Leong

Sabrina Leong
Instructor: Zack De Piero
Writing 2
16 March 2015
My Writing 2 Journey

We started off Writing 2 with learning about genre. Before I came into this class, I

didnt know that genre could be applied to almost anything. I thought genre only related to
movies, music, and books. But I learned a lot about genre awareness just after my first
PB1A. We brainstormed ideas in class, and the class discussion broadened my ideas on
what I thought genre was. I now realize that genre is in almost anything: restaurant menus,
movie posters, research papers, eulogies, and more. Genre is in all aspects of our lives, and
there are many ways to think about it.
We also had readings to help us understand rhetoric and genre conventions, such as
Navigating Genres by Kerry Dirk and Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking) by Janet Boyd.
Some particular ideas that I thought were interesting were that genres help us to make
more efficient decisions when writing, as we can see how people have approached similar
situations(Dirk) and it is this knowledge that helps us to recognize and to determine
appropriate responses to different situationsthat is, knowing what particular genre is
called for in a particular situation (Dirk). I thought it was very interesting that we can look
at examples from a genre we are focusing on, and by determining its conventions we can
write more efficiently (because we know whats expected of us and where to start) and we
can also know what is appropriate (which also has to do with what the audience expects).

Leong 2

Being able to locate and understand any genres conventions and rhetorical devices
is extremely useful for the future as well. When I take other GE classes such as history,
sociology, or religious studies classes, Ill encounter genres and writing pieces that Ive
never seen before. Ill use my genre awareness to understand each new piece and write
about them more efficiently.
Furthermore, Janet Boyd states that every time you go to write anything (and every
time you open your mouth), [ . . . ] you are making decisions about which words to use and
what tone to establish as you order your thoughts based upon what is appropriate for your
intended audience in that context (Boyd). I thought this statement was really important at
the time, and I think its even more important now. I think this ties in a lot with becoming a
better writer, and it also ties in to a lot of other readings that we read throughout the
quarter. For example, Dirk wrote about knowing whats appropriate, Laura Bolin Carroll
expanded more on rhetoric such as audience and tone, Mike Bunn demonstrated how to
read like a writer and also focused on audience and purpose, and Losh and Alexander
illustrated the idea of changing your identity for different audiences. They all have a
common theme that I think is an important lesson from this Writing 2 classthey all have
to do with knowing your reader and the different moves an author (or you) can make to
appeal to them. Being able to persuade your audience is essential for all aspects of writing
and genre.
After we talked in class about WP1, I jotted ideas for my analysis on the back of the
assignment sheet and quotes that I liked from the course readings that I could use in my
paper. I then tried to find three examples from a genre that I wanted to write about. After
searching for a while, I got hungrier and hungrier, and I ended up choosing pizza websites

Leong 3

as my genre. I first found three examples from my genre (pizza places I liked in Isla Vista),
and then I looked through each page and wrote down all of the conventions I could think of.
I then compared and contrasted their conventions and rhetorical features and created an
outline of what I wanted my paper to look like. I then worked with my outline to create my
paper.
In class, we learned about parallelism in formatting sentence structure and
documents. Before we mentioned it in class, I just assumed that some documents were
formatted better than others. But then we learned about the importance of parallelism and
the moves authors make that reflect it. Parallelism shows attention to detail and is a
formatting/style choice that authors can use to enhance credibility. In class we looked at
two different resumes, one that used parallelism and another that didnt. The one that
didnt lacked professionalism and was less aesthetically pleasing. Parallelism also connects
ideas and phrases together, and helps with the flow of the writing.
We also went over different verbs to use instead of says such as highlights,
suggests, emphasizes, or asserts. I thought this was very helpful, especially because I often
struggled with what verbs to use when Im introducing a quote. Now when Im stumped, I
look back to our list that we made and choose the one I think fits the best.
In preparation for WP2, we talked about different disciplines and majors. Zack
suggested that we choose a topic related to our major, so after some searching I decided to
look into scholarly articles about medicine. Finding a scholarly article and a non-scholarly
article on the same was difficult, and it took a long time to think of possible topics, try to
find a scholarly article I liked about that topic, and then try to find a non-scholarly article
about the same topic. Eventually I found two papers that I really liked about dendritic cells

