Hi, this is Yuxuan's cover letter for midterm portfolio. The first thing I want to claim  I don't think I'm a good writer, and to be honestly, I don't like writing. However, 39B is a required course for each UCI student and of course I know the importance of mastering the writing and reading skill in my college study, and even my future career. More specifically, I am a bio major students, which means I need to write plenty of lab reports in the future. Therefore, learning how to analysis genre conventions or rhetorical strategies in 39B is really essential to me.

     First, to finish a good lab report, I need to find and read a lot of researches and reports written by others. This is a similar process as gathering secondary sources when I an writing my Rhetorical Analysis essay. Actually, this is my first time searching secondary sources to support my thesis in my RA essay, and I found out this procedure was not that simple. To filter out useful sources on net, I need have a clear minds about what information I am really searching for support my essay. Therefore, I should always keep in my mind that what is my thesis, or what is the argument of one of my body paragraph. On the other hand, I also need the ability to analysis the sources, not matter when I am searching or utilizing those sources. Therefore, I can make sure that the sources used to support my argument is always related with my argument. These sources gathering skills were improved when I was reading or writing in 39B, because they are the consequent results when I was learning to analysis the rhetoric and genre. For instance, one way I learning the post-apocalyptic genre in Station Eleven is to find out the useful conventions and analysis them, and without doubt there are commonalities with gathering my secondary sources. Back to my bio reports, these skills would absolutely help me to understand others' academic article and gather useful information from them.

     Another thing I learn from writing 39B is determining the genre before I begin my writing. One thing I have learnt when analyzing the genre is the importance to set my writing into an outline at beginning. I have to confirm what genre my article belongs to and then focusing myself into the conventions of that genre when I was writing; therefore I can always have a clear direction when I am writing. Just using lab reports as an example, when I notice that I will write a bio reports, I need to use some data, experimental results, or logical analysis to support my conclusion; moreover, the words I used should be more academic and my tone should be more objective; less complex rhetoric strategies should appear in the report and be more directly to my central statement. I learn this because when I was reading and analysis Station Eleven, I find out Mandel utilizes post-apocalyptic conventions every where, no matter her tone or the scene depict. Therefore, this post-apocalyptic seems more reasonable to me because Mandel connects every plot, character or scene reasonably and smoothly because all her creation is based on the post-apocalyptic genre.

     Last but not least, I realized the importance to figure out my potential audiences before I write. I never consider audiences an important rhetorical elements until I learnt that audience is also a part of the rhetorical triangle. I still remember that the topic my team chose for the Galaxy Quest debate is the potential audience. When I was digging out the potential audiences of that film with my teammates, I recognized that most of the laughingstock can only realized by the audiences who familiar with that film. Even some of the characters in that film represents a kind of audience of this film. For writing a report, this rhetorical strategy is also useful. The words choice must be different when write an report for people with same biological knowledge or for people have no idea about my research object.

     By and large, what I have learnt from writing 39B is really useful for my upper division writing. It taught me what I should consider for my writing and how to write that I have never considered before. However, I still need to improve my analysis skill in "how" it affect audience's feeling and tones of whole story. I think I always do not dig deeper enough when I was analyzing. On the other hand, writing 39B not only important for my upper division writing, but also to my future life. Even though my job in my future life has no correlation with biological study or writing, the skill I learnt from 39B is also a tool to communicate with others' thoughts by writing and reading. Although I don't like writing, but I wont refuse a chance to have a collision of thoughts with others.