Thursday, December 5th, 2019

      Time passed quickly, imperceptibly, and this semester will soon be over. For me, I liked this  English 110 class because it is very helpful for improving my writing skills and I enjoyed the process of writing because we could freely choose the topic of the previous three compositions. We were allowed to write about topics of our choice which was very nice because I can share my opinions or what matters to me with others. Today, my professor asked us “What is the theory of writing for you in this class?” When I heard this question, what came to my mind is the genre of writing varies. When you start writing, you should determine what kind of genre (for your topic) can give your audience more of an impact. Also, the most important thing is that a good writing piece needs constant improvement.

      I have taken this class before, I knew what a genre was, but I did not know why the genre is important to an author to attract the audience. In my first composition “Rhetorical Analysis of Four Sources on Healthy Diet”, I analyzed what the genre of each article was that online. I thought that it was a good opportunity to think about why those authors chose their genres as their compositions.

In this composition, I learned a lot. Not only did I learn of the importance of genre in an article, but I also learned other rhetorical elements, such as stance, tone, audience, and so on. In simple terms, the stance is whether you agree or disagree with something. Tone is the author’s attitude apparent in his/her article, and it affects the reader’s emotions. The audience is a specific range of readers who would like to read your article and are suitable for it. I had never been aware of these elements in my previous writing.

      Later, when I started to write my Composition in Two Genres, I had to say after finishing the “Source Based Essay”, I had a deeper understanding of genre and rhetorical elements because as we read other people’s articles, we were also studying their writing skills. In my Composition in Two Genres, I was more concerned about how my article can be effective and enlightening to the audience. A meaningful article is how much useful information the reader absorbs from your writing and appeals to them to do something. For example, the college newspaper column has hundreds of articles. How to stand out from the hundreds of articles is key. In other words, if your genres cannot make people pay attention to your composition, that will be terrible because people may just glance at your article. This means that you do not have a chance to get people to read your whole article and then you are out because your article looks bland. So, for my writing to be in focus, I first tried different types of genres. They were the poster and cartoon.

These two genres had special meaning for me because they changed my idea of genre. In my impression, the genre could be essay, speech, novel, and so on. Furthermore, what they had in common was that their text and background is mostly black and white collocation. Imagine that if you have a lot of black and white design text in front of you. Will it cause you visual fatigue? The answer for me is ”Yes.”  I thought that a variety of text combinations and pictures can make your readers keep a pleasant feeling while reading your article and that would help your reader better understand your ideas. So, choosing an appropriate genre for yourself is important when you prepare to start writing a composition because sometimes it will help the reader quickly catch what you are trying to say in the article.  

      I think the peer review, first draft, and conference has contributed the most to my theory of writing. I felt that the most difficult composition is the research essay during this semester because I did not know how to organize my content when I started this composition at the time. Even if I had already decided on my topic, I still found it hard to write. When I finished the first draft, I thought it was poor. Later, my professor let us peer review in class. I felt the advantage of peer review is that my classmates could point out the shortcomings in my paper, then I had the opportunity to improve my essay. I remember that when I gave my research paper to my partner, and after she finished reading, she said that when you cited a quote, don’t forget to put the quotation marks and you should explain and analyze more when you cite a quote. Hearing this comment made me feel that I am very careless because I knew that when we use a quote, we need quotation marks, but sometimes I ignore that detail. Also, I agree with her that I need to add more explanations because I found that the explanations of quotes can show your understanding of the said quote. However, I had only explained to them in very few words. This might lead to my readers feeling that I  didn’t have a good understanding of the quotes. In addition, the conference was very helpful to me. As I mentioned before, I found this research essay very difficult. I was not sure I could write it well, and I was feeling incapable. When I went to my professor’s office, I told my professor my situation, and she encouraged, saying that you know somebody makes their research essays include an introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. They make their essays look very logical, maybe you can find some model essays for reference. Everybody’s essay is different, just try your best. Also, she gave me some suggestions that helped me expand the research essay such as how stress affects people’s brains and health.

If not for my professor’s suggestions, I wouldn’t be writing this paragraph. This idea actually plays a vital role throughout the article because it makes my readers understand why we need to value the impact of stress. My professor also reminded me of my first draft that I need to explain the meaning when my essay mentions technical terms.

My professor’s comment made me realize that sometimes you should think from the perspective of your audience because some technical terms you might know, but not your audience. So in future papers, if I find a technical term, I will write a definition next to it so that my audience can understand the content of my article more clearly.

      In my heart, I think when you finish your writing, you should repeatedly examine and revise it. You can show your paper to your friends to read it, then ask them how they felt when they read it, or if they were confused. These questions would help you to make your article become better because you can know where the problem is, then you can fix it. 

      In addition, after taking this course, my cognition of writing can be described by these two pictures.

Follow the rhetorical elements (a rhetorical situation, audience, purpose, genre, stance, and language) to write your composition, they are like a rule to help your composition to become more complete. Also, I think the most important rhetorical element is the audience. In the past, I thought anyone (unlimited to what kinds of people) could read my articles, and my articles could give an effect on them. But when I learned from this class, I found that every article had a particular audience (the group of people). The audience is the object of my persuasion, it affects my content that will appear in my composition. For instance, in my research essay “How Different Methods can Help Relieve Stress”, my audience is aimed at college student who has stressed.

As I mentioned the keywords “college students”, “stressors”, “emotions” and “reduce stress” in the introduction, we can associate this article involve how college students can effectively relieve stress. Then to develop my content around that specific audience in the following paragraphs. Also, this rhetorical element is influencing my content of the Theory of Writing because I have determined my audience are college students. So in this composition, I wrote about my experience, feelings, and what I have learned in this class. This influence to my audience is who has not yet taken an English 110 class when they read my article after, they have a desire to take this class because they want to learn more about the knowledge of writing and improve their writing skills from this class. Anyway, in my future writing, I will first consider who my audience is and then decide how to plan my writing to better inspire or persuade them.