Leong 4

being used to fight cancer. I thought this was really funny because at the time, I was
learning about the immune system and dendritic cells in my biology class. It was really
engaging to read both articles and apply the knowledge I had just studied from biology and
use it to help me with another class (this writing class).
The interesting thing about my process for this writing project was that I didnt
make the complete outline that I had made for WP1. I had previously jotted some ideas
down on the handout like I did for WP1, but I then decided to sit down and start writing. I
wasnt quite sure how to start, so I looked for a hook that would introduce my topic. After
finding a good hook, I looked at the Vietnam essay for inspiration on moves. One move
that I remembered mentioning in class was that the author specifically chose one side to
argue, explained the main points in her thesis statement, and then spend the rest of the
essay comparing and contrasting. I thought these moves were very effective at
persuading the reader, and tried to implement them in my own paper.
One thing I think I was able to improve on was that I incorporated in-text quotes
along with quotes from the class readings throughout the essay. In my WP1, I mainly put
quotes from the class readings at the end, which gave a filling in the requirement feel.
This way my argument has support from the articles I read and from the class readings, and
these supports work like a thread throughout my whole paper that ties it all together.
Another improvement was that I broke page long paragraphs into smaller paragraphs so
they were easier to read and in nice bitable pieces. I also tried to make a specific thesis
that gave a solid overview of the main points I was planning on covering in my paper. I had
a hard time with the page limit for this essay, and I had to take away a lot of sentences
throughout my paper. This was difficult because I have a hard time seeing what could be

Leong 5

seen as redundant or what ideas are not as important as others. Cutting away sentences
was a painful process, but in the end I think it made my paper clearer and more concise.
For WP3, the day after we brainstormed ideas for our genres, I asked every one of
my friends what they thought about the project and if they had any ideas on what genre I
should create. I got a lot of interesting feedback and ideas, such as notes students pass in
class, handwritten letters, Magazine advertisements, and crossword puzzles. After hearing
about crossword puzzles, I thought of fun activities children could do and ended up
choosing to do a restaurant activity sheet for kids. Because I knew that I wanted to do an
activity sheet for kids, I chose a fun topic for my scholarly articleanimals. After searching
online for interesting new discoveries on animals, I found a really cool new discovery about
penguins and the tastes they can perceive. I thought this was really appealing, especially
because earlier this quarter I learned about gustation and taste receptors in humans in my
biology class. Once again, I was able to apply the knowledge I learned about genes, protein
receptor coding, and taste sensory and use it to help me understand the article.
Interestingly enough, I was also learning about species trees in my Ecology and Evolution
class, which were also included in the article.
I created my genres and then looked at the prompt and began writing my paper. I
looked at the prompt and tried to answer all of the questions, and I looked through the
readings and tried to see if I could apply any of the things we talked about in class from
McCloud or Losh and Alexander. I was really surprised when I found them so easily; they
almost jumped out at me. The readings and the points in my essay immediately clickedI
would look at an important term from McCloud and say hey! I used that in my genre and
talked about that in my essay! And then I would have a defined word for the particular

Leong 6

move I made, and I supported my move with textual evidence from my genre and
quotes from the McCloud essay.
I believe that WP3 is the best out of the three writing projects I wrote. I made sure I
didnt have any page long paragraphs so that my paper was easier for my reader to take in,
I integrated quotes from class readings and quotes from the genres I created so that I had
credible support for my ideas throughout my paper, and I created topic sentences that
really introduced what I was planning on writing about, rather than vaguely mentioning
what the paragraph was about and then getting to my main point later on. These were
some of the main difficulties I had in my previous two papers, and I feel like I addressed
them much better in my third paper.
In the future, Ill hopefully be writing scientific research papers, and I plan on using
the knowledge I gained from this class. One of our main focuses in this class was analyzing
and understanding the conventions, rhetorical devices, and moves of scholarly, peer-
reviewed papers, and through the in-class discussions, activities, and papers I examined
and wrote about, I believe I have a much better understanding of how these papers work to
persuade readers.
This quarter, I wrote three unique papers and learned all about genre awareness,
conventions, moves, rhetoric, and a bunch of things in between. I think that learning
about all of these devices has had quite an impact on menow when I read an interesting
article on Facebook, I admire the parallelism of the article (and notice when there isnt), I
wonder about who the target audience for the article is, and I enjoy recognizing a specific
convention that I hadnt thought of before. These are all things I never would have thought
to do before. All in all, Writing 2 was quite the journey.

Leong 7

Works Cited
Boyd, Janet. "Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. By
Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 2. Anderson, South Carolina.: Parlor,
2011. N. pag. Print.
Carroll, Laura Bolin. "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis." Writing
Spaces: Readings on Writing. By Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 1. West
Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. N. pag. Print.
Dirk, Kerry. "Navigating Genres." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. West Lafayette, IN:
Parlor, 2010. N. pag. Print.