Celeste Stresau
Enc 2135
Section 0053
Final Reflection
Throughout the three major projects I completed in this course, I learned a great amount about genres, composing writing, and rhetorical strategies and choices. During the process of writing our first paper which was a research paper on an issue of our choice that related to the discourse communities in our individual study paths, I learned the meaning and importance of discourse communities in all areas of life. Discourse communities provide a way for groups of people with similar beliefs and ideas to achieve a similar goal, and to communicate as they do so. Along with this, this major project taught me how to properly compose a paper by correctly sourcing my scholarly research sources, and using them to effectively support my claim in a clear and organized manner. This project taught me to make a claim, and find effective and logical evidence in order to support my claim throughout my writing. I learned how to write a proper research paper my composing claims and using in text citations in order to source my evidence.
In the second major project I completed throughout the duration of this course, I learned the value of using different rhetorical choices in order to better reach your audience. Through different appeals such as ethos, an appeal to the speaker's credibility, logos, an appeal through logical thought, or pathos, an appeal to the audience's sense of emotion, an author can target their individual audience in a way that would be the most efficient in achieving their purpose. Similarly, there are different rhetorical choices than an author can make while writing such as utilizing different tones or word choices in order to specifically target their audience. Through this major project, I was able to practice using rhetoric in order to target different audiences, and analyze how different authors and artists used rhetoric in their respective pieces in order to achieve their goal and portray their purpose to the audience.
The third and final major project I completed in this course thoroughly educated me on different genres in writing and how each genre could be effective in reaching certain audiences. I learned many different types of genres such as emails, social media posts, posters, articles, and power points. Along with this, I learned how each genre could affect individual audiences and why one genre may be more appropriate for a specific audience than another. For example, a scholarly article would be more appropriate for a group of researchers than a twitter post. I also learned how to pick a specific genre to target my intended audience more effectively. Furthermore, I learned how to analyze my own work and identify areas where I achieved my goals as well as areas where I could improve upon my work. I feel that the third major project we complected in this course was the most educational for me as I personally had no experience with different genres and using them in my writing. I found this course overall to be very informational and engaging throughout the three different writing projects we completed.