Wong 1    Natalie Wong  

Dr. Lynda Haas  

WR 39C  

25 August 2015  

Reflection Essay  

When I first registered for Writing 39C, I knew the course was going to be demanding in

preparing students for upper division scholarly writing; however, I knew this class would further

develop my writing ability, as there is always room to grow. Writing 39C is an intensive writing

course designed to introduce students to the world of exploring and writing scholarly pieces. In

this class, the three major assignments include the Historical Conversations Project (HCP) essay,

the Advocacy Project (AP) essay, and the Social Media Campaign (SMC). All of them involve

the use of academic databases and the application of multimodal elements to form strong

arguments. Each component of this course require students to lay the foundation of their

arguments based on scientific evidence and scholarly conversation by utilizing contextual

rhetoric of appealing to the audience’s sense of ethos and logos. In addition to urging the further

practice of credible and extensive research to promote better arguments, this class has been a

significant proponent of the eight Habits of Mind (curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity,

persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition) through the inclusion of multiple

attributes in every assignment.  

Wong 2     As mentioned, every assignment played a role in developing the eight Habits of Mind,

and one in particular stood out to me on Connect. The Power of Process exercise involved

critical reading and skim reading practices, where it provided tips such as reading the first and

last sentences of each paragraph, as well as focusing on important vocabulary to use as keywords

for further research, as shown in Figure 1.  

Figure 1. Power of Process. Connect.  

By specifying ideas to expect and look out for while reading, I was able to get engaged with the

text and learned how to focus on only highlighting and annotating important ideas and excerpts

that will further my understanding of the text. In addition, the steps that involved summarizing

the main ideas in the “After Reading” section allowed me to practice my metacognition by

allowing me to reflect and see if I understood the information I had retained. The whole Power of

Process has taught me how to pay attention and look for specific details or phrases in order for

Wong 3    me to fully comprehend and retain what I read. As finding sources to defend an argument

requires multiple sources, learning how to skim-read allowed me to quickly eliminate irrelevant

studies and maximize efficiency by reducing the amount of time I spent on each potential source.

One source I decided to include in my HCP after skim reading was a book by James Serpell, a

Professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In this source, he provides

archaeological and historical evidence to explain the history behind the dog’s evolution,

behavior, and interaction with humans. I determined that this source was important to utilize in

paper because he not only explains the process of dog domestication, but he also includes a

historical perspective, which is an important component of the HCP.  

Prior to this course, I saw writing as a linear process that only involved researching,

writing, revising, and submission of a paper. However, the writing process of our first major

assignment, the HCP, demonstrated how important the reiterative process of researched based

texts was in reinforcing our knowledge and developing a strong argument. This class introduced

the online catalogue ANTPAC of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to me, which allows

students to access and utilize for research and for Writing 39C. Through the process of

researching, I learned the importance of specific keywords and “following the breadcrumbs” in

researching for scholarly articles. Since the HCP was a review of literature to lay the scientific

foundation upon which we were supposed to base our AP, I chose a topic I was curious about. I

was intrigued by canines’ abilities to feel emotions and realized it was important for advocating

against the inhumane practice of puppy mills. However, I was unsure which studies would be the

most appropriate or the most effective for my argument against puppy mills that also emphasized

and included scientific and historical background. Beginning with keywords such as “canine”

Wong 4    and “emotions,” I found articles that were informative but ineffective in contribution to the

historical aspect of the scientific literature. After skim reading through a number of articles,

keywords like “domesticated dog,” “canine cognition,” and “cognitive ethology” showed up a

lot. I recognized that these were the most effective keywords to find scientific articles and

academic journals for my HCP and ultimately focused my review of literature on the studies of

canine cognition, canine cognitive ethology, and the history of their domestication.  

Ultimately, the academic journals and scientific articles I discovered through the UCI

library catalogue heavily influenced the direction of my HCP. It provided me with immense

interest of learning about canine’s cognitive ability and their emotions, which I decided to

include in my HCP along with the relation they have with the process of dog domestication;

subsequently shaping my argument for the AP of needing to end puppy mills. Although, my first

draft of the HCP reviewed and summarized the scientific articles I found, one revision priority

was evident, the organization of the paper lacked cohesiveness and purpose, as mentioned by Dr.

Haas in her review of my draft. I approached this needed modification with persistence by

including significant revisions to the structure and focus of my introduction with the addition of

credibility and historical background. In the introduction paragraph of the HCP draft, I quoted

two very well known scientists, James Serpell and Dr. Marc Bekoff, without introducing them

with background information. In addition I lacked historical information about the subject of

cognitive ethology and the idea of speciesism, which I learned is an important component is

strengthening my credibility towards the reader. Therefore, in order to establish my credibility to

the reader, I went back to reorganize the paragraph so that it will flow better with the addition of

basic background information such as the institution in association with each scientist and their

Wong 5    focus of research. Additionally, the anthropomorphism paragraph of Alexandra Horowitz and

Julie Hecht’s criticism of anthropomorphism in the field of cognitive ethology was not effective

in its contribution to building the foundation for my AP; I revised that section to utilize the

information on anthropomorphism to further emphasize historical human-canine relationship

formed through domestication, effectively tying together the different reviews of scientific

literature. Since the first draft needed revision for clarity, the revision process involved a lot of

flexibility with finding and including more information into the review. Although, I first

stumbled through the process of writing the HCP, my recognition and persistence of executing

this new procedure of writing developed my openness towards a new method.  

