allowing me to look at things in a different perspective, helping me to become a stronger writer. I found peer reviews beneficial because it not only gave me input on my work but being able to read some of my classmates papers let me take to account their writing techniques. In addition, I also feel like I became a more confident public speaker and communicator due to the amount of in-class presentations we had. I still become extremely nervous when I have to go in front of a class to present but since this classroom felt like a safe environment it made going up a lot easier, helping me tackle my fear of public speaking. Public speaking is something I still need to gain more confidence in and with practice and time I will be able to overcome my weakness and become a better speaker. The Connect modules that are assign weekly have also help me become a better communicator; allowing me to master my skills in both grammar and critical reading while overall improving my writing. I found grammar practice as the most useful task because it has helped me formulate sentences in effective ways.

For the RIP seminar I had a very small role in the murder mystery scene where I played a trainee for the police detective. Even though I had only one line it was still important that I memorize it and remember when to say it. Besides that little role I play in the actually scene, I contributed to the outline script for the introduction and the murder mystery scene script. I specifically wrote the part in the introduction script covering the stock characters and the role of the police. In the murder mystery scene, I helped write the script where Holmes and Watson discuss the case. In addition to this, I was also in charge of picking my groups modern day

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television show pictures for the class power point, making sure the resolution of the pictures I chose were clear. During preparations for this RIP seminar I develop better communication skills; having to work with others and considering all ideas when collaborating with my classmates to produce a text. Having to summarize information succinctly for the introduction was difficult because there was a lot of valuable information to incorporate but we were limited on time. Creativity came to play when having to summarize what I thought needed to be mentioned, representing only the most important ideas. As well as when the class had to create an original mystery scene to reenact we had to be creative since we were basing it off the Sign of Four but changing it up to make it our own story. Flexibility was another skill that has developed for me when helping make the murder mystery scene script since my classmates were assign different scenes so it was hard to write the script for the scene I was assign without knowing what was occurring in the previous scenes before. Once the missing scenes were posted I had to go back and edit some parts of my script so it correlated better to the previous scenes. Besides this, since the main actors of this play were limited on time to remember their lines improv acting was use. For the scene where I appeared I wasnt sure when to say my line because we werent referring exactly to how the script was written and for our dress rehearsal we briefly went over this scene. Overall, the performance went well and we interacted with the audience giving them a firsthand experience while incorporating the main points of the mystery genre and the stages of genre development. Even though our class is roughly twenty students I think we did a great job incorporating everyone. Working in a group is not always easy and persistence was
necessary for the RIP seminar because it involved a lot of time and effort. The way we divided

the class into smaller groups (presenters, script writers, visuals) really help involve everyone by

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assigning different roles and each individual group was able to collaborate among themselves then report back to the class. As a result from this class I have gain many valuable skills to help improve my writing; from grammar practice to strengthening my vocabulary to focusing on textual analysis. Besides these specific writing skills this class has helped me become a better communicator. I hardly ever share my opinions in class unless I am working in a group and since group work was emphasize in this course it has helped me feel comfortable with sharing my opinions with my classmates. In addition, public speaking has always been a challenge for me; I get incredibly nervous when Im in front of a class and I have to present when a teacher is present. Having weekly presentations has definitely helped me gain more confidence, but I have yet to overcome my fear. Overcoming this weakness is something I plan to continue to work on because elocution is an essential skill to have. Throughout this course I have also became familiar with the habits of mind I develop and how these specific skills can be used in my professional life. Personally, I think openness is one of the most important skills to acquire because in life you will be interacting with others regardless of what profession you desire to pursue. Since this class consisted of a lot of group work it has helped me be become receptive to new and different ideas of others. Within these ten weeks I have benefitted a significant amount from this alluring course.