CLO #1: Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.
Throughout my first English semester in college, we focused on various types of genres and different types of writing . Major writing assignments such as: Expository , Persuasive, Literacy Narrative, and Letters were the main focus on how I improved my understanding and practice for the structure and organization (rhetorical situations) of different writing. In addition in helping me to gain a better understanding of each assignment, student examples/samples were analyzed and discussed among me, my professor and my peers, as we openly shared our insights of the rhetorical situations of each genre, and how we could make inspirations for our own writing pieces.
The very first writing assignment I had to work on in my college career, was a letter that addressed to Professor Carr, introducing myself, followed up by a letter where I had to write about anything that is personally significant to me. I found these two assignments very relaxing and nicely paced before we started to get more serious about major writing assignments to look forward to in the semester, that I knew of because of the class schedule. Afterwards came the literacy narrative, where I wrote about my personal experiences in the engagement of learning/practicing about literacy. Then my expository essay assignment asked that I researched an interesting/controversial topic of my own, stay strictly neutral in informing my audience about the topic, and to make sure that the topic was also arguable for the next assignment. It was around this assignment where I started to further engage with different rhetorical situations, as my peers and my professor were there in helping one another to understand how each rhetorical element has its own unique role in constructing such an essay. The Argumentative assignment had the same cover topic as the expository essay, but it asked that I argued it and take a side. This assignment also had presentation style mode to it, which showed how much more complex rhetorical situations can become when styles of writing is changed up.
Other minor genres that were explored and analyzed throughout the course are, Annotated Bibliographies and Reflection Papers. Such writing pieces are new learning processes for me, as an annotated bibliography taught me that sometimes organizing and analyzing citations and sources before writing a research paper, is useful in preventing the phenomenon known as ‘Writers Block”. Reflection papers also gave me a chance to re-analyze my research and rhetorical elements before handing in my final work, and to also explore how I have achieved certain course learning outcomes.
Coming in to college, I had no idea that carefully thinking about a purpose, stance, audience, etc, in consideration to different writing, could have such a positive effect on the outcomes of my writing. I have learned alot on how to utilize different writing practices, which has not only helped me in the English classroom, but also in my Political Science, Anthropological and Psychology classes, and will continue to help me in future assignments.
Each major assignment is revised in the Portfolio Projects menu.
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