Dear Professor Tumen,

Prior to entering Writing 2, I rarely considered genre when reading or watching content,
whether it be in my day to day life or in academics. At the beginning of the quarter, when we
were instructed to make a collage about our lives and later a ransom letter about the content of
the collage, I quickly learned how genres can be transformed into one another. As I struggled to
translate complex academic text from my scholarly article into an easy-to-understand
infographic, I thought back to my collage. If an “About Me!” collage can be translated to a
threatening ransom letter, surely I could find ways to simplify the text from the article and put it
towards educating a different audience. This process happened quite frequently for me in this
course—the smaller activities and project builders helped pave the way for working on both
Writing Projects. By the time I began to work on my Writing Project 2, the challenging parts,
like researching and summarizing my sources, were already done through Project Builders 3 and
4. Although the reason I had already completed them was because they were assigned to me,
doing the Project Builders showed me the importance of splitting up large projects into smaller
tasks. My writing process, at least with Writing Projects 1 and 2, started with reading rhetorically
and pulling out the important parts of the text to incorporate into the projects. After this, I
organized the information into categories in order to rephrase and reorganize it. Then, I outlined
my project and began writing or designing it. To further improve, I would like to develop better
reading strategies to be able to read and study more effectively. I also want to improve my
revision strategies, since I still struggle with undergoing significant revisions with my writing.
My personal writing style involves speaking and writing in a casual, yet informative tone.
Especially with the intended audiences of my Writing Projects being the general public through
an infographic or students my age through a blog post, I learned to write in a manner that comes
off as relaxed and informal. At the same time, I still employed proper grammar, organization, and
clear writing to maintain credibility in my writing. With Writing Project 1, I wrote several short
lengths of text in order to not overwhelm my audience, which was the general public or anyone
without prior knowledge on the subject. I also needed to stay relatively informal in order to make
the infographic engaging to avoid sounding too boring or scientific. As for Writing Project 2,
being informal was important in order to engage with my audience, which was my peers, other
new college students. Since I was speaking to my peers, it was important for me to avoid talking
down to them or being patronizing, as I wanted to sound like I was giving a friend academic
advice. Though both of my translations were much less formal or professional than the academic
articles I referenced to create them, they were necessary choices in order to appeal to my
audience and produce engaging content.
My Writing Project 1 was an educational infographic discussing malpractice in penguin
research, since researchers were using flipper-bands on penguins to gather data, despite it
harming them. Because the genre was infographic, the audience’s engagement with my
translation relied heavily on visuals. For this reason I rearranged the images, texts, graph, and
flow chart several times until I settled on an arrangement that could convey information the
fastest. I ultimately moved the images of the flipper-banded penguins to the top, which helped
the audience see exactly what I was talking about. Immediately after looking at the image, the
audience’s eyes move to the blurb of text describing flipper-bands and why they’re used. Next,
they’re informed about why they are harmful. I originally had a flow chart at the bottom of the
infographic, but I edited the visuals on it and then moved it to be in the center to garner the most
attention. As for changing the text, one of the best pieces of feedback I received was to try and
clear my mind before reviewing my infographic and pretend I know nothing about the subject.
Doing this helped me figure out which parts of the text were confusing and needed to be cut
down. Once I did this, I reworded the confusing parts of my writing and cut out unnecessary
phrases. Finally, my original infographic seemed to leave the audience hanging without a real “so
what?” or reason to care. So, I added a more serious section at the bottom explaining why the
topic is important and people should care.
My Writing Project 2 was a blog post discussing why academic reading is important for
students and how we can improve our skills as readers. The biggest fault I found in my blog post
was that it was too wordy, especially for students who want to get to the point quickly. I used up
a lot of words simply citing my sources in the text, which wasn’t necessary for the audience to
see anyway. However, I still hyperlinked my sources in case they did want to reference them. I
also realized that reading my blog post seemed like reading an article, when I wanted it to come
off as personal, like a conversation with a friend. So, I added in more casual, friendly phrases
such as “I know we’re all guilty of this!” and using “we” instead of “students” to bring out that I
too am a student looking to improve my writing. This aspect of blog writing is important, since it
makes the author more relatable and engaging.
My portfolio reflects on what I have learned about genre conventions throughout Writing
2 this quarter. Prior to this course, I never thought about different genres and how relevant they
are beyond just academia, but in our regular lives. I learned to read academic sources and
identify the most important information, in addition to the steps to translate it into another genre
to convey it to a different audience. After pulling out the key points, I figured out how to
reorganize the information and phrase it in a more casual or conversational manner in order to
speak to a more general audience than just other scholars. As I approach new writing projects, I
will read rhetorically and focus on having conversations with the text as opposed to just reading
to memorize it. Once I get to the writing stage, I will be able to outline what I want to say by
splitting up the project into smaller tasks.
When I first entered Writing 2, I had no idea I would be translating genres and come out
of the class with new rhetorical reading strategies and strong writing habits. Thank you for this
positive learning experience!

Sincerely,
Amelie Machatzke