Throughout this quarter of UWP 1, I have learned a lot about my ways of thinking and writing. I did not realize how little I really knew about writing until I read through many essays, discussions, and chapters on the different ways to write. In the beginning, trying to define what “genre” means or what a “discourse community” is felt like trying to describe the color red. I could list examples, but a definition was incredibly hard for me to make out. However, through different readings and discussion prompts, I have come to understand these terms and incorporate them into my writing. My research skills have improved, and by doing multiple revisions of my work I can see how my ideas and thinking have shifted and improved my writing. Although I still have a long way to go before my writing is perfect, I think I’ve successfully managed to grasp the five UWP learning outcomes: Rhetorical concepts, processes, knowledge of conventions, research, and metacognition. Prior to this course, I had a very minimal and superficial understanding of what a rhetorical concept was. I knew the general examples of audience and purpose, but I have learned a broader scope of how context, genre and revisions all play a role in writing. Kerry Dirk’s “Navigating Genres” helped me understand what a genre was and how there can be such a wide variety of genres. Dirk explains that genres are a response to a situation, then are repeated by others for that same situation. Types of books like horror, romance, and comedy are all genres, but so are larger classes of things, like scholarly articles and websites. These last two were particularly important to my discourse community of wildlife centers as means of spreading information and educating the public. The genre of a website responds to the need for educating on wildlife, as well as explaining the work the wildlife centers do. As a class we read Laura Bolin Carroll’s “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Towards Rhetorical Analysis” which went through many parts of writing, such as exigence, audience, and constraints, all which were crucial in my Discourse Community Project. The exigence is the rhetorical situation the genre responds to, the audience is the target for reading the essay, and constraints are aspects of the genre and mode of writing that is a limiting factor. Practicing identifying these aspects in a discussion activity with common advertisements was very helpful in solidifying my understanding of this. For that activity, I analyzed an ad based on ethos, pathos, and logos, but reading my classmate’s posts helped me see the “problem” or situation the product or company was trying to solve and how they used imagery and word choice to persuade the their target audience.
Coming into this class, I thought I had learned how to revise my work in a thorough manner. In middle school and high school, the process of revising essays consisted of amping up my vocabulary, fixing spelling and grammar errors, and changing a few sentences here and there. Towards the end of high school one of my teachers proposed a new technique: rewriting the sentences, thinking holistically of what the paragraph was trying to say. Before then I had never really made my rough and final drafts look too much different. Then when I got into college, I realized how helpful it was to rewrite my work. I often have this idea in my head of what to say, but when I write it down it sometimes loses its meaning. Actually changing the sentences and paragraphs really made me aware of my power as a writer and how much control I had over my essays. Those rough drafts were not set in stone but were in fact the beginning molds of modelling clay that I could then craft into a brilliant work. For this class, I read Nancy Sommers’ “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” which put into words the different methods one should take to successfully revise a paper. She described a method which included going over your work in a series of cycles, in each cycle focusing on a single improvement. For my work, I used this technique to revise my Discourse Community Project, going paragraph by paragraph at first to make sure I had all the required points. Then I looked section by section to see if it flowed, then compared my introduction and conclusion paragraphs to see how they related to each other and add something if needed to strengthen my exigence. Finally, I went over lexical problems in the essay and corrected spelling mistakes. This entire process can take some time, but the result is worth it. I can actively see my work changing and shaping into a strong, continuous paper. These new skills will help me edit my papers in the future and can be improved upon further as I progress through my writing career.
Being aware of conventions is essential to one, writing a paper, and two, revising a paper. For example, knowing that a scientific paper will be more formal in tone and has a specific layout and format with organized sections is useful in writing a paper in that genre. As an animal science major I have had to read many scientific reports and articles, all of which follow very particular conventions. When writing in this genre, I need to have an abstract, introduction, method, and results, etc. section and clearly define variables and terms that may only be well known to the animal science community so that everyone can understand. I need to write in third person and make sure to keep my paper unbiased, as that indicates bad experimental design and makes my results undependable. I wrote my Discourse Community Project, using a similar format, but the DCP was less formal and the results were based on reading and analyzing websites and articles, not on independent/dependent variable experiments. The similarities in format and structure and differences in wording and tone allow me to understand the connections and conflicts between the conventions included in each.
Research is important in any major or class, but properly knowing how to find credible, strong sources is a skill that takes time to develop. In this class, it was helpful to read “Googlepedia” by Randall McClure to see how you can start broad and then narrow the searches once you found a topic or particular type of source that interests you. For me, using broad searches for “wildlife centers” and “wildlife education” helped me find different websites from wildlife centers or researchers whose experiment was based around educating the public or surveying their reactions towards animals. Then by searching through the library database I was able to find research articles on wildlife centers and education relating to wildlife and the public. I had a general sense of how wildlife centers operated, and while I unfortunately could not interview anyone, I did learn a lot more through websites and the articles I read. This DCP helped me solidify my prior understanding with new information from more in-depth research. I will continue to build upon these research methods in future classes and life in general, as I now feel confident in finding credible sources so that I can educate myself in new interests, social issues, and my major.
One last learning goal for this class is metacognition. Being able to visualize my writing and see not only the words and paragraphs, but my ideas and thought process for writing them is beneficial for me. As I wrote my cover memos for my papers, I tried to see how my paper differed from my outline, if my points or purpose was changed or altered, and offered what I thought to be my strengths and weaknesses. Reading the responses from peer reviewers enabled me to see which ideas came across as I wanted them to and what areas I needed to restructure and redo. Metacognition ties into my processes of revising as I try to look at the paper holistically and follow my thought process in order to clarify my ideas and purpose.
While I believe these learning, outcomes have significantly helped me improve my writing in this class, I know that my writing is nowhere near perfect. I often write run-on sentences and can sometimes get a bit off topic. My issues range from being small grammar mistakes to not encompassing prompts fully. And while I may not get everything perfect, I know I now have the tools to continue to improve. I can use my knowledge of rhetorical situations and concepts to help my find a genre that suits my work. I can use conventions of that genre to alter my tone and structure, among other things. I can then find articles that will strengthen my arguments and can revise my work using metacognition to better my paper overall. I will continue to build on these concepts and overtime I can accomplish better writing, but it takes practice.
Over this quarter I have understood and integrated rhetorical concepts, conventions, and better research into my writing. By revising my work multiple times and following my thought processes I have become more aware of my actions and ideas while writing. There is always going to be more for me to work on and improve upon, but I feel that in this quarter I’ve been able to change my writing for the better and gain new skills that I’ll take with me in my future writing endeavors.