Three Building Blocks
This is the showcase of my work from this quarter's Writing 39C course. My topic is Factors that Influence Domestic Cats’ Social Intelligence. I have to admit that this is the first time I have ever write an academic essay (Literature Review + Advocacy Project). Please check out the following list to see my progress!
Three Building Blocks #1
The first thing that I found really useful is definitely Twitter. It helped me gather information and communicate with my classmates under quarantine.
Three Building Blocks #2
The second one is the UCI Library research. The assignment provides several ways that I did not aware of searching for academic articles.
Three Building Blocks #3
The most useful assignment is definitely the research agenda. When I'm writing my essays, I do not need to research for articles. Instead, I could use sources I researched last week. It dramatically reduced the time I spent writing drafts, which helped me keep my thought together without interruptions.
Peer Review
Peer review is always the part I love the most. By giving out advice, we could check what others are doing and our classmates' understanding of the project, and the requirements given by the instructor. Through this process, I could check whether I did the assignment right. By receiving my peers' advice, I could know whether my words are easy to understand by my audience, which are students like me most of the time. Although sometimes, my peer might not give out advice as practical as my professors do, it is nice to know how my audience would think about my essay. The nice part about peer review is that you never know what kind of classmates is reviewing your work until they publish it. This means you could get a responsible one or a sloppy one.
Peer Review Advice I Gave Out #1
The advice I gave to Wenqian should be beneficial to her. Many paragraphs in her essay are too long to keep track of. So, I suggest she should divide long sections into smaller ones, which could be easy for her audience's read.
Peer Review Advice I Gave Out #2
I suggest Zixuan Gao try not to summarize too detailed information without a controlling thesis of each research article. Her three summaries for three research articles could be too detailed, and some information she provided is not supposed to appear in a summary.
Peer Review Advice I Received #1
Olivia suggested me to add anecdote in my introduction section. After careful consideration, I did take her recommendation. The before and after section #1 has shown this suggestion.
Peer Review Advice I Received #2
Yiling suggests adding a few sentences employed as a smooth transaction between my literature review and problem section. I did take this comment seriously, and the work is shown in before and after section #2.
Before & After
Before & After #1
This revision fits in Section 1: Introduction and Review of the Literature. I added a few sentences to make sure my introduction start smoothly.
Before
After
Before & After #2
This revision fits in Philosophical Questions, Rhetorical Appeals Counterargument. I added a few transitioning sentences that could conclude my three research articles and employed them to introduce my philosophical question section.
Before
After
Before & After #3
This revision fits in the Academic Ethos section. Instead of listing the achievements of Scott R. Loss, I combined it with the article's thesis and quoted vital information to enhance the credibility of the essay.
Before
After
Link to final advocacy project.