Peer Feedback QuestionsWhose draft are you responding to? Audience Awareness: Your audience for the memo are WRIT professors who have not taken this section of WRIT 1122. Given that the audience know

To: DU Writing Program Faculty

From: Aubrey Patrick

Date: May 25, 2020
RE: WRIT 1122 Portfolio

Writing is an essential skill, not only for any type of career one is looking to go into, but in the ability to share thoughts and opinions effectively in society. Often times, Universities do not include enough writing requirements in their common curriculum to prepare students well enough in this skill, but as a liberal arts school, the University of Denver makes sure that every student graduates with the ability to write not only professionally, but to a variety of audiences in different fashions. After only one year at the University of Denver, I have learned a tremendous amount about how to write to different audiences and how to determine the best fashion in which to do it, which has allowed me to grow as a writer across all of my classes.

What makes the writing program at the University of Denver so unique and effective is it focuses on cultivating skills that can be utilized among all students no matter what they are studying. For example, in WRIT 1122 we had three writing project assignments among the quarter, each focusing on a different style of writing; the first was an analytical research paper geared towards an academic audience following the Classical Model of Argument, the second was a newspaper style piece geared towards a public audience following the Toulmin Model of Argument, and the last paper was in the format of a memo and followed the Rogerian Model of Argument. In addition, there were smaller writing assignments throughout the quarter that allowed practice in analyzing other pieces of writing and peer review assignments for each writing project.

At the beginning of the quarter we had a set of learning goals that we read through and determined what we felt we were proficient in and what we needed to work on. Three of the learning goals that I felt I needed to work on in the beginning were; being able to incorporate more pathos into my writing, as I am more of a pragmatic thinker, incorporating source material in a rhetorically effective way, and my peer reviewing skills. I definitely believe that I have improved each of these skills vastly this quarter most notably through the writing projects.

The second writing project most notably showed my ability to include more emotion and personal voice into my writing, something I was not too familiar with doing at the start of the quarter. Especially after reviewing the papers of my peers for the second project and receiving feedback, I definitely became more comfortable with loosening up my writing in places and becoming more creative, such as through my changes in the introduction and title to my paper. For example, my draft title was; “Coronavirus prompts Manchester to rethink the merger between Memorial High and Manchester School of Technology”, but after revision I changed it to; “Is the Coronavirus actually creating educational benefits? And, yes you read that right”. I feel like that change alone represents my mental shift in being able to adapt my writing with my personal voice more effectively.

The first writing project most notably showed my improvement in the ability to include source material in a rhetorically effective way. I was largely unhappy with the way that I included source material in my draft and felt that my argument was made any stronger with the inclusion of the evidence that I chose. As a result, I basically rewrote all of my body paragraphs to frame the evidence better, because I liked the evidence that I had originally chosen, just not how the writing around it complemented it. The drastic different in the effectiveness and clearness of my argument and the way that the evidence complemented between my draft and final paper exemplifies my achievement in my ability to integrate source material in a rhetorically effective way.

I struggled with peer editing throughout the quarter as there were situations in which I had a difficult time understanding the exact message of the author, and times where I felt the paper was already close to perfect, but I tried to dig deep and provide my best honest feedback each time, as I found the feedback to my papers very valuable. There is not specific instance that exemplifies this, but by editing the papers of the same peers for each writing project, I was able to become more comfortable with their individual styles of writing and tailoring my feedback as clearly as possible to each of my peers. This became a lot easier for me to do and took me a lot less time to do between the first and third writing project, which I feel shows improvement.

The writing projects that I am submitting to this portfolio are my WP1 and WP2. The WP1 assignment was a research paper regarding school violence, in which I focused on the role of media, and was geared towards an academic audience following the classical model of argument. The WP2 assignment was in the format of a newspaper article focused on a local issue, for me the merging of two high schools in my area and followed the Toulmin Model of Argument.

The major revisions I made to my WP1 during the writing process was mainly what I stated earlier in working on effective source integration. In addition, I put more work into constructing a valid and strong counterargument with evidence and then effectively refuting it without denoting it.

The major revisions I made to my WP2 during the writing process was again a lot of what I stated earlier in my ability to add personal voice into my paper. I made a lot of revision to my title and introduction to draw the reader in, and I split up my paragraphs more to make it easier to read and more rhetorically effective for a public audience.

The writing program and the University of Denver has allowed me to grow more than I thought possible as a writer in such a short period of time. By focusing on a wide range of specific styles of writing I have become a much more well-rounded writer as a result and am grateful for the amount that this class has taught me even in a remote learning format. These skills are what cultivate the DU community into a constructive environment where students are able to share their opinions in an effective way, which I am very proud to be a part of.