Entry 1:

In the first class meeting of this semester, I was introduced to the Threshold Concept. At first I
thought the purpose of introducing this concept was to help the new students blend in the
discourse community in our class, since they have to overcome the problem of bringing
previous knowledge forward and learning new knowledge. Yet we were reminded by the
professor that the new students also have the knowledge that we could learn from. Thus the
whole class should adjust themselves and learn with acceptance. When we talked about the
characteristics of the Threshold Concept, I began to make connections to what I had learn from
the previous course. While discussing and exchanging ideas with classmates, I realized that other
people made similar connections as well. Some who are new to the class even went beyond my
thoughts and provided a lot of brand new ideas. From that, I experienced the power of critical
thinking and group working. At the end of the class, I was not only able to use the Threshold
Concept in adjusting my attitude of learning, I was also able to connect it with writing. I once
again formed the desire of expressing my voice with writing, and knew that I would not be
discouraged by failures.

Entry 2:

On the second class of this week, I learned to create summaries and analysis. At first, the class
was asked to write about things that we can recall from the essays written by Peter Elbow and
Natalie Goldberg. At that time, I was already connecting the two essays, trying to compare and
find similarities between them. When writing summaries, I realized that my writing was more
towards analyzing than summarizing. I learned that when writing summaries, it is necessary to
mention the author and articles name at the first sentence, and that using the terms, he
mentions he concludes would increase the proficiency of the summary. The most important
lesson I had learned from this week was writing analysis. I was surprised by how easy it is to
complete a paragraph with thorough analysis. We created a paragraph as a class by typing out
some classmates opinion and changing a few phrases. The paragraph contains a very authentic
voice because it was typed straight out of spoken words with no extra fancy terms. It was a
demonstration of Natalie Goldberg's idea in her essay First thoughts, which explains the
importance of writing down the first thoughts, and not letting the editor in the writers mind
prevent the writer from writing. It is very hard not to stop and edit when writing an essay, and yet
the first thoughts appeared can often make the essay more authentic.

Entry3:

I learned an important lesson of revising essay at the second class meeting. The example
paragraph was already very thoughtful and full of creative ideas. Along with the professor, we
first edited the grammatical errors, and worked a lot on expanding the ideas in that paragraph.
After that, it became an even more thorough and complete paragraph. I thought it was the end of
the revising lesson, not knowing that the revising could never end. The professor then asked a
few classmates to read the paragraph, from the clanmates breath taking we discovered some
influence of sentences. Even after editing the length and fluency of the sentences, we were not
exactly done with revising. The last part of the revising lesson, which was adding tone into the
paragraph, was what amazed me the most. By playing with the types of sentences in that
paragraph, the information given by the author seems clearer, and the whole paragraph looks a
lot more professional. The play on sentences adds the personal style in the writing, which
grabs the reader's attention and make the sentences alive, almost like the words are jumping on
paper. From the lesson, I really saw the are that I can improve on. I am going to try to follow this
process while revising my essay, and hopefully I would be able to write out my style.

Entry 4:

We had been preparing for the timed write this week. I thought I was prepared because I read all
the assigned readings and even wrote down important ideas and thoughts on a piece of paper.
However, I was far from being able to express my thoughts when I did the timed write. I always
had the problem of thinking too much when I writes, causing me to write extremely slow, and
sometimes I would even forget some ideas while thinking about how to write down the other
ideas. Although I kept telling myself that I had to overcome the over-editing, I couldnt help
arranging my ideas before letting them become sentences. Because of that, I spent too much time
forming an outline and finding quotes instead of composing the essay. I was only on the second
paragraph when the professor called that there was forty minutes left. Also, I was extremely
nervous at that time, and there were even times that my brain blanked out. I learned from that
experience that I have to practice doing timed write more. I need to be able to wisely use the time
I was given, Rather than finding quotes, I should also spend time on expanding my thoughts. I
could also annotate my articles more, so it is easier for me to expand on ideas. I knew I did not
do well on this first timed write, but at least I know where to improve on. I believe that practice
will make a better result for next time.

Entry 5:

This week, I learned to outline my reading with the correct format. Before that, I didnt
know that the format of listing main points start with roman numerals, followed by alphabets,
then end with numbers, instead I would switched the alphabets and numbers around. I also
learned to use the Tab key properly for the spacing of the outline. That was always my concern
when I was given outlining assignments. The biggest concept I had learned about forming outline
was that I didnt have to go through every single idea that the author presents. Although it is also
a way of forming an outline, it is hard to express the authors main idea clearly. I realized that I
could only focus on particular ideas in the text, which helps leading to a bigger idea. This lesson
about outlining turns out to be very useful to me because it clarifies my confusion on the outline
format and provides me a new perspective of making use of the outlining skills. It made me
realized that I could also use outlining for studying and reviewing. Thus, I would master the
outlining skill and use it properly for my readings and studies.

