Evelyn Alvarez

UWP 01
Sophia Bamert
June 7, 2017
New Perspective on Writing
Throughout middle school and high school, Ive always dreaded writing papers
for teacher and my peers because I was afraid that they wouldnt like what I had to say
about a certain topic. Furthermore, because English was not my first language I always
struggled expressing my opinions throughout my paper in a coherent manner. For this
reason, I always feared writing because I knew that people were going to criticize the
vocabulary I used or my sentence structures or just any structural issue within the paper.
Therefore, when I knew that I had to take writing courses in college I really had to
overcome this fear of writing. The way that I overcame this fear was by writing in a
journal. In my journals I would write about my day, my feelings, my goals, my dreams,
my crushes, my family, everything! This really helped me overcome my fear of writing
because I was more comfortable with decent English vocabulary and I was able to have
my ideas flow coherently throughout my writing. However, this still wasnt enough for
me to write decent essays in high school since the topics assigned werent about feelings
or tell a story about my dreams, they consisted of more serious topics.
Furthermore, from first to twelfth grade we were taught to use proper vocabulary
within our writing and have great syntax. I feel like the majority of us, college students,
were taught to look at the technical/structural side of essays and from there determine
whether its a good paper or not. However, now that I am almost done with the course I
can see how incorrectly we have been taught on how good writing looks like. This
course has taught me that the structural aspect of writing shouldnt be the main focus,
instead, I should be looking more at the content of the writing, i.e. who is the intended
audience, what is the tone, what is the writers argument, etc., rather than just pointing
out the missing commas or syntactical errors of the paper. The importance of writing is
knowing and understanding what, why, and how the writer is conveying his/her argument
to the audience rather than pointing out technical errors that mean nothing when looking
at the big picture. Knowing this, my writing has changed so much because I went from
always making sure that all technical errors were fixed to now making sure that my
argument is presented correctly to my intended audience. For example, on my first draft
of the Literacy Place Narrative, my intended audience was Chicanos; however after
having my draft revise by peers and instructor, my argument wasnt intended for
Chicanos, instead, my argument seemed to be intended to my UWP peers and not
Chicanos. Therefore, after reading all the comments on my draft I decided to write a
completely new essay. I could have just revised my original draft but I felt that by writing
a completely new essay I would have better control on how my argument would be
intended to the appropriate audience (Chicanos) and what important points that need
further explanation.
Through the assigned readings and group/class discussions about the readings, I
learned what a genre is, how papers should be read, i.e. focusing on the content of the
paper and not on grammar/syntax, how peer-reviews work, and what a discourse
community consists of. Essentially, I was not aware of the fact that shopping lists or
ransom notes were considered as genres. Before, I thought genres were like different
types of music (Spanish Cumbias, hip-hop, rap, rock, etc.) and movies (i.e. Romantic
Comedies, Chick Flicks, Drama, Action, etc.). However, after having this discussion in
class I learned that there are many literary genres that we encounter on a daily basis. And,
essentially, what makes something a genre is the fact that exigence (i.e. a rhetorical tool
used to help the audience understand what the discussion is trying to accomplish),
constrains (how the rhetoric within the discussion is being presented), and audience are
all part of a rhetorical situation that are being put into an object that is now considered a
genre since it is able to serve as an action. For example, in class we discussed about
ransom notes and how those serve as a type of literary genre since its context, such as If
you want your husband back, you must pay $10000 to get him back, the exigence in this
case is having to give money in order to get that person back, the constrain is that you
must pay the amount of money asked for (not more, not less), and the audience is the
person whom is missing their loved one.
Thus, this kind of information served as an introduction to our discourse
community project. The phrase discourse community was something that I had no idea
what it was or what it was about. However, after reading it in the readings assigned and
discussing it in class I can to the understanding that a discourse community is essentially
a space that consists of specific goals, language, and genres that are unique to that
community and by knowing such information one is able to consider themselves as part
of the discourse community. For this reason, I decided to do my discourse community
project on the emergency room at UC-Davis Medical Center. This is considered a
discourse community because the goal of this community is to save lives, people within
this community use specialized vocabulary such as medical terminology in order to
communicate with other medical staff, and there are plenty of genres throughout the ER
that help inform physicians of their patients status and genres that help medical staff
communicate with each other. Such genres include patient history medical forms and
computers installed with special programs in which consists of patient information that
help nurses and doctors aware of the patients condition. Nevertheless, in order to be
considered a member of the community one needs to fully understand and practice the
common goals, language, and comprehension of genres within the ER. Therefore, I had
to be aware of such requirements in order to properly communicate with the medical staff
and patients.
My draft for the discourse community was (according to my peers) written well
and that I just needed to include more specific medical terminology examples. As for the
feedback I received from the one-on-one conference was that I did need to include more
specific examples and further explanation of my analysis of the discourse community
because the analysis was there but my transitions from one topic were shifted to quickly;
thus, I needed to slow down a bit and explain certain topics further. This is exactly what I
did. For example, in Becoming a Member I included examples of basic medical
terminology such as DNR (Do not resuscitate), Epi (Epinephrine), and AF (Atrial
Fibrillation) that are used on a daily bases within the ER department. Furthermore, I also
received the suggestion of expanding my Final Thoughts paragraph further by
answering the questions: So what? Why is it a discourse community? Why should people
know about this community? I essentially restated my argument in my Final Thoughts
paragraph to remind my audience why the ER is a discourse community and its
importance.
 Conducting my research for my discourse community was not as difficult as to
how I anticipated it to be because we were taught how to use the Shield Librarys sources
inside and online. I think that if we didnt have the workshop with the librarian I would
have struggled so much in finding my resources. Furthermore, this workshop helped me
find sources, such as academic journals that were peer-reviewed, in which would be
considered appropriate secondary sources for my research paper. As for my primary
source for this project, I couldnt really interview one of the nurses or physicians in the
ER since we are constantly bust attending patients and their families; thus, I asked one of
the other girls that are also interns to answer a couple of questions. I asked one of the
girls about how she felt before stepping into this community and how she felt after.
Moreover, I asked her about what medical terminology she had to learn throughout her
shifts and she responded that she had learned the names of tools that physicians used and
names of diseases commonly found in the ER. Therefore, I had never done a research
paper in which I was required to have primary source, such as interviewing a person, in
order to enhance my argument. Because it was a new experience for me, I was a bit shy
to ask one of the volunteers to answer a couple of questions for my research paper but
after asking her these questions and recording her response I saw how important it was
for me to get her response on my paper because it would enhance my argument.
If I would have more time to write my portfolio I would definitely include more
primary sources such as interviewing the medical staff, patients in the ER that are stable
enough to have a conversation, and record incoming traumas so that my audience can see
how chaotic the ER can get, thus, acknowledge why communication is so important in
this community.
Learning about different genres is one of the main concepts that I will definitely
be acknowledging and applying in my future writing because there are so many genres
involved in medical writings and scientific writings.
Therefore, I have learned so many interesting and important concepts that are
important to considered when reading other peoples writing and our own. This course
had taught me so much on how to approach papers, identifying the argument, the
audience, and genres throughout a paper. I will definitely continue to apply such
techniques in my future studies of medicine.

Thank you so my Sophia for all the hard work and dedication you invested in us. It is
very much appreciated!