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Jesus Gonzalez

Michael Mlekoday

UWP 001

12 June 2018

Growth in Writing Through UWP 1

Writing papers has never been something I look forward to. Every time I have a paper

due and I feel like I should start it, I always say the infamous words, “I’ll just start it tomorrow”.

The idea of being stuck or not knowing what to write has always made me procrastinate essays.

However, the UWP Learning Outcomes helped quell my fear of writing essay substantially.

These include Rhetorical Knowledge, Processes, and Research. By using these three learning

outcomes I was able to create two well-structured and well-researched essays, titled, “Teaching

to Learn” and “Effective STEM Communities”. Although both essays show the use of these

three learning outcomes, there is always room for improvement.

Rhetorical Knowledge is the effective use of rhetorical concepts in writing. Rhetoric

means the art of persuasive speaking or writing with the use of figures of speech and other

compositional techniques. Some examples of rhetoric devices are audience, purpose, context,

mode, and genre. While writing “Teaching to Learn”, I made sure to implement these devices to

make the essay more effective. An example of purpose in “Teaching to Learn” is, “Language has

made me realize one of my passions which led to me, in high school, to join an after-school

tutoring program to help other people out in math and science”. The purpose of this sentence is

the same purpose of the entire essay. That is to invoke the audience to think about their own

literacy history and think about how that has defined who they have become. The sentence
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provides a specific example of one of my interests and how it connects to my literacy history,

this will hopefully allow to reader to find their own specific interest and connect it back to their

own literacy history. Since my major is engineering, persuading companies to use my designs

through writing and speech is going to be vital. Refining the use of rhetorical knowledge in

future essays can help with persuasive assignments.

The second learning outcome I have used greatly in both of my writing assignments has

been Processes. A process in terms of learning outcomes is, the ability to edit and revise drafts to

ultimately better the final product. It is also the collection of the various stages used to construct

assignments. Some stages include research, drafting, and composing essay material. For

example, the process I used for “Teaching to Learn” started with brainstorming ideas, which

included, current interests and forms of literacy that I am fluent in. Next came constructing an

outline which broke down the structure of every paragraph. From the outline came the first draft

which synthesized the outline into paragraphs and a main idea. Following the draft came

revisions done by my peers, instructor, and myself. This updated “outline” provided the

condensed information needed for a final draft. The second essay, “Effective STEM

Communities”, showcases an example of the revision part of process in the form of, “General

interest has also increased because members of the club have started other STEM based clubs

like Robotics Club founded in 2014 and the Aerodynamics Collective founded in 2015”. This

sentence was added during the revision process to provide more evidence to the argument of the

essay. The argument of the second essay was to show how communication systems improve the

effectiveness of discourse communities. During the revision read, it became obvious that the first

draft did not provide enough evidence to support that the Young STEM Students was indeed an
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effective discourse. The second essay generally followed the same process except for one major

difference. The major difference is the third learning outcome, research.

Research is the collection and analyzation of information based on prior knowledge with

the intent of synthesizing and providing new evidence for new arguments. Since the first essay

was based on personal experience, it did not include scholarly research as part of its process. The

second essay was an in depth look at communication systems in discourse communities, so it did

include a lot of research. A specifically researched part of “Effective STEM Communities” is,

“The last two years alone have seen a general G.P.A increase of 15%. The school’s G.P.A

average is measured every recorded term which is every five weeks, along with diagnostic

exams.” This statistic was obtained by interviewing the two founding members of the discourse

community. The purpose of this statistic is to show the effectiveness of the Young STEM

Students which provides a base for arguing that the communication is was makes the community

successful. Interviewing itself is an effective researching approach because it provides primary

information and personal accounts of situations. In future engineering papers, interviewing

fellow engineers and scientists will provide much needed primary information if I am basing my

work on something in their field.

Although I only touched on three of the five learning outcomes, I take all five into

account when writing future papers. The learning outcomes also provide a useful basis for other

mediums like presentations or speeches. Even though the five might seem independent, they

interconnect very effectively. By following all five thoroughly, effective papers with well-

constructed arguments and well-researched evidence can be produced in many different

disciplines including my own which is engineering.