Entry 6:
The focus of this week was to brainstorm the long term research essay. We were told to produce
a think paper containing the important issue we value, how we identify the issue in a discourse
community, and provide solutions to it. When I was reflecting on the issue I value, I was
surprised to find that writing about things that I'm passionate about helps me create my identity.
It leads me to a pathway of expressing my voice. Excitements of presenting my thoughts to
others grew along with the completion of the brainstorming process. Although there are still
uncertainties about the solution of this issue, I am willing to put effort in developing it. I think,
this is what is called the power of writing. Through reexamining myself, I had discovered my
voice, and by sharing my ideas to my other classmates, getting feedbacks and suggestions,
helped me gained confidence in taking action. Also, connections are formed when we share our
ideas with each other. We found similarities in the experience that formed our voice. With only a
tiny connection, I was led to view the issue that the sharer present through his/her perspective,
which really fascinated me.

Entry 7:
This week the class we participated in the speech given by Dr.Victor Rios. He is the author
of multiple book and received multiple awards for teaching students, most importantly, he is a
change writer and speaker who tries to influence teenagers who are struggling in gang life. Dr,
Rio was a highschool dropout himself, and had no purpose of living except surviving under
poverty and gang violence. However, his teacher helped him finish his high school education
when he was in the low point of his life, and made him seethe importance of education. Later he
even went to Berkeley, and got his PHD. Dr. Rios sees education as an opportunity to make a
change, even though as students we might not see the value of education, he still thinks that it is
the major component to move further in life. He also provide the way to change the gang teens
life. Instead of punishing and force them to obey, it is more effective to let them know their
value. Once they find a voice and identity, they are going gradually become positive in trying to
achieve it. This speech turned out to be very useful for my research project because I my topic
would focus on problems occur in students who lack of confidence and need to express their
voices.

Entry 8:

After the lesson this week, I learned a lot about how to narrow down a topic when writing
a cause and effect essay. By specifying the particular trait, the essay would be given clarity and a
better organization. The main ideas of the essay could also be branched out into other causes and
effects, creating a more complex essay. Also, I learned how a so-what statement can change the
essay by making the readers feel like the issue stated by the writer is important to them as well.
At first I was struggling a lot with coming up with the so what statement for my essay on the
problem of ESL students because I thought it is less likely that native English speakers would
pay attention to the struggle of nonnative English speakers, some of them dont even know that
the ESL program exists. Then I try to make connections between the two because I think it would
be the best if native English speakers could be engaged in helping ESL students learn. Thus I
finally found an effective statement, stating that along with the increasing number of immigrants,
nonnative English speakers would increase as well, and to create a friendly learning environment
the problem of ESL students should be noticed. I hope that I could make it clearer and stronger
as I am writing my essay, and will keep practicing the technique I learned in this class session on
future essays.
Entry 9:

Our class was asked to think of a particular group or person related to our next essay, which
is the Profile essay. Since we were not allowed to Profile ourselves, and it was hard to directly
connect my essay to a specific person, I decided to profile a discourse community that I am part
of--the Chinese ESL students. While doing the research, I discovered that there were a lot of
different aspects to look at this same topic (problems of ESL students), and that trying to write
from all the aspects would be impossible. Although in the previous essays I already narrowed
down the main ideas into the speaking and writing aspect, many peer reviewers still find my
ideas confusing to them. Thus, I reflected back to the essays I wrote in the past.When I tried to
write with complex ideas, I could almost impossibly make all the ideas clear to the readers. I
would always receive comments such as lack of clarity or sentences are too wordy. Looking
at my research and struggling to narrow down the topic made me realized that writing a complex
essay needs an equally time investment. When writing an essay, I would spend most of my time
outlining my ideas, causing me to have less time to actually work on my essay. Even though in
my head I have an essay completely drafted out, I could never be able to type it out as an essay
because I dont have enough time to do so. The result is, most essays that I turned in did not meet
my satisfaction. Because of that, I realized that I should really spend my time wisely, look into
the details of the essay, and ask my peers for suggestions.

Entry 10:

This week we completed and peered reviewed the draft of the Profile essay. After we were
given a more complete explanation of what are expected in the profile essay, I realized that I had
a lot of revising to do. First of all, the biggest problem I had in my essay was that I wrote it in a
academic, argumentative way, which made the essay boring to the readers. We were told that
Profile essay, different from other essays, should be written in a more interesting, descriptive
way, and should not start with a traditional introduction. Thus I decided to make a breakthrough
in this essay, putting interesting elements and make it creative. I used a metaphor which
randomly appeared in my thoughts when I was drafting the essay--the idea of the chicken or the
egg. Knowing that it was a risky challenge, I hard to connect that idea to my topic of the Chinese
ESL students. After finishing and reading through it, I realized that the two ideas were not
blended together completely. I focused too much on relating my metaphor to Chinese ESL
students, and completely ignored my original purpose, which was describing the technical and
emotional struggle they face. Although I still ended up taking risk to turn in the essay with the

chicken or the egg metaphor, I learned through this writing process that I should learn to balance
between creative ideas and the main idea of the essay.

