Taylor 1

Drew Taylor
Instructor Keaton
ENC2135-07
5 August 2016
Reflection on the Courses Key Terms
The first and most important term we discussed in class was the word genre. Our first
class we were asked what we think genre is for our writing into the day. My definition was that it
had to do with how a book makes you feel (Taylor 1). Now after taking the class I believe I have
a better idea of what genre is. A genre is a group of compositions that share the same medium,
purpose, and rules. Genre is how compositions are sorted into their categories, sharing many of
the same conventions in their creation. For our first project into the course we had to write about
genre pretty extensively and give our own definition. My definition was from the Brief McGrawHill Handbook and it said Genre simply means a type of writing (Maimon, Peritz, and Yancey
9). But I also elaborated saying how you have to take genre conventions and the rhetorical
situation into account (Taylor 1). I had to learn that a genre is more specific than just saying
horror for example, you would say horror movie, horror novel, etc. Thats where the medium
takes into account because an adventure movie could have very different conventions than an
adventure novel. For instance, an adventure movie would have very attractive visuals and often
times a catchy soundtrack to go with it but the novel would have to use imagery. In project 3 we
actually had to use different genres than an academic essay to teach about genre itself, which was
a very different experience because most of the genre we covered in the class was some sort of
writing. Using a different genre tested our knowledge about genre because we actually had to
consider our audience and our purpose before choosing a way to teach genre. If we used a genre
but didnt follow many of the conventions, we were most likely told about it to fix it for our later
draft. My website initially didnt have much, the only thing that was there for it to be considered
a website was that it was online (Taylor). Of course for my final draft it will have more of the
common website conventions: links, pictures, web page movements, etc. A lot of my learning
about genre went through failure and revisions. When I said something about genre or did
something wrong I was told and it just furthered my definition of genre. Even today I learned
more about genre; I got my review of my project 3 and was told that my website should be more
like an actual website by using different pages and more fun stuff (Keaton). Genre and its
conventions work in a parallel in that when a new genre is created and popularized, the genre
conventions are also created and adapted to how the genre is going. The conventions also
determine how future compositions are created and that in turn affects how the genre is. My
knowledge on genre went from a very narrow view just about books to all compositions in
general.

Taylor 2

Another major term used in the course was research. Going into the class I never really
used research for big projects so I didnt have a very in depth spectrum of knowledge about
research. We did a tableau for research before we had actually discussed research so my mindset
was very similar to the beginning of class. My body position was supposed to be me looking like
I am thinking which was what I thought research was; research was thinking about something
(Tableau). Now, after doing a project directly about research and doing this paper you have to
research your prior papers and texts to write about these terms, I feel like I can come up with a
pretty accurate definition of research. Researching is the act of finding new information that is
substantial to your current interest. Research is the aggregate of the information that pertains to
your subject, new or old. The fact that research is the mass of knowledge came from the website
we used to find research through FSU (https://www.lib.fsu.edu). We were taught about research
where a lot of it takes place, the library. We were shown how to search through a database and
through the library. We had to have at least 10 sources about your topic and one interview.
Before the class I probably would not have considered an interview a form of research but an
interview is an accumulation of information, just through another person. I would say the paper
itself was the biggest help about teaching us about research, we actually had to go out and find
information about our community (Taylor). While defining the term research can be important,
how to research is a much more important issue. I may never discuss the definition of research
again but I will undoubtedly use research many more times in my future. My community I
discussed in project 2 was the engineering community which as a whole uses research as much
as the next profession. For my major, chemical engineering, I will definitely have to research
already existing chemicals and chemical reactions while researching the inventions as well. We
also got a handout that gives us more information for when we are researching, how to research
(Keaton). My definition of research came from my previous knowledge about research but was
refined to cover the different ways of research. You can research through the internet, the library,
through an interview, or you can go to the primary source yourself. It is used much less
nowadays with the internet and how fast you can get information but actually learning and
researching yourself gives you valuable and credible information that you cant get from a lot of
secondary sources. I also learned about primary and secondary sources, and their relevance in
todays research through a PowerPoint from Megan Keaton (). The major difference in my
knowledge about research from the beginning of the course to now has to do with how to
research, and how to find sources. A source found straight from google can often times be
misleading, but a source found through one of FSUs databases is more likely to hold credible
information. Research is important when you have an opinion and need to back it up or when
you need information in general to form an opinion.
The third term I found most useful from this class was the rhetorical situation. Genre is a
part of the rhetorical situation and you can find an appropriate genre using the other parts to
rhetorical situation. For my first essay I made notes to myself about what rhetorical situation
saying that its all considerations the author takes into account (Taylor 1). While I believe that
definition is true I would go into more detail about rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation is

Taylor 3

the audience, purpose, context, stance, genre, and the medium of the text. A rhetorical situation is
reason our audience is who he/she is, and why our purpose is to The reason I thought
rhetorical situation was the other important term is because every composition has a rhetorical
situation, and its often why we choose a certain genre. For project 3 the context was that we
werent allowed to use the genre academic paper, so we had to take that into account and find the
next best genre for our purpose of teaching genre. The audience also was taken into account
because my audience was my roommate, I was not going to write him a childrens book. You
have to take the situation into account every time you make a composition but often times we
arent consciously going through the rhetorical situation. Learning about rhetorical situation is
helpful because it can lead us to make better decisions when creating a composition. On our first
essay I didnt actually think about the situation and thinking about the purpose and context of
that paper would have helped me write it. Before I learned about how to go through the steps I
often considered who the audience was in order to make the best paper. The rhetorical situation is
not only for writing; it can be used for all compositions. In our weekly tweets we have to use
rhetorical situations, for example our audience is both our peers and our teacher so a tweet
should try to be entertaining if you are considering your peers as your audience, but because the
teacher is also an audience we shouldnt use too much profanity or shouldnt bash the class
without a good reason. In one of my tweets I questioned the short assignment because it was
actually 900 words (Taylor). My purpose of the tweet was to be sarcastic and the short
assignment was the context. The medium is also important for your genre because a text and a
letter both have similar purposes and contexts but the phone can send it much faster than a paper
letter. An essay about politics with the same purpose, context, medium, and audience could look
wildly different depending on if you are liberal or conservative. The stance is important because
it is your opinion on the matter. All of the parts of the rhetorical situation are important in
affecting your final product. All of my papers have had a rhetorical situation but it wasnt until
project 3 that I actually considered each part of the situation to make a better genre.