March 1, 2009
Brian Gutierrez
Department of English
North Seattle Community College
Seattle, WA 98195-4430
Dear Mr. Gutierrez:
As this composition course comes to a close, I have selected four essays from this quarter that I
feel best exemplify the writing outcomes, and the progress made in my writing proficiency. The
purpose of this course was to improve argumentative writing skills and text interpretation and
analysis. I think originally I was lackadaisical reader; reading on the surface but not giving
thought to how authors craft their text to establish an argument for specific audiences and
purposes. This wasn’t how I usually started papers – I would write for the prompt, but rarely
ever consider how rhetorical strategies could enhance the effectiveness of my papers, as long as
it addressed the topic at hand. And least of all, I never considered outcomes as important
elements of writing. Traditionally, for previous writing assignments, revision was based on ideas
and conventions – and not necessarily the style and genre, voice and claims. Hopefully, these
following papers will give you some insight as to how I’ve revised my original essays into more
effective, persuasive arguments.
The essays I have chosen for this final portfolio were chosen for best representing successful
execution of the writing outcomes. From reading Mary Louise Pratt, my paper “The Classroom
as a Contact Zone” addressed examples of arts of the contact zone. Discussing Michel
Foucault’s Panopticon in “Power of Panopticism” explored modern disciplinary mechanisms.
Susan Bordo’s discussion of cultural views of the male body prompted an examination by a
philosophical standpoint in “Hell is Other People.” Lastly, I selected “The Cultural Gaze and the
Body,” which built off of both Foucault’s and Bordo’s texts. You gave all these papers
encouraging comments, and so I decided to give them further attention and consider them for
revising.
In the past I’ve never largely considered audience when writing – mostly because my audience
has consistently been the instructor, whose expectations for formal writing are alike with any
other. However, with this course we’ve been reading from a variety of different texts, each with
its own genre and voice. Pratt’s essay, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” deals with how an author’s
background can define a special purpose and audience when writing autoethnographies, like in
the case of Guaman Poma. He wrote in such a way (mixed Quechua and Spanish language) that
would not only extend his ideas to the Spanish invaders, but also his fellow Incans. When I
wrote “The Classroom as a Contact Zone,” and explored ideas for classroom examples, I realized
that this paper was not just for the instructor to read; I was also writing on behalf of other fellow
peers, and representing their voice for personal experiences dealing with diversity, stereotypes,
discrimination, mediation, and other arts that Pratt describes. Most of my other papers are solely
geared toward an audience and argues on a literal level; “The Classroom as a Contact Zone”
switches from a formal discussion of the text to a more personal voice as I discuss problems
reflected in today’s classroom, my own definition of autoethnographies and conclude with my
proposal for a creating a contact zone in a classroom environment. I don’t write in a personal
voice very often for formal papers, but it was appropriate for this situation, since I was
suggesting personal ideas and thoughts to the instructor. Using two voices also demonstrated an
ability to write for different audiences, too – a formal voice for textual discussion, and a more
personal voice (as a student) for community discussion. Usually, I wouldn’t juxtapose the two
styles, but in this case, it seemed effective and fitting, which is why I think this paper best
exemplifies audience awareness and possessing rhetorical sensitivity.
Drawing ideas and content from multiple sources was also a new process in writing, for me. It
has also usually been difficult to organize ideas and arrange them into a cohesive, uniform
argument. Our short paper 2.2 provided a good opportunity for such writing, however. In her
essay, Bordo references many philosophers, and for our assignment we were instructed to
research a pair and discuss how they related to Bordo’s claim of the modern rediscovery of the
male body (and the consequences). I chose Jean-Paul Sartre and his philosophy of solipsism, the
“Gaze,” how it plays into our behavior, and ultimately, how it influences they way we view
others and ourselves. Using Bordo’s text and sources I researched on Sartre, I tried to integrate
their line of inquiries to support Bordo’s theme on the cultural gaze into my essay (“Hell is Other
People”). While I did understand Bordo’s general message and use multiple kinds of evidence
(both primary and secondary sources) to support her argument, my original draft didn’t quite
generate an intertextual discussion between the Bordo and Sartre; my writing was weak in that
particular element. I could have also referenced Simone de Beauvoir, whose philosophies
mirrored Sartre’s. However, of all my papers it showed the best use of course texts and writing.
It did demonstrate responsible use of MLA system of documenting sources, as you can observe
at the end of the essay.
Producing complex, analytic arguments was the most difficult of all outcomes; and I would say
probably the most important, too, in terms of all the papers we have written this quarter, since
reading the texts provide the foundation from which we argued from. Sometimes writing essays
were difficult because I wasn’t sure if there was specific topic to argue (like in the case of the
major papers). This was where my greatest weakness lay – being unable to write a clear line of
inquiry and exploring other evidence and counterclaims. Many of my papers suffered from this
weak spot – for me, reading the texts seem to offer multiple ideas and it was complicated to
organize them into a uniform essay. “Power of Panopticon” seems to resolve the majority of
these issues, and is the best representative for successfully fulfilling the third outcome. The
organization, I felt, was well done – I began with the background and anatomy of the panoptic
tower, then discussed Foucault’s observation of the evolution of modern disciplinary techniques,
and offered my own example of Panoptic structures in society today. Of all the conclusions, this
one had the best – instead of my usual approach of summarizing, I suggested that there was a
trend of “extensions of the Panopticon structure are likely to be developed even more in the
future”, which you noted was an excellent conclusion. I liked my transitions here, too – after
discussing transitions in class, I had written to fashion more purposeful paragraphs. The
organization, and evidence from the text was analyzed to support the general theme of the paper
– I discussed how the consequences of panoptic structures were useful for controlling large
populations and machines more effectively, and how the success guaranteed its expansion and
longevity. This particular essay was more argumentative from the rest, mostly due to the
carefully crafted organization.
For most of the quarter, we’ve left revision to the very end, although we did receive comments
from you and our other peers on our papers. All my papers would’ve benefited from revision,
but the paper that was most extensively revised would be my second major paper, “The Cultural
Gaze and the Body,” in which we integrated Foucault’s idea of the panoptic structure of power
into Bordo’s cultural gaze toward bodies. From the beginning, I knew this would need major
revision: most of the body paragraphs felt redundant; the conclusion seemed to diverge from the
main line of inquiry, which unfortunately seemed to be missing. Writing sentences with
awkward syntactical construction was also a common failing on mine that you noticed; sentences
were revised for clarity. Other students mentioned the lack of a main idea, or a weak argument,
which distracted the reader from my paper’s purpose. Like in my other major paper, I revised
“The Cultural Gaze and the Body” by reorganizing the paragraphs, throwing out irrelevant
information, and crafting a much clearer theme. It is not the perfect paper, but having undergone
revision I feel it completes the other outcomes more successfully, which is what the fourth
outcome should do.
Writing for a class, a text, or any other formal academic setting will probably never be my strong
point, but I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to hone my argumentative writing skills.
Especially in a college setting, I know that being able to write proficiently and persuasively will
be invaluable later on. It has never really come to my attention that writing could be bettered by
successfully executing these four outcomes – audience, author, argument, and revision – but my
final drafts demonstrate that hey make for better and effective writing.
Sincerely,