As I began my process of developing my AP, researching sources for evidence and

formulating an argument for the AP was not difficult; but, I had a difficult time deciding the

different sources I wanted to include from my HCP into the AP. From the conclusion of my

HCP, I created a solid foundation by concluding that puppy mill facilities should be stopped

because of their unethical practices and simply ignore the cognitive abilities and emotions of

canines. In addition, I recognized that humans have interfered with the dogs’ natural evolution,

providing the shared history between humans and canines via domestication, thus we are

responsible for them as a species, and ethically should not treat them as inanimate objects. As

mentioned in my week nine blog post, I cited the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS)

to argue that the puppy mills are a business of exploitation by providing statistics and facts from

the website. In addition, I quoted Clay Shirky from his Ted Talk, because I realized the

importance and impact social media has on our society in bringing awareness of an issue to

public, and how it can be utilized by anyone with access to the Internet.  

Wong 6     As a class, we participated in social media campaigns in order to practice our digital

rhetoric and spread awareness of an advocacy issue of our choice as different groups. Since we

were addressing our audience through social media, we were required to effectively convey our

arguments by utilizing rhetoric appropriate to our social media platforms, such as through hash

tags, “click bait” - an eye catching link that attracts attention and encourages people to read on -

descriptions, and utilizing the proper multimodal elements in the different platforms. For my

group’s advocacy, Refurbished Pets, we used our Twitter and Instagram accounts to raise

awareness of adoptable pets that people often overlook. As discussed in my seventh blog post, I

learned how important the role of social media is in advocating a certain issue by allowing it to

be spread at the quickest rate possible. In addition, using different hash tags such as,

#giveasecondchance and #rescue, allowed us to engage with other social media users by

providing facts and statistics about adoptable pets such as adoption rates. Since all posts are

arguments are restricted to character count on social media, our messages had to be appealing

and intriguing with the least words possible. We relied on “click baits” and rhetoric appeals to

captivate the attention of users. Our most responsive post appeal to pathos and included an

intriguing headline and an appealing video, displayed in Figure 2. This post demonstrated that

appealing to emotions will more likely elicit a response by social media users in comparison to

appealing to credibility and logic.  

Wong 7    

Figure 2. Twitter Post for SMC.  

From our social media campaign, we concluded that Twitter was far more responsive than

Instagram: 70.3% to 29.7% respectively, which suggested that users preferred to simply pass the

conversation on than actually add to the different posts. Furthermore, this project required

responsibility and flexibility between the group members. Since the class was online, it was

hard for everyone to contribute and work together at the same time, because everyone was on a

different schedule. In addition, I was able to exercise my creativity by creating an informative

and persuasive infographic for the group through Piktochart, as shown in Figure 3. The

infographic provided statistics and facts for the viewer, and provided different options for one to

start making a difference in a dog’s life. This infographic was simple yet able to introduce the

issue to the viewer.  

Wong 8    

Figure 3. Infographic for the SMC.  

I believe that this course allowed me to constantly practice my metacognition. Our blog

posts required me to go back, reflect, and evaluate my learning progress each week. By doing so

on a regular basis, I was able to see my slight areas of improvements through the comments,

thought processes, and discussions on my work. It also enabled me to take responsibility for the

actions I made on different assignments depending on how I approached them. Another

component of this course that involved the application of metacognition was peer review. It

provided the practice of openness by seeing different perspectives of writing and being aware of

the different ways I can organize or revise my papers. For instance, from peer reviewing one

HCP draft, I noticed that sources were not introduced the way we learned with the basic

Wong 9    background information and focus of research. By commenting on the draft, it made me go

through my paper to look for the same mistakes.  

While I improved in many areas in my writing, such as introducing my essay with

credibility and organizing it in a way to have the paper flow easily, I believe the most important

skill that I learned through Writing 39C was simply to utilize my resources via the UCI library

catalogue. Prior to taking this course, I was unaware of this vital resource, with access to

databases filled with scientific articles and academic journals on a variety of topics. If I had

known about this tool earlier, my research progress for my Psychology and Behavior research

papers in my first quarter would have gone smoother. Now that I have learned how to quickly

find sources by using specific keywords like I had for the HCP, I know this will greatly benefit

me in the future for any writing assignments outside of Writing 39C.  

     

--PEER REVIEW--  

Multi-modal Elements: I think the graphics that you included could be very effective in

providing evidence of your learning if a more detailed explanation of the graphics followed to

fully describe how it was they helped you. For example, you could explain more thoroughly how

the Power of Process wheel helped you, or why the specific tweet you included was more

effective than perhaps other tweets that you chose not to show.  

 

Wong 10    Scholarly Ethos: The essay was objective and informed. I think you did a good job at writing

with a scholarly ethos, providing evidence to support your claims and remaining formal

throughout.  

 

Top 3 Priorities for Revision:  

1. Provide more thorough explanations in the areas that did not include as many examples

or specifics like how The Power of Process helped you become better at skim-reading.

2. Include more specifics such as how the studies you found changed the direction of your

HCP.

3. I think your content could focus more on accounting for your progress and growth

throughout the term, and what you’ve learned in comparison to before rather than

documenting the different assignments you accomplished. I feel like you spent quite a bit

of the essay explaining the different things we did for the class instead of evaluating your

work and progress in particular.