PROGRESSION THROUGH WRITING
Eileen Perez
MY GROWTH THROUGH WRITING
How ENC 2135 Helped Me Become a Better Writer, Rhetor, and Analyst
Hello prospective ENC 2135 students!
I am Eileen Perez, a current student at FSU who has formerly taken FSU’s ENC 2135 course.
I was fully expecting this class to be like any other generic English course where one would just be provided essay prompts that had to be turned in by a certain time. I thought this class would mostly be busy work that would not do much for my current writing abilities, I could not be more wrong.
Even if you have taken both AP Literature and AP Language in high school, there will still be much that you will take from this course. Not only will you see improvement in your writing, but you will get to learn much about your own interest as this course is designed in a way that allows you to do so. Through the discussion of John Swales’s discourse communities, we got to explore the writing conventions within our own majors while learning about a topic of our interest, which will be very evident in Project 1.
Besides learning more about our respective majors, this course gave the chance to explore often overlooked aspects of rhetoric: Genres. The AP English courses offered in high school go over many parts of rhetorical analysis and how the choices of the rhetor contribute to the bigger purpose. In ENC 2135, you will hear familiar terms such as ethos, pathos, and logos, but we also get to explore another aspect of rhetoric often overlooked by these AP courses. Although the AP courses have gone over much of the aspects of rhetorical analysis, they rarely explore the genres that the rhetoric was composed in. This opened a whole new aspect of rhetorical analysis for me while I explored how the genre that a piece of rhetoric is written in was chosen for a reason, how the choices made by the rhetor are due in part to the constraints of the genre itself, and how the genre achieves the goals of the rhetor. ENC 2135 helped me learn much about genres through Project 3 where we had to compose two pieces of rhetoric in two different genres and we had to explain how and why we choose these genres and the choices we made within the constraints of each genre.
The main thing I have taken away from this course was Ms B’s mantra of “progress, not perfect”. Despite my enjoyment of writing, I have always been very self critical of my work and become frustrated when my writing is not up to par. The extensive writings you will do in this class helps you realize that writing is a process, it can sometimes be slow, but it is a process. It is a process of brainstorming, revising, and more revising before you complete a work. Even when you do complete a work, it is not going to be perfect, and that is the point. Writing itself is a journey where you constantly get to improve, and I hope to demonstrate that here with my revision of my Project 2 assignment.
This class helped me grow as a writer, and I am sure it will help you grow too. I hope you take a look at my projects below so I can share my progression with you so that you may have a glimpse of what your experience with ENC 2135 may be.
PROJECT 1
Investigative Field Essay
Project 1 is an investigative field essay. This assignment asked us to define what a discourse community is (see "view project 1" for definition) and research a topic within the discourse communities of our respective majors. This allowed me to explore my own discourse community and see how the skills I learned in ENC 2135 will apply to my current interest.
My major is political science, so I choose the issue of partisan polarization as this is an issue that not only did I find interest in, but is being heavily researched among political scientists.
Throughout this project, strengthened the skills I learned in my AP classes, that being of developing a thesis statement that shows both the organization of my essay and is referenced throughout the paper as a whole. Finding supporting evidence is very easy, but I wanted to ensure that I was reflecting my thesis throughout my whole essay. In order to accomplish this, I set an organizational pattern for my essay in regards to topic and finished my thesis towards the end of my writing so that it more accurately reflects the organization of the essay.
Another thing I got to practice was my use of evidence and quotations. In my AP classes, I have been taught that quotes should only be there to support your ideas, but more than 90% of the essay should be your own work. I believe that I have accomplished that throughout this project with most of the essay being of my own thoughts with the sole purpose of the quotations to serve as support for my claims.
PROJECT 3
Multigenre Persuasive Campaign
In Project 3, we composed a Multigenre Persuasive Campaign in where we create two compositions utilizing two distinct genres to achieve some purpose. Throughout this process, we learn the functionings and become experts of our genres. We must then explain the rhetorical choices we made in our compositions through a rational.
I got to explore the functionings of genre and its conventions by utilizing them myself. In this project, I had to put myself in the mind of the rhetor in order to achieve my purposes, that being persuading my former principal to allow me to give a presentation to students about their rights and informing said students about those rights. In doing so, I was able to gain a much better understanding of how genre influences choices rhetors make, something which was overlooked in my AP classes. I had to take into consideration the constraints of powerpoint presentations as I couldn't flood them with information. I had to see how I could persuade my principal with just a one page letter. Because of this project, I have become more conscience of the choices I make in my own writing and pay closer attention to how genres influenced the writing of others.
PROJECT 2 REVISION
Rhetorical Analysis of Field Artifacts
In project 2, we had to write a rhetorical analysis of two artifacts, one being text based and the other non-text.
In the version I turned in, I focused a lot on making sure to weave my thesis throughout the analysis to ensure that my entire essays functions to support my thesis statement, something I first learned in my AP classes. What was new for me in this project was analyzing a non-text based artifact, as my AP classes focused entirely on analyzing literature of some sort.
The main changes I made in my revision were all based on the feedback provided by Ms. B. I made sure to clarify in my first two paragraphs on the analysis of my tweet what the function of each of those paragraphs are with an appropriate introductory sentence, something I did not originally make clear in the first version. The next major change I did was expanding on subgenera contained in YouTube and what that means for the conventions of the video I analyzed. I believe this helps provide more context and make my following claims of how this attracts a certain audience a lot stronger. The final change I made was to split one of my paragraphs into two, with the first one going into the gestural modes of communication and the second the aural modes. I did not add much information to those paragraphs besides a smoother introductory sentence as all the information needed was already present. What this does is make my paper more organized and split the information into reasonable chunks for the reader.
This revision really does demonstrate Ms B's mantra of "progress, not perfect", as it shows that writing is a process. Even though project 2 was already "complete", it can still be worked upon. Writing is all about the process of brainstorming, writing, revising, and revising again. The point is not to reach perfection, but to grow with each touch of the keyboard or each stroke of the pen. Writing is not about the result, but about the growth that comes out of that result.