1

ENC 2135 Reflection

Sydney Littman

Florida State University

ENC 2135: Research, Genre, and Context

Ms. Natalie Patterson

April 24, 2024

 2

Introduction

After finishing the class ENC 2135, I came out of it learning so much. In high school, I

said that there was no reason to have English One through English Four classes. I usually learned

the same things every year, and nothing new. Going into this class, I was pessimistic. I thought it

was going to be just like high school. Without this class though, I would’ve continued to write

poorer than I do now. This class showed me subjects I would’ve otherwise wished I knew.

Rhetorical Strategies

At the start of this class, I had little to no knowledge about rhetorical strategies. For

example, using the three rhetorical appeals. Yes, I knew what ethos, logos, and pathos were, but I

didn’t quite grasp onto what they meant. It wasn’t until this class that it stuck with me. The way

we had to compose project two, analyzing rhetorical artifacts is what I think did it. Only after

seeing the rhetorical appeals being used in the real world, did I figure them out inside and out.

They say that once you learn about something, you start to see it everywhere. Now, every time I

am consuming any type of content, an article, a TikTok video, etc., I am reminded constantly that

rhetoric is everywhere. Everyone uses rhetoric every day whether they realize it or not. Whether

they are trying to persuade or inform, it’s all around us.

Genres

Similar to rhetoric, I didn’t quite understand the term genres. At first, when my teacher,

Natalie, brought up the subject of genres, I thought she was talking about book genres. These are
 3

genres such as horror, non-fiction, mystery, etc. I quickly learned though, that this genre has a

different meaning. This genre pertains to the form of writing. Some examples of genres are

articles, emails, or they can even be grocery lists.

When working on project three, that was when I fully understood that anything could

basically be a genre. This was when we had to create three genres of our own to showcase a

specific argument. One of the genres Natalie showed us was through memes. That was the exact

moment when I started to think about what other little-known things can be genres. Because of

this thought, I came up with the idea of one of my genres being a short YouTube video. I didn’t

end up going through with it though due to the process of that being too long.

Building Arguments (Specifically with our field of study)

I really enjoyed working with our major or our field of study to have something

consistent throughout the projects. It not only taught me a lot about the teacher shortage, from

my major being in education, but it helped me build arguments better. In the first and second

projects, I’d say my arguments weren’t that strong. After researching, writing the papers, and

analyzing artifacts, I feel that by my third project, I finally wrote a strong paragraph. Then after

revising my first project, I realized that part of my essay should have been included in my

argument. I made sure to change my essay title and some sentences throughout my essay to

compensate for all the research I did. Natalie encouraged me to come up with better arguments

throughout the whole semester, so I hope she thinks I improved on that if anything.
 4

Conclusion

Unlike high school, I will take all of this new knowledge from ENC 2135 and apply it to

my essays and writings in my future classes. Not only that but I will use it in any of my writing

moving forward for the rest of my life. As a future teacher, I will also use these new writing

skills and pass them on to my future students. This class has been one of my favorites out my

thirteen years of being a student.