top of page
This page is settled for my final assignment, an essay, for the Writing 39A course that I am taking at UCI. It is a formal reflection on how I start , process with analysis and peer review , and finally write the essay. The theme of the course is about Disney & Gender. The question that we discuss is : How do Disney films contribute to the construction of society's values and norms about gender roles? How have these values changed over time? Here is the link for my essay: WR39A Essay about Disney
Exploratory Writing & Planning
1st except: This assignment belongs to the weekly exploratory writing for defining and explaining social construction, being created by created by two sociologists, Gwen Sharp and Lisa Wade, which made me "become more aware of and continue to improve in the metacognition of Habits of Mind." What I wrote in this assignment pushed me to start to form knowledge about the "media" world we live, and was taken to start my essay in order to describe and explain how Disney films, as a mediator, to construct our knowledge, experience, feeling, and even the cognition for many facets, especially the facet of gender perceptions on roles that genders take respectively, various gender norms and values.
Excerpt from Week1 Exploratory Writing
Excerpt from Week 3 Exploratory Writing: Beauty & the Beast and Gender Codes
2nd excerpt: This assignment is about annotations that I could make from watching the film Beauty and the Beast for representing characters' gender roles, values or norms. It is connected with one of course objectives, "understand the importance of having a process when you are composing a sophisticated text." Watching the film for seeing the plot at first, watching specific times and scenarios again for quotations and annotations, and writing annotations took me around 5 hours to complete this assignment since that was the first time to watch that film and finish such assignment. Though it was a little bit time-consuming, but it was also a beginning to be aware and attempt to understand what gender elements, such as "toxic masculinity," submissiveness, courageous, sacrificing, and independence, that could be involved and taught through one forms of the media, film, which targets children as audience. The gender elements that the leading female character Belle shows are concluded and are as the example taken to my essay so as to write and describe what the second era of princesses are portrayed by Disney film.
Peer Review
1st peer review: To me, this is the best peer review that I gave through the the course. It is not only because the professor said so, but also because I showed my understanding to Kexin Zhang's outline by outlining and categorizing facets of Disney films that she would like to write in her essay--"attributes that these male characters in Disney films value, and clothes showing what male characters value. Further, I gave peer review post by adding the expanded suggestion to Kexin. Namely, another facet that can be considered further from the outside looking and clothing is "body shapes under uniforms of male characters." Through this peer review that I gave, I have "improve(d) my peer review skills through practice."
Excerpt from Thesis & Brief Outline for Essay
Excerpt from Week 4 Exploratory Writing: Star Wars and Gender
2nd peer review: This is the best peer review that I got from Abigail Rose Stetter toward the assignment Week 5 Exploratory Writing: Disney Superheroes. I chose it because it made me realize one of big issues that I had (or am still having) when writing which was I usually wrote long and complicate sentences to start. The peer review post that was posted by her made me "understand (understood) the importance of self review: learning (through peer review practice)."
Self Review
Excerpt from Connect about Self-review Essay
1st self-review: This is about the topic sentence that I would write for the third body paragraph. I would revise it by reconnecting to the course question and my thesis. It may should be written into "The gender roles that are constructed by Disney films in the third era of princesses...." Reviewing and revising this made me learn one of "effective habits for my own writing process"--rethinking and attempting to connect thesis all the way down to the end of essay.
Excerpt from Connect about Self-review Essay
2nd self-review: This is about the layout of body paragraphs in my essay. How to separate example one and example two, or decide whether or not to separate examples through paragraphs is an important issue to decide and be aware. It is because it cannot only induces the aesthetics facet when viewing the whole essay's layout but also leads to how clear and concise that audience would react to my essay. I would like to separate the example of Mulan in 1998 version and in 2020 version from the example of Belle of the film Beauty and the Beast in the second body paragraph. Reviewing and revising this is a representation of "improving my ability to write prose that is readable, focused, and full of details."
Before
After
Excerpt from my essay for this Writing 39A Course
1st revision: This part that I revised is in the middle part of both the whole essay and the body paragraphs of my essay. I noticed and revised this because Professor Lynda not only pointed out but revised this when I was asking her suggestions to my essay. After revising, it looks better because of the correction and the clarification of unclear words and unclear pronouns. This would not make readers feel confusing when reading "more strength" and "the male soldiers" directly rather than "manly better strength" and "those soldiers."
Before
After
Excerpt from my essay for this Writing 39A Course
2nd revision: This part is the conclusion that I wrote for my essay. Before revising, it seems a little bit unrelated to my thesis and the content of my body paragraphs. However, Professor left the suggestion, "a better ending would be to say something about how the values they've constructed in their characters have changed to keep up with the changing perceptions within culture." After revising, it is more related to the thesis and my body paragraphs.
Revision
bottom of page