Ran Yi

Professor Anandi

WR 39B

1 DEC, 2016

Portfolio Introduction

       I started my writing life at the first quart I came to UCI. I took Academic English 20 A two years ago at the first quart. The first time, I thought the writing classes were easy, because I got a 10 points on SAT writing test, and it just got 12 points total. And I did not spend many time on it at the first quart, but I found I was wrong, I did not pass the 20 A class. After that, I really took the writing classes very seriously, and I found that I had many weaknesses on my writing skills needed to improve, so I wrote every essay seriously. These quart I took writing 39B class, and at this time. the end of this quart, I can say that I improved a lot from taking this class, especially critical reading and summary skill, also I think I can easy know how to write a topic when I face a tough topic.

        I think that every classes was very helpful for me. My instructor always gave us about 10 to 15 minutes to write our ideas after we finished an essay, sometimes we wrote about the reflection after we finished an essay, like what we learnt from writing the essays and where can we improve in the next essay. This was a new style of teaching for me, and I think that this method was very helpful not only for me but also for the all people in the class, my friend always told me that it was very helpful for us, and after we thought the questions which our instructor gave us, we could find some place we need to improve. In the week 2 reflection, my instructor gave us a question, "What was the difference between writing the RIP exercise and the CR exercise? Did you experience any difficulties? Do you feel you were successful?" In the week 1, honestly I was a little bit perplexed. Because we had many reading schedule and the homework was hard for me. This reflection section gave me a good chance to relaxed and think about what I did and what I learnt in first week, and tidied my thinking. My answer for this question was," I think the RIP exercise focused more about describing a person, week one RIP exercise was introducing ourselves, and the CR exercise focused more about critical reading, the week one CR exercise was extracting one to two details from the novel. I think that the RIP exercise was successful for me, and the CR exercise still need some improvement, and the instructor told me that I still need talk some detail and explain more depth. 

       At the first draft of RA, I had some problem about my essay's structure. I had a meeting with my professor after I finished m first draft. And she told me that my essay still need some improvement. This RA essay needed to focus on the novel we read, "The White Tiger". I chose corruption topic from this novel, the author discusses in this novel. And professor told me that I needed to have connection with the novel in the whole essay. So that after the first draft, I made some changes for novel, I build some explanation after my examples and gave them the connections with the novel we read. This was a big challenge for me, because in the essays I wrote before, I just needed to give one or two examples from the novel we read, but this time I need to write a 6 pages essays, so that I made a long time to structure my essay at the begining, and at the final draft, my essay was about 1600 words. 

       From the beginning of this class to week 6, I practiced my critical reading skill, summarizing skill and drafting skill. In the class time, the instructor gave us examples to help us have a structure for the next assignment. After week 6, the midterm time, to now, I also learnt many writing skills, and I worked on a big project called "RIP" project. The requirements for this project were very simple, just had two requirements, the first was " Having the connections with globalization or the novel we read before", the second was "Having audience." I was very confused with these two requirements at the first time, because these two requirements were too simple, so that I thought I could write anything I want, and I did not have any ideas at the first time. I chose to write about computer games' development and then connect with how globalization influenced computer games, but then when I searched the information in Internet, I did not find many resources, so that I changed my mind, the final idea for me was Anti-globalization. Because this topic was easy to find big amount of resources, and then I could make my project like a news article.

       The RIP project was a biggest part in this quart, and I spent about 4 weeks to finish it. In the process I writing this project, I faced some difficulties, like " What topic I should choose? What genre I should choose? What second resources I should choose?" These question confused me long time, but I felt joyful after I deal with these problems one by one. I think the time that I was working on the project was a impressed experience for me, and the most important thing for me was I improved my critical reading and summary skill by finishing this project.

      Critical reading and summary skill are almost the most important skills I had trained in writing classes, on week one to week six, I trained these two skill by finishing CR exercises, and on week seven to week ten, the RIP project was also a big challenge for me, and it also trained me these two skills. At the first time I started to write the RIP project, I chose the topic "Anti-globalization", and then I searched a lot of resources. I needed to understand the sources and found which sources were useful for me, and I could use them on my project. One resource I searched in Internet, a article from " New Times", it was related to my topic, but it was very difficult for me to understand that article. There is a sentence from that article, "The third wave is the widespread diffusion of the innovation in ways that lift overall productivity and living standards. This takes much longer. Or, as the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow observed in 1987, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”" (ALEXANDER FRIEDMAN, 16)This sentence made me very confused, I did not understand what he said at all. And then I went to search the quote that author used in this article, and finally understand what the meaning for this sentence. This was just one difficult I faced when I was finding the resources, I needed to understand each resource, so I could know which one was necessary for me. And after I finish this work, I thought it was a big training for my critical reading and summary skill.

       Writing 39 B influenced me a lot in this quart, and I think the skills I learnt from this class could use in any class in my college lives. I could use my writing skills when I am writing a economic essay, and also could use it when I am doing a short answer question. So this quart is a very important time for my college lives, and I enjoy this class very much, not like before, I just took writing classes like a job. This time I am really enjoying the class, so I should thank you for my instructor, Anandi Rao, and all classmates.