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Josephine Fung
Dr. Haas
Writing 37
12 December 2014
Reflection Essay
Writing is not the easiest subject for me, especially the critical reading I have to do, but I
feel that my writing and reading have improved tremendously since taking this course. For
example, I learned how to cite my sources, use correct MLA formatting when writing papers,
and write for a scholarly audience. I will certainly use the material I learned from this class and
incorporate it into the future writing classes I will be taking at UC Irvine.
As a result of taking this course, I have studied different types of genres: specifically the
detective genre. The class began learning about how the detective genre originated and
blossomed in the Victorian Era, thus resulting in writing up wiki pages on the class studio. From
researching and composing wiki pages to listening to other groups presentations, I have learned
about the different factors that contributed to the rise of the detective genre, some of which
include the incompetent police force and the literate middle class. I enjoy learning about history,
so I was curious about the historical context of the Victorian Era in relation to the Sherlock
stories. The class worked together to create a class wiki page as a reference site for everyone.
From doing these collaborative projects on the online wiki pages and oral presentations, I
became engaged because I needed to involve myself in the work to fully comprehend the task at
hand. If one is not engaged in the task he or she is assigned to, this individual would not be able
to understand what the task objective is.
Another genre I have learned as a result of taking this class is Literature Review Essay. I

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have never written a literature review before, and this was a challenging task. The habit of mind I
acquired as a result of this essay is openness because the essay required me to put the scholars
into conversation and not to incorporate my ideas; this essay focused on the scholars ideas on
the detective genre. This essay required me to obtain quotes from scholars and then write a
synthesis relating the scholars ideas about the detective genre convention. Analyzing and
synthesizing scholars points are still not two strengths I possess when writing these literature
reviews, but with more practice, I will surely be able to improve.
Reading scholarly texts are certainly different from the other texts I have read that is
mainly because texts include more quotes from other scholars than a text, such as a novel. The
language a scholar uses in scholarly texts is also difficult to comprehend because the scholars
introduce their claims using complex vocabulary and formal language. When compared to
reading a book such as The Hound of the Baskervilles, reading scholarly texts requires a more
academic and analytical approach (i.e. analyzing each sentence or paragraph to figure out the
meaning rather than reading a chapter in a novel to summarize what happened). I definitely
needed to be persistent when reading scholarly texts because I would need to analyze the
scholarly excerpts until I could find a quote that fits well with the controlling idea in my essays.
After many attempts of trying to understand scholarly texts, I think I am capable of
understanding scholarly texts, but it takes time. For example, in Theory and Practice of Classical
Detective written by Delamater and Prigozy, the two scholars suggest, deductive style of
reasoning follows the belief that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be true (22). The vocabulary is more complex than casual reading,
but this is essentially saying that reasoning is eliminating the possibilities and after accumulating
more evidence, this elimination will eventually lead to the solution.

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Understanding scholarly texts also helped me in writing the Literature Review and
Rhetorical Essay. Both essays required two different prompts, but the rubrics were somewhat
similar the Rhetorical Essay asked to use a more rhetorical approach (i.e. a formal voice and
having expertise on the topic). The Rhetorical Essay asked to compare a convention of a classic
detective genre convention to a modern day text and to state whether the modern day text mirrors
or adapts to the classic; the prompt also asked to analyze two scenes that related to the thesis. In
the Literature Review, the prompt asked to review what the scholars have written about the
detective genre. I decided to revise the paragraph on Watson as the narrator in this specific essay.
This paragraph had problems with synthesis between the two scholars I mention and I did not
accurately represent one of the scholars; I also had too much plot summary in the paragraph. The
first quote connected well with my topic sentence for the paragraph, which was revised to
Having Watson as the narrator allows the reader to think critically and to connect the pieces of
a puzzle before the answer to the case is revealed. Next, I found a different quote from a
different scholar that made my essay sound more coherent because it related to the main idea. I
believe I synthesized the two scholars points well by noting the connection between the two
scholars in relation to the main idea of the paragraph. [insert habit of mind] I decided to rewrite
the entire essay for the Rhetorical Essay because I feel like I understood the prompt much more
than the Literature Review and I also feel more confident rewriting it. The priorities I need to
work on are analysis of my points, organization, and cutting out extra information that is not
relevant to my main idea.
Writing peer reviews are not only helpful for my peers, but for myself as well. From
reading others review on my work, I get the opportunity to see what others think I need
improvement in and by peer reviewing other peers work, I am able to see what to avoid or what