Entry 11:

This week started from blending the three essays that were related to the research essay. At
first we were asked to only put the essays in order and combine the work cited and the outline. I
thought it would be easy to do so, but it was completely different from what I thought when I
tried to put all the ideas together smoothly. In fact I struggled with forming the order to put the
ideas in, and the transition between the ideas. During the process, I also discovered that some of
my ideas were harder to blend in with others because their tone sounded completely different.
For example, I could never imagine blending the chicken or the egg metaphor into an academic
argumentative research paper. Thus I deleted a lot of elements that I originally liked, and tried to
keep the same writing style throughout the whole essay. I was surprised after I finish combining
the essay that there were a lot less pages than I thought. However, I saw some parts that I need to
clarify on, which might enlarge the research paper. Overall, this process of blending the essay not
only helped my with the skill of connecting ideas, but also guided me to look into my research,
and form possible solutions for the problem I identified in the essay.

Entry 12:

After forming the draft for the interim essay, we were taught how to revise it while focusing
more on the writing style. The lesson is to create sentence variety in the essay to avoid monotone
which would make the readers feel bored when reading the essay. Similar to the example we
worked on the board, my essay has long and wordy sentences, and was formed in a way that
could not interest the readers. I realized in the lesson that I need to work on my sentence
varieties, and connecting the ideas in a way that the readers could connect the most. Also, I was
handed back the Profile essay that we wrote last week. The result of the metaphor (the chicken or
the egg) was not satisfying at all. However, I already thought of how to revise it. I planned to add
in an interview that I had done to an ESL teacher when I was writing the definition essay. Ive
never added any interview in my writing before, so it is a challenge to me. Yet I hope it could
add some color to my Profile essay, make it more informative and interesting to the readers.

Entry 13:

In groups, the class participated in a poster conference. Our group decided to focus on
how entering a new discourse community can positively and negatively affect an individuals
voice. We combined the texts The Pact, Writing to Change the World, and Bacas poem to
support our thesis. Although we seem to have a rough idea on what we are writing about, we
could not get everything together as a group. In fact, this is one of the biggest lessons I had learn
from this poster conference, which is working with group members. I think what we were
lacking the most in our group was the coordinator. No one in the group would take the position
of reminding and dividing the jobs to each member. It turned out that we were not able to
assemble everything until the very last minute. We could have been a lot more efficient if we all
feel responsible for this project, gather up in our spare time, and schedule times to keep up with
our progress. Despite the lack of cooperation of teamwork, I think that overall our group had
done a nice job in connecting our ideas. If we could learn this lesson and take time to finish our
poster, it would be a lot better.

Entry 13(2):

We did a 60-minute timed write in class at the second day of this week. What was very
different from before was that we were told the topic of the timed write before head, and we were
given a day or two to prepare for it. Although I gathered a few quotes and reviewed the topic
before as preparation, I still could not expand my thoughts as well as I expected. I realized that I
did not consider the limitation of time when I was preparing for the timed write. I gathered too
much information and tried to put too complicated thoughts in the essay, which would cause me
to not be able to finish my essay. Even though I realized that this problem, I still had to take time
to rethink my essay, forming a shorter but thoughtful outline. Also, even I thought I did enough
preparation for the essay, I still wasnt able to fully expand my thoughts during the timed write.
With that, I think it comes with practice. I think I could practice timed write by timing myself
when I write essays, and also by doing more freewrites.

Entry 14:

This week was the last week to work on the research paper before we turn it in. The
professor did a mini-lecture on inserting quotes and developing paragraphs. I learned that by
looking at how many quotes are inserted in a paragraph shows which part I need to develop on.
When I scanned through my paper, I discovered that I have little quotes. I also need to work on
paraphrasing the ideas and not just let the quotes explain themselves. The lecture help me a lot
on that when the professor work with students to develop a full paragraph with quotes and nicely
expanded ideas. Besides the helpful lecture, our class also did peer review in class time. It was
also very useful to me because my peer reviewer pointed out a lot of things I need to expand on
in my essay. However, what inspired me the most what a students work. After reading her essay,
I realize that her tone in her essay is a great example of what I struggle to develop in my essay. I
really look forward to seek for suggestions from her and make my research paper as complete as
possible.

Entry 15:

The lesson on the SLOs of eportfolio was the last lecture of the class. This eportfolio
assignment is an opportunity for students to reflect back and present what they have learned
throughout the course. When I was doing the reflection, I realized that I had gained a lot of
confidence in my writing. Thinking back to the start of the semester, I was still unsure about
what was important to me, or what messages I wanted to send to the readers through writing.
However, as the semester went on, I gradually found my voice. By the end of the semester, I
turned in a research paper with input of everything I had gained in the semester. I was actually
proud of the result. Before, I would hesitate in showing my writing to others, now I am eager to
let people hear my voice. Besides the confidence in writing, I also learn how to put my thoughts
into words without too much editing and thinking. I used to spend hours in front of the computer,
trying to put the ideas into sentences, and I am now able to overcome the editing that stops me
from composing. It helps me a lot in timed write because I was finally able to finish an essay
before the time frame. I hope I can really make use of what I had learned in the semester, and
become authentic in conveying my thoughts to others.