This course offers numerous opportunities to improve our writing. In this class, I not only enhanced the skills I already had, but also learned new writing concepts. Before I took this class, I knew that my writing is poor, and I have always wanted to improve it; however, I did not know how and what aspects of writing to improve. So, I came into this class with the ambition to improve my writing, and I have accomplished my goal although there is still room for improvement. At this point of this course, I have learned the elements that successful writing is composed of, and I am now able to categorize the various techniques that can work together to define strong writing.

I have always thought that the more I wrote, the more effective my writing would be especially since I could barely meet the standard word count for most of my writing assignments. To accomplish the minimum word count, I used definitions of words instead of the exact words in order to make my paper longer. However, I learned that wordiness does not necessarily make our writing persuasive and effective in this class. Understanding concision and precision has helped me realize that each word serves a purpose in strengthening our arguments. This understanding in concision will improve my writing in any area in the future.

One of the best things I learned in this class is that we can use a “shitty first draft” as the foundation for our writing. Every writing needs a beginning, and “shitty first draft” is a great way to start any kind of writing. So, knowing “shitty first draft” will not only benefit me in this class but also in my future writing of communication area and other kinds of writing.

Another technique that we can apply in all kinds of writing is to define audience. The most basic thing for good writing is defining audience, thus we can make rhetorical choices based on the audience to make writing the most effective. This concept of “defining audience” can be used in all writing that I will be facing. For example, I need to define the audience of a job application in order to make the appropriate rhetorical choices such as using a formal tone. Another example is that if we are writing academic writing, we need to identify the audience who will be scholars in the area that our writing focuses on. As a result, we have to apply a formal tone, and adopt the jargon of that field in our writing to make it professional.

Revision is also very important for us to produce any kind of writing - job application, popular writing, academic writing, op-eds, blogs, and news- even notices for missing people need to be revised to get to the final work.

At last, I want to thank you for all your hard work done for us. The practice and knowledge I have gained in this class will help me in various ways. You are one of the best teachers I’ve ever met. And I will definitely miss you.

Best,

Yuling Fan