Reflection

Throughout this last semester, while taking this course I've come to learn quite a lot about how different forms of media and genres can aid greatly in how information and arguments are presented. Previously I've always been so used to simply copying and pasting the same formula when it came to writing papers throughout high school, But over this semester and even parts of last semester, I have finally begun to be able to branch out in ways I've never really had the chance to before.

One example of what I've learned this year about genres has to do with how they can be used to target certain audiences who respond to different forms of media in different ways. As seen in our third project, learning how to use a single overarching narrative in two completely different ways shows us how creative writing can be, and how unique arguments can be formed to specific messages. Using these different methods might not seem like they'll do that much at first, however, when it comes to specifically targeting a specific group of individuals, there's nothing more useful than using different genres to help get your point across.

When it comes to composing, a perfect example of its use this semester can be seen in the first project, and the annotated bibliography we had to do at the beginning of the year. These two assignments showed how setting up our writing and planning ahead can help dramatically when it comes to finally compose our papers down the line. By having the annotated bibliography to work with, it was extremely easy to finally craft the project that was given, since many of the specific details and quotes we had to use in this essay were already pulled out ahead of time. Overall these two assignments show how important preparation is when it comes to composing future writing projects.

And lastly, when it comes to what I've learned so far when it comes to applying rhetorical strategies in our work, and how we can analyze these strategies in others' works, nothing shows that more strongly than in project two. By analyzing those two main sources, and comparing and contrasting them against each other, we can further understand what exactly about them makes them so important and useful, and how we can apply those same strategies in the future, something that we also applied later in project three.

Overall, these main projects that we did this semester fully helped me personally to further explore the different ways in which writing can be edited and written to help ourselves further analyze other people’s works, as well as ways in which we can employ the same strategies to our own works in the future. These seemingly small lessons do have a huge impact when it comes to truly understanding what makes the writing we encounter in our everyday lives so powerful and resourceful.