Sarpong 1

Kwabena Sapong
Professor Batty
UWRT 1101
27 November 2015
Final Reflection
When I first started writing in this class I thought it was going to be like a standard high school
class. I thought we would follow the basic format of an introduction paragraph with your thesis
followed by your three body paragraphs and a conclusion paragraph where you state your
introduction paragraph again, but you rephrase it.
This class emphasizes that you do not have to follow the classic/basic 5 paragraph essay paper
rule. If I were to teach this class, which I couldnt/ wouldnt do ever, I wouldnt change one
thing from the way that it has been taught to me throughout the semester. This class also teaches
you how to be yourself when you are writing; I never learned this in high school.
The one thing I surprisingly liked was the readings from the writers guide book. It didnt just
blindly state writing facts. My favorite two chapters were about structure and style. The structure
chapter talked about how everyone follows a five paragraph essay format and how it is
unnecessary and quite frankly makes for a boring paper to read. The style chapter was about how
there are basic styles people write in; high, mid, and low style. High style refers to scholarly
papers, mid style is what the average school assignment is written (like this paper), and low style
is how you text your friends It would state a fact and give some reasoning and examples to help
further its point. I disliked every other assigned reading because I think it did not help progress

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my writing skills. I have nothing against the other assigned readings because they did a good job
of explaining, but I enjoyed reading the writers guide book way more.
I personally believe that my writing has improved from the end of senior year of high school to
the end of my first semester in college. I think that I have improved because I was able to take
more risk and was not forced to conform to the 5 paragraph rule. For my genre major assignment
we had to pick a topic and write about it to two different, specific groups of people. My topic
was the two minute drill, a type of hurry-up offense used to score a touchdown or field goal in
the final two minutes of each half while leaving the other team virtually no time left to score
(used in American football). My two audiences were high school football players and I was the
coach presenting a power point on how our team was going to run our two minute offense. My
second specific group were people who read sports illustrated and read this weeks article about
the Carolina Panthers and how they used the two minute drill to win the game. At first I was
going to do a video about how the two minute drill is supposed to be ran =, but then I realized
that I do not have the skills or actors to make this video, so I choose to do the sports illustrated
article because I cannot watch all the football games and sometimes they do not have the video
ready when I have to watch it, so I usually read a summary of the game. This is why I chose this
as my backup. I added pictures and a header to make it more like a real news article that you
would read online. I decided to make a power point because I played football in high school and
our offensive coordinator and head coach created a power point on how they wanted us to
execute our two minute drill. So when I found out we could choose our topic I knew this was a
good choice because I have learned first-hand. I also added commentary in the notes part of the
power point because that is what the coach would verbally be saying while the presentation was
going on.

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I learned that purpose, genre and audience all go together when creating literature. Purpose is
why you are writing what it is that youre writing. Audience is who you are writing to and it
doesnt have to be one type; there are primary and secondary audiences as well. Primary
audience is who your work is originally for, so in my sports illustrated article my primary
audience are Carolina Panther fans. Secondary audience relates to people who have similar
interest to the topic, so in my example a secondary audience could be people who read Sports
illustrated. When I first heard genre I only thought the word was associated with movies, such as
comedy, action, horror, documentary, etc. I did not think it was associated with comic books,
power points, excel-spreadsheet, non-fiction books, flip books, etc.
Now that I have learned about purpose, genre and audience, I now know that I do not need the 5
paragraph rule every time I need to tell someone something. Sometimes shorter is better.
Because I know about audience, I know when it is appropriate to use high, mid or low style of
writing. This is going to help me in the working world because the way you talk to your friends,
co-worker and boss can all vary. Since I am planning to be an accountant when I graduate, I do
not picture myself writing in essay format. I picture myself writing very straight forward to my
co-workers or boss. I wouldnt write Stacy McCluster went to Macys to see if she could find
that cute little sweater for her nephew for Christmas, but when she arrived they were all sold out.
She was so upset. She remembered that Belk also has the same sweater, but in a mint green
color. She found the sweater at Belk and it only costed her $35.34. I would just input Stacy
McCluster accounts payable $35.34. and move on with my next entry. I will prepare for this by
using the right type of jargon, so that my co-worker can clearly understand what I am trying to
say.

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When I first read this question, my immediate response was no I am not a writer nor do I want
to be one, but when you look up the definition of a writer you get a person who has written a
particular text. The writer of a letter. If you were to only read the first sentence then I would say
I am not a writer, but since it gives us an example saying the writer of a letter then I would
consider myself as a writer. I would consider every little kid who has written a letter to Santa
Claus is a writer. Just because you do not write for a living does not define you as a non-writer.
My writing process starts off with my brainstorming ideas for me to write about. Once think of
five I select one to write about. The one I choose does not necessarily have to be my favorite
topic, however, it is the one I feel I know the most about and I know I can write the most about.
My favorite classroom activity is a two way tie. The first one was when we were working on
audience everyone had to write there two topics on the board and whichever one was hit the
person would have to explain what it means and each table had to come up with a clever
secondary audience that would be interested in this topic. The team with the cleverest audience
would get a point. I enjoyed this because it helped explain that audiences are not a limited as you
would think; there are a lot of different and wacky ones. The second classroom activity that I
enjoyed was when we were speed dating. We lined up our chairs, so that each person has
someone directly in front of them and we presented our e-portfolios to them. I liked this because
we got to bounce ideas off of one another. If we liked someones idea we could incorporate it
into our own e-portfolio and after saying our ideas out loud we could figure out if it was actually
a good idea or not. The reason why I liked these two class assignments was because I actually
got to talk with people in my class and learn a little about them. The one classroom assignment I
did not like was when we had to write in white font. I didnt like this because I could not
remember what I wrote. I also like to refer to my previous sentence to build my next sentence.

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The one main thing I am going to take away from this class is that writing does not have to be
black and white. You can write with color and still get a good grade and have fun with the
writing assignment. This new found knowledge is going to carry over to UWRT1102 and for the
rest of my life.