16 May 2016

Dear Scott,
I choose to write a letter to a former teacher of mine and an advertisement
for an SAT writing school. I chose the letter because this teacher had a great impact
on me when it came to writing earlier on and we still keep in contact, while I wrote
the advertisement for an SAT writing academy because I thought it would be an
interesting way to display what Ive learned and still be talking about writing.
Before writing my open-genre piece, I spent a lot of time deciding what genres to
write, ultimately picking the letter because Im very comfortable with it and the
advertisement because I thought it would be somewhat of a challenge to
incorporate a lot of information into something that is typically mostly visual. I
selected Annoying Ways People Use Sources, How to Read Like a Writer, and
Two Kind of Thinking, to discuss in my writings because I learned the most from
those specific articles and utilized these techniques throughout the course and saw
how it improved my writing.
The letter was simple to write because I have written so many before and I
was reporting what I had learned and how I felt that made me a better writer.
Although I wont send the letter I wrote, I approached it as if I were to send it. The
advertisement was much more difficult to write because I wanted to explain what I
had learned, without fully explaining it because it is an ad to get people to take the
same course. I also have not created as many advertisements in my life as Ive
written letters, so I did look up writing course advertisements online to see what
they would look like and wrote about what would get me to take the course.
My audience for the letter was my 8th grade teacher Ms. Roberts; since she is
an adult professional but also a good friend, I used a more formal tone yet with
colloquialisms and casual syntax. As my former educator I knew she would
understand exactly what I was talking about so I wouldnt have to describe much in
great detail, but perhaps she hadnt heard of the exact articles I was referring to so I
elaborated on that. My audience for the advertisement was high school students
preparing to take the SAT. As an advertisement, I used more visuals and shorter
sentences, with simple language that could quickly be read and understood.
However, given that I had to demonstrate what I had learned and was writing from

a writing academy, I allowed the descriptions under each course listing to get a little
wordy.
I thought the information was easily translated into both of my genres; had I
chosen different genres I see how this would have been more difficult. If I was
writing to elementary school students, they would not understand a lot of the
vocabulary I used or had I written to someone I did not know personally I would
have written in a much more formal register. I learned that an advertisement and
the information it contains will vary so greatly because it goes back to the audience,
purpose, and context of that particular good or service. Im not so sure what I
learned about writing letters from this, considering Ive been writing different kind of
letters my whole life; I did think about that I should send Ms. Roberts an actual
letter (or maybe a text). This writing project allowed me to demonstrate what I had
learned throughout the course and really solidify how and why what I have learned
has helped me become a better writer.
Sincerely,
Lauren Fichtner

Writing II Academy
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In this course, you will become an expert on the difference between genres
and disciplines and how audience, purpose, and context work together to form
and influence the genres and disciplines themselves. A genre is a formal
template general format that can come in many written forms, like an ad or a
novel, while a discipline is more the field of study, like English or Biology,
contains each awith a distinctive audience, purpose, and context that help to
distinguish the different themes in a more narrow field. In class you will learn
the conventions that form genres and conventions in order to be able to
better write in them yourself!

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The easiest way to catch your mistake is to proofread! We will implement the workings
of Scott Kneece and revise using colorful highlighters to determine what can be Added,
Deleted, Substituted, or Rearranged. Focusing on the main ideas and flow of the essay,
we will look at why you made the writing choices you did, how they pertain to your
topic, and, look at why you made the revisions you did. We will also have other read
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Learning to read like a write is one of the most valuable classes you can take here,
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author put this quote here? Why do I remember this certain information from the

passage? What feelings did the author evoke from me as I read this? How did the
author write in a way that evoked such feelings? Learning HOW the writer made you
feel a certain way will allow you to determine how you want your readers to feel about
your writing.

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Thoughts that come from your mind when you are not forcing anything, letting your ideas flow
onto the paper with no structure or judgement, are based from first-order thinking. This is our first
line of thought. Second-order thinking, requires, well, thinking; it takes time and planning and can
be your first-order thinking revised, fine-tuned, and formatted in some way. In this course we will
be learning from the writings of Peter Elbow, who insists that his teaching of thinking will elicit
better writing by combining a free-flowing creative thought with a more refined polished process.

15 May 2016
Dear Ms. Roberts,
Hi! Im sorry I havent seen you in so long, but college at UCSB has me
completely consumed! How are you? How are your classes and students? I would
definitely like to get together soon so we could talk and catch up. Well, to the point,
I have an assignment for Writing 2 class where I have to write in some sort of genre
to an audience more educated than me and demonstrate, essentially, what I
learned in the course. As my 8th grade English and ASB instructor and favorite
teacher ever, I thought you would be the perfect person to appreciate all that Ive
learned throughout this course and how I feel it has made me a better writer
overall.
Ive been doing just alright in most of my classes, but I feel as if Im really
excelling in this writing class and that its going to help me write better in the rest of
courses as a result.As you know from your class, Ive always hated proofreading my
essays. Even just skimming my paper once is enough to catch a handful of tiny
errors, but I never wanted to do it at risk of second-guessing myself and my next
draft not being as good as the original. I learned from this class that writing is never
done because it is an ongoing and social, outward process that can always be
augmented for the better. In an article called Annoying Ways People Use Sources
author Mike D. Stedman uses the analogy of people driving in very slow in the fast
lane and gives two reasons for why they would make this annoying choice: they are
unaware of what is generally accepted or they know and do not care. I took this to
mean that any part of my writing could be deemed annoying and, therefore, not a
good read. Now in proofreading my essays, I try to look out for sentences of certain
elements that are annoying for me to read, and would likely be annoying for others,
and work on fixing it. Before, I would have blamed my annoying writing at the hands
of the topic I was given, but now once I identify an issue I can either ignore it, like
the slow driver who does not care, or make an effort to change, like the driver in the
slow lane who has just been informed of general traffic laws.

Another piece Iwe read called How to Read Like A Writer by Mike Bunn is
something I think you would enjoy; it talks about questioning the authors stylistic
choices as you read, based on what evokes a lot of thought from you as a reader. So
if you read something that resonates with you, you would question why that
element of the authors writing did so and follow-up with how did the author
accomplish that. Other questions would be something like Why did the author put
this quote here? Why dont I enjoy reading this? Why do I enjoy reading this specific
part and not others? All of these questions will lead to you asking how the author
achieved that feeling from you, which will allow you to determine how you can
implement these skills to evoke specific things to your own audiences as a write.
I know that youve always loved writing so I thought no one would appreciate
a letter, describing the conventions Ive used to grow as a write since junior high,
better than you. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out of your hectic
schedule to read my paper and what I had to say that I learned about writing this
quarter. Im sure you already know all this stuff and more! And thank you for setting
a good foundation for me as a writer earlier in life, its much appreciated and Im
not sure I realized it fully until I took this course. Hope to see you soon!
Warmly,
Lauren Fichtner