Chenjia Liu

Writing 2
9, June 2020
Final Portfolio
Dear Joshua Smith
I have an excellent experience learning and improving my writing skill this quarter. Writing 2
allows me to do something that I have never done before. For example, before this class, I could
never imagine I would translate an academic paper into another form of writing. I realize that
Writing is not a class we should learn at an increasing level. Instead, the process of improving
writing skills is keeping practicing what we have learned again and again. This is why we are
assigned to do the weekly journal. The journal commonly doesn't have a specific requirement.
We just need to set a time and write down whatever comes into the mind. For the first few
weeks, I would sit there for a few minutes and talk about some daily stuff like the food I make or
the match of my games. Then, the requirement became more specific such that we needed to care
about the logic and coherence. This assignment makes me gradually adapt to write since the
beginning of writing used to be hard for me. 

What's more, the reading of one week finally makes me leave the fear of writing behind. When
Lamott describes the writing process for a writer, I feel like he is spectating my life. I prefer to
plan everything ahead so that I won't mess up things. If I have a writing assignment due at the
end of the week, I will start writing as soon as possible because I regard it as the toughest work.
The writing process also made me struggle before this class. At the beginning of writing, I
commonly sit and design my thesis and structure for several minutes. I basically won't write until
I come up with almost everything, and revise after I write down a few sentences because I'm not
confident with my work. This is very time-consuming, so my work cannot be done at once.
However, after reading Lamott's article about the shitty draft, I understand that writing is a
difficult process even for professional writers. But they can still produce the work with excellent
quality because they do an outstanding job on the revision. Therefore, my fear of writing shitty
things does not constrain my writing anymore. I begin to write my ideas first, just like what I did
in the weekly journal, and then organize and filter out the bad stuff. I think I will never forget
what you said in class that writing without revision is dangerous, and I will keep my passion for
writing.

"The spectators see the chess game better than the players." It's not easy to identify my writing
style, but I do know that I don't particularly appreciate following the conventional rules. For
example, people commonly put the main argument of a paragraph in the beginning, but I prefer
to use something to lead to my argument smoothly. Sometimes I also like rendering the
atmosphere, creating atmosphere, and set off the characters' psychological activities when I do
free writing. For academic writing, the passive voice is used frequently to avoid subjective
expression. When I revise the paper, I usually pay attention to grammar mistakes. 
The last revision exposes many grammar mistakes and problems of coherence. Although these
problems are not so significant compared with the central idea, the correction allows my
audience to understand my point more smoothly. In writing project 1, I change the sentence
structure sequence so that people start with something familiar with them. This relates to what
we learned about the coherence and cohesion. What's more, the position of sentences also
changed in some cases so that they are closely connected, which makes the paragraph as a whole.
For example, this is a paragraph after the revision.  In the introduction part, the purpose and
some background information are stated and explained, which involves the use of jargon and
abbreviation followed by full names, such as "Structured laser radiation (SLR)" [4]. Some
jargon, such as "refractogram" and "geometric-optics model" [4], is commonly used to describe
the phenomenon and the setup in the research process. Initially, the first sentence is divided into
two sentences that explain the "purpose and background" part and "jargon and abbreviation" part
separately. The sentence that begins with "some jargon" was placed at the end of the paragraph
and the passive voice was not being used. After the revision, those sentences are like chains that
gradually explain the "introduction" part. In the "evidence and observation" part of WP1, the
clarity is further improved by making some keyword bold. Lastly, some necessary detail is also
added to explain the reason for practicing a particular convention, such as why the physicist
needs to find information quickly. 

In WP2, there is little change in the structure of the reflective essay since its explanation is one-
to-one corresponding to my translation. The difference is mainly reflected in the grammar and
the content. There were a considerable number of grammar mistakes in the first draft. Most
importantly, I further discuss how the screenplay is uniquely related to the issues of plastics
pollution in environmental science. The goal and the screenplay's property allow an otherwise
boring article to become attractive for the audience so that they can pay attention to growing
environmental problems. 

The feedback from you really helps me polish my work. The most important information is how
my content could be explained in more detail. Sometimes it's hard for me to be comprehensive.
For example, you pointed out that I didn't provide enough reason for why physicists want to
make their paper easy to read in the first draft. But once I know my weakness, I begin to be more
scrupulous and cover more points in the first draft. Something that I still need to improve is the
word choice and diverse sentence structure. I think I will be better with more practice. The
favorite part of my work is the translation, which is why I didn't make any change for the final
draft. I think I was very innovative when I do the translation. I spend many times polishing the
dialog and the format so that it looks like a real transcript. 

Overall, this course makes me more sensitive and passionate about writing. I'm now better at
finding the key information of an article and making my word more appealing and infectious to
my audience. Most importantly, my attitude about writing has changed. It's no longer a tedious
assignment. Instead, it's now an effective way to express my ideas and feeling.

Sincerely,
Chenjia Liu