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to add when I want to edit my own work. One peer review assignment I reviewed was the
Literature Review for the detective genre. Before reviewing others, I thought I wrote a decent
essay, but looking at the grading rubric to grade my peers, I realized that I did not do a great job
in synthesizing the scholars quotes. For the Rhetorical Essay, I also thought I wrote a decent
essay, but one peer wrote that my essay was confusing because I included irrelevant information
that was not relevant to my controlling idea.
Peer reviews are also similar to collaborative projects because they require a second party
to contribute to achieve a similar goalwhich is helping other colleagues and learning from the
assigned material. For the wiki projects, my group members and I evenly divided the work so
that each person would have one page each (i.e. for the Victorian England page), or part of a
section for each wiki page (i.e. for the Cinematic Elements page). We all did research and wrote
up our sections, and then we each presented our presentation in front of the class. I needed to
possess a creative habit of mind for the presentation part of the projects in order to make an
appealing presentation to teach the class about. As a result of working on these collaborative
projects, I enjoy working in groups because the workload is split between the people in the
group, and more minds are able to contribute to the overall thinking process. However, there was
one instance where when I was writing a cinematic wiki page, I was unaware that I was on
another group members page so my page overwrote his page and there was a huge
misunderstanding. I did take responsibility, which was the habit of mind I possessed at the time.
I have also learned that I should practice the content of my part before I present before my
classmates, but I should not memorize lines because I will tend to forget and make mistakes.
Another suggestion I have learned from collaborating is contributing ideas to ones group
members because one would participate in the work and the worst that can happen is that the

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other members reject the idea. Overall, collaborative projects are helpful in splitting the
workloadin general and in improving writing and presentation skills.
In addition to doing collaborative works, I found that doing the Connect assignments
were also extremely beneficial to my writing skills. These assignments allowed me to practice on
topics I did not do too well in, or topics I am not familiar with. The topics that were most
challenging for me on Connect were learning Integrating Source Material into a Text,
Paraphrasing and Summarizing to Understand a Text, and Basic Conventions of Academic
Essays. When I first attempted the Integrating Source Material into a Text module, I did not
fully comprehend MLA format and cited works, as well as the differences between summarizing,
paraphrasing, and quoting. However, after recharging this topic, I learned that I just needed to
carefully read the part of the module that talks about the topic. The other module I recharged on
is the Basic Conventions of Academic Essays, and I think this is much harder than the
previous topic. The other two topics were difficult as well, but after talking about the topics in
class discussions, I believe I have a good handle on these challenging topics. The habits of mind
I need to have when completing these assignments are flexibility and metacognition because the
assignments are tedious and the task adapts a plan depending on how well one does in the
beginning section of the module. Completing the Connect assignments will not only help me
succeed in this course, but out of college as well because one needs correct grammar when
writing reports, papers, etc., no matter the career one chooses.
Some of the most important lessons I have learned as a result of this class are time
management (by completing the workload assigned by the due dates), the different habits of
mind, formal writing, and critical reading. I was never assigned formal writing works in high
school (I mainly had to write about a book and answer some prompt that related to the prompt),

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so this is a change. Although this class has improved my writing and reading skills, there is much
more I need to improve in and this will happen as I continue my education at UC Irvine. With the
material I learned from in this class, I will take it into account in the future courses I will be
taking to improve on my writing skills.