Robin Li

My writing history begins in pre-K where I was exposed to the alphabet. My

father assumed that I would struggle with English since I would have to learn my
native language and English concurrently and soon I was placed into an ESL (English
Second Language) class. He put me in Chinese school and told me to practice
reading and writing English at home. Eventually I would enroll in a weekend
enrichment program to further my knowledge of English. However the origins of my
writing began when I starting writing reading logs for books I had read in
elementary school for school assignments. Then in middle school, I started to write
in an essay format with organization and structure. In high school, the grading for
essays or any type of written work was treated as professional work and the grading
was based on: a good topic sentence, thesis statement, supporting evidence, paper
format, and grammar. Throughout my whole education, reading and writing remains
to be one of my weakest subjects. It wasnt because English was another language
for me. It was because I hadnt practice it enough.
The last time I wrote an essay was for an assignment in my freshman year of
college for Writing Seminar which was three years ago. As a computer science
major, Ive done mostly programming assignments for my classes and I havent
needed to utilize my writing skills which are slowly degrading.
As for my academic career, Ive been considering entering a graduate
program for Computer Science and that would also involve completing a thesis in
order to obtain a Masters Degree in Computer Science. A strong writing ability
would play a significant role when writing a thesis. If I were to consider a Ph.D. in
Computer Science, writing would be essential because of the demand for research
proposals and papers. However, as of now, I am focused on completing a Bachelors
Degree in Computer Science.
As for my career interests, I hope to enter the software development side of
any technological firm. In the software development industry, documentation is very
essential for software projects. Documentation allows the developers to
communicate their thought process and work to clients. This makes having good
reading and writing skills crucial in providing a product that meets customer
requirements. Documentation also allows future developers to continue where

someone left off because a developer needs to understand the software

architecture, design, and typical use cases in order to make sure the developer
knows how to proceed with refactoring or updating the software.
Eventually I hope to accumulate my skills and work towards becoming a Data
Scientist. The key point of a Data Scientist is being able to report findings and
conclude deductions on a given data set and communicate those findings and
deductions in an understandable way whether it would be a research paper, article,
or a piece of written work. Improving my writing skills would allow me to better
communicate my findings and deductions to a particular audience.
Part 2:
Profiling Audiences is a way to develop a foundation when writing. Chapter 2
essentially advises writers to see from the perspective of the audience because
every piece of writing has an intended audience. From assessing my own
weaknesses in writing, I believe being able to Create an Audience Profile would
improve my writing in this assignment because it provides a template for
understanding how the reader would assess this paper. By understanding and
seeing from the readers point of view, I can tailor the written work to satisfy the
readers requirements.
To create the profile I would ask:
Who is the audience?

The teacher grading my assignment.

What are their demographic characteristics?

Teacher with a background in Professional Communications for Computer

Science majors.

What is the audiences task?

Assessing whether or not the writing assignment fulfills the requirements.