Over the past 4 months of being part of this class, I’ve learnt a bit more about writing and the application of rhetorical terms in my own writing. With each writing assignment shows the evolution of my ability of applying audience, author, tone, purpose, genre/medium, language, purpose, rhetorical situation, stance, and tone. Coming into this class, I believed that: 

“…writing to be a way to communicate and express yourself to others, in the form of texts, blog posts, essays, articles, etc., but there are many other purposes to writing.” (Reflection #1).

Still to this day, I still believe that writing is to be a form of communication to others but now through the forms of genres as I learned recently—there are many ways we can display writing to cater to an audience. This in addition to what I learned about myself as a writer during these past 4 months, I formulate my Theory of Writing where I believe that: writing is a catalysis of getting a point through an audience that can be displayed in any form of genre which is linked with execution and confidence to create a successful piece. 

 

With the first assignment—Source Based Essay, it was a start to a greater understanding of the rhetorical devices. Although this assignment was essentially an analyze of 4 sources, this analyze was essential in building up my exposure to these devices and being able to recognize how they are used would be added to my knowledge of how I should write which would be used in my future writings. I feel that being able to identify another author’s rhetoric is essential to understanding their writing as a whole which gives a deeper meaning to it. An example of this is my identification of rhetorical situation on my chosen website source where I identified that: 

“Chris Aviles cares about the success of all students and brings up ways for teachers to connect a student’s habit of gaming to their education. He adds in his experience in sports into the piece and connects the similarities between the traditional sports and eSports where he discovered that both activities lead to the growth of the student mindset. In his ‘About Me’ tab, he displays great care to other teachers and their students which makes his opinion more truthful and wholesome.” (Source Based Essay).

 

This in a sense relates to my initial thought of what writing is from “Reflection #1” where writing is a form of communication in forms of genres. The genre of a blog for teachers reveals his intended targeted audience. At the time, I believe that writing are only pieces that are just pages of words that work together to convey an idea to the audience such as essays. With the essay, I wanted a narrative where I wanted schools to have eSports/gaming programs and the method in delivering my perspective on the topic was through an essay. In order to achieve this, I have a strategy which keeps me organized in the writing process which is to look for all the potential sources that I can possibly use and briefly go over them, making sure that it fits with what I’m trying to do. In a sense of doing this, it creates a sense of confidence in me as I become more familiar with the sources and believe my ability in writing this assignment will be good.  

With this assignment, I had a chance in getting another’s perspective on my piece. Having someone read your writing and give their thoughts I feel is important as they are another set of eyes to who would highlight what I did well and what they feel I can improve on due to the blindness created from reviewing my own piece of writing. If the reviewer gives helpful advice towards your work, it leaves a path of improvement that would greatly help strengthen your piece. The advice I received from my colleagues I felt were pretty insightful in what I overlooked and gave me enough useful information to greatly help improve my piece and gave me more confident in the creation of my final product.

As my theory at the time was just saying writing is a way of communication, I feel my writing gets that point to the audience just by existing. My theory at the time was pretty basic and bland and is something that everyone overlooks. When someone reads an essay, they expect it to give them information—communication. My writing gets my Theory of Writing to the audience discreetly.

 

With the Inquiry Based Essay, my idea of what writing is remains the same and with my newfound knowledge of rhetoric, I went to apply it to this new writing assignment. Overall, I felt that the reflections required in this assignment really helps organize our thoughts and helped us see how we would satisfy each rhetorical term. For example in Writing Genre #1, I found that this reflection helped me see who my audience will be as the writing proposal dictates who my audience will be in the piece as we can see with: 

“My topic is about gaming/eSports and I want to research about ‘why there is a lack of females in professional gaming or gaming in general?’” (Writing Genre #1).

As the author trying to capture this audience, through some peer review of my draft, I found that my language in this piece has to be specific as the wrong use of words such as using female vs women would give off a different message. My stance on the topic has to be clear so the piece wouldn’t be taken the wrong way. I unfortunately happened to not execute my stance on the topic in the best form as there was a certain paragraph in my writing that caused conflict in the stance of my final product. Clearly, my execution of the piece wasn’t the best as I ended up contradicting myself in my argument, causing the reader to question if this piece of writing can be trusted. Hence, my Theory of Writing has to evolve to something that reflects my mistakes in this piece where I have to be more aware with how I’m writing so it doesn’t cause confliction in my audience. When I looked back at the days before submitting the final draft, I remembered being less confident in the piece as I had to rewrite a bit of my essay with 2 new sources and get rid of some sources that were just a repetition. Whether the reduced confidence affect my ability as a writer, I now believe that whatever I put out now, I need to keep my confidence throughout the whole process in order to produce a piece I’m proud about.

 

The Composition in 2 Genres assignment marked the finalization of my Theory of Writing where I also updated my thoughts on the forms of what I believed were writing to a more overarching word with is genre. Prior to this assignment, I always thought of writing genres to be more word oriented such as essays as seen with the previous assignments. With this assignment however brings a new though on genre which is any form of communication used to deliver a purpose. This assignment brings freedom to a field I once believed was only home to pages of words. This freedom allowed me to explore more in the unknown parts of what I believed what writing was once was. 

Since this was the last major assignment and I ended up with a hit and a miss which although the previous assignment was still an acceptable grade for me, I feel my execution of these 2 genres have to be better than the previous assignment. Unlike the other assignments where we had plenty of time, we had only around a 2 to 3 week time frame from starting to finishing the assignment so I have to work efficiently. The initial reflections to get our thoughts together worked, in a sense that I had an idea of what I wanted to do with this newfound freedom of choice of genre. However, there was some uncertainty for what the purpose of my second genre was going to be as I wanted to:

“… use the genre of a comic; I would want my audience to be people who hate hypocrites” (Audience Strategy).

A strategy I had with the previous 2 assignments was to look for all the material I will be using before I start writing the draft which creates a mindset for me where I know the material that I will be using so I can craft my piece accordingly. In the previous 2 assignments, I had time to look for all the potential sources that I could use for the assignment. This assignment was a little different as I decided to something out of reach of the research I have done previously leading to some conflicting in my mind of whether this was going to be successful or not. This then leads me to fall back to comfort and with the verbal presentation of our topic, I felt more confident in what I will be doing. I believe that after we present our thoughts and ideas, we become more confident with them and we can execute better and form a more promising result where the solidarity in the message exists—everything in the piece works together to form a clear and concise message. 

 

In general, I feel that in order to build up confidence in the writing, you need to get all the material being used together and review them. Next you should write all you can about your topic in the genre you want to deliver it in. After that is getting a peer to review your current work and give you feedback; if they believe it’s good, try to add on to what you have as you now know that what you wrote is fine. These steps build up the confidence you have in your piece, completing my Theory of Writing. There are some aspects which the audience can see the confidence you had during the process through the moves you did as an author such as phasing something simple differently that could be questionable but in your mind, you believed it to be right. They can also see this through the use of the language you chose placed in the piece—confidence with rhetoric.

 

With future writings, I believe my Theory of Writing will possibly change as I learn more about writing and its strategies and utilization. With current Theory of Writing, however, I can see me using it to keep my confidence in what I’m assigned up because if you don’t believe in what you’re writing, you’ll end up producing a piece that is filled with uncertainty and possibly errors overlooked. Confidence I believe relates to execution—if you believe what you’re writing, you’ll put more effort and the execution would overall be better compared to a piece where you have no confidence in.