Melson Heo
12/10/18
Shamecca Harris
English 110
Writing
I walked into an English class as an incoming Freshmen thinking about how is English form high school in comparison to college. As a high school graduate, I learned that college papers are going to be more overwhelming than high school papers. As I entered the class, I was asked to keep in mind of the theory of writing. At first glance of the term, I said to myself, “It is just the development of writing, some writings get popular because of their greater insights”. However, these thoughts were being developed and switched around as I worked on assignments in the English composition. As I faced the end of the semester, I had to come up with an essay what I thought what was theory of writing. I realized that the theory of writing means simply the writer and how they use genre to reach out their audiences.
Writing is similar to the universe, they are both a vast space. Writing is a very expansive idea where people can express their opinions. There are no boundaries and limits to what a writing piece can be. A writing piece can be used in many ways and can be analyzed in many different ways. Here are some examples where the definition of theory of writing during my first semester as a college undergraduate student.
In the beginning of the semester, I had to choose a social issue. At first glance, the social issue could have been anything. However, as I soon to realize that the issue that I chose was going to be racism and how it prevailed all throughout U.S. society and history. This was really interested to me because I had so many ways of expressing my opinion. In addition to that, racism is really controversial so it had popular media sources where people had discussion every day. As I searching for articles for the first assignment, I had to put my knowledge of rhetorical analysis. To do a rhetorical analysis, it had several criterias. The criterias had to have a rhetorical situation, an author, an audience, a purpose, a stance, and a time (setting). With these criterias, I had to keep in mind of writing the first assignment. As soon as I completed the first assignment, I learned something valuable, that audience is an impact that the writing leaves as soon as the writing is published. Within the realms of writing, audience can be inspired or discouraged. Either way, it was the beginning for me to realize how writing can be important.
Heading towards the second assignment, it was when I played the role of the author. Since I based on the topic of racism, I had to argue an opinion and support it through the provision of open media sources and scholarly articles. With these sources, I had to provide a research paper that explained my thesis statement. I had to maintain my own identity and had to reach out a certain audience. My topic for this research paper was discussing the voting rights of African Americans throughout U.S. history. For this instance, my audience for this research paper was African Americans. With this assignment, I had to develop a well-thought essay that explained and informed the reality of voting rights of African Americans and other minorities. As I was wrapping up this essay, I had to rethink about the theory of writing once more. Realizing that my definition was different from before, it was time to truly think about the theory of writing.
With the final assignment, I had to use two genres to convey a message to a certain audience. The two genres that I chose were art and poetry. With these two genres, I had to establish a point. Similar to the research paper, I developed points that revolve around racism and voting rights. However, I switched my audience to Asian Americans because oftenly, they are not discussed about it often in U.S. society. With the two genres that I came up with, I displayed my stance between the two genres. However, the importance of genre does come in to role. For instance, there is art. Art can shown to many people but the internal analysis within the art will be known to a few due to the targeted audience. From this assignment, I have learned that the theory of writing is a context, not the piece itself.
Currently now, I am typing up this assignment to indicate what theory of writing is. As
Stated in the introduction, I believe that the theory of writing is you. Authors do not choose based on other people, it is what they feel compel to write. However, writing does not end with just writing with words. It could mean any other things. An example are memes. Memes are not something that we use during professional English class. However. memes can be ways to reach out to younger audience due to its humor and younger audiences find this appealing. With a genre, authors have the ability to write as long. Within the realm of writing, it has an identity and stance. Writings do not have to agree with each other but it is where we can express our emotions and problems in the form of words to reach out to others. Writing is like a void, endless and boundless. That is my theory of writing. It is bound to change over the course of time but as long as I keep writing, there are always definitions that come with fixing or redefining.