Composition (EN) - ENGL-2010

Intermediate Writing - ENGL-2010

In English 2010, you will learn principles of composition and rhetoric to help you write clearly and persuasively in a variety of situations. You will study different genres of writing and examine the rhetorical strategies that make each genre work for its audience, purpose, and context. In this intermediate writing course you will focus on writing as problem solving and use the invention-drafting-revision-editing process to transform your writing to reach different audiences and contexts. 

My final revision process for these two assignments began with having someone I trust read them in order to get a different perspective. Having worked on both projects for a considerable amount of time, it could be hard to objectively determine the actual flow of the writing from my intended effect throughout the process. The ability to encode meaning in a way that will be successfully decoded by your audience is something that I have found takes practice and humility. I made the choice to cut down on some of my more flowery sentences, and instead focus on clarity. As a poet at heart, I tend to lean into more descriptive sentences. While revising I wanted to balance those out with some more succinct lines to give the reader a change of pace from time to time. There were multiple sentences that I opted to break into smaller, simpler lines in order to achieve this effect. I have also taken a grammar and style class this semester, which allowed me to utilize some more complex sentence structures with effective punctuation and rhetorical choices during the final revision of these projects. I especially wanted to focus on these new skills while editing the open letter, since that was the first project of the semester and I had learned a considerable amount in that time.

Overall, I have learned quite a bit from this course. I enjoyed exploring different genres of writing with the same topic because it really highlights the importance of those rhetorical choices. I was worried initially that having to adhere to the same topic throughout the entire semester would get repetitive or difficult to apply in certain contexts, but I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Especially when writing the issue brief, I had so much fun researching different angles of my topic and creating interesting visuals to correspond with the information. Rap as poetry is not as objective a topic as some, so I was worried about finding enough qualitative data to create the issue brief. I learned that there are several ways you can approach something in order to craft a persuasive argument. It was a good experience to stretch my creative limits and find an alternative angle for the issue brief. Creating my own info graphic was another highlight of the assignment for me and I was very pleased to incorporate it in my final issue brief as well.