Through WR45, a course that explores the relationship between home, family, and self, students, including myself, have done many assignments that have helped us write our final GA essay, which analyzes audience, rhetorical purpose, message, and genre conventions of a memoir excerpt. Assignments that have especially helped me include have written two drafts prior, giving and receiving peer review, “Metacognitive Reading: Anne Lamott’s ‘Shitty First Drafts,’” “Read and Evaluate: Two Student Genre-based Rhetorical Analysis essays” assignment, and a revision strategy blog post. 

 

Artifact #1

I think that the “Metacognitive Reading: Anne Lamott’s ‘Shitty First Drafts’” assignment helped me better approach the GA essay rubric section of revision and process, as well as the organization section. I specifically strengthened some student learning outcomes, like metacognitive ability and understanding that writing is a long process which requires multiple drafts. For example, the WR45 course objectives state that the student should be able to “develop a theory of writing as a recursive process through critical metacognitive reflection on their individual writing and self-definition of key terms” (course objectives, 3). Writing is a repetitive process because it requires much revision and drafting. With reading “Shitty First Drafts,” I can now see that writing is a process that requires potentially three drafts, each revised to make the essay better and eventually fulfill its purpose (Lamott, 3). Doing a metacognitive reading helped me understand that in the future, I should write multiple drafts, and it is appropriate to brain dump the first draft. This helps me see writing as a process, a part of the course objectives, so that in general, I can make my writing better by working on it over many days with new perspectives. Additionally, practicing metacognitive reading helped strengthen metacognitive reading, which allows me to better think about how I think about my writing. Ultimately, understanding how one considers their writing will make the writing stronger, which helps learn the course objective that writing a process where to improve, one should use metacognitive thinking in their writing. Understanding this course objective helps overall writing skills that can easily be applied to writing in general.

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                                                    First Draft                                                                                  Final Essay

Understanding the course objective through the assignment helped me write the GA essay because I could better write three to four drafts as I understood why I was doing it, and thinking about how I was approaching the essay helped me make better writing strategies. This reassessment helps improve writing in general. Additionally, In terms of the GA essay rubric, the assignment helps with the revision section and organization section as multiple drafts are used. 

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This learning helps me become a part of the WR45 discourse community by learning more about what the expected genre conventions of assignments are, for example, having multiple drafts and looking at writing through metacognitive reflection. It develops ethos because I write better if I have multiple drafts and reassess how I approach writing. 

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Artifact #2

The Read and Evaluate: Two Student Genre-based Rhetorical Analysis essays assignment helped me meet the GA essay rubric requirement of “purpose: genre based analysis” and “evidence and analysis,” and practice openness and persistence from the habit of mind in the course objectives (GA essay rubric 1). With the assignment, I could read through other student’s essays and get a better understanding of how they analyzed their quotes, specifically what connections they focused on. A significant portion of the essay on “The Lottery” focuses on how each quote in the essay shows a genre convention, and clearly connects the genre convention to the audience and cultural context. This made me realize that in my essay, I incorrectly assumed that the reader would understand how the quote shows the genre convention, leaving the reader potentially confused and making my argument weaker. Thus, I went back and fixed my essay to show how the quote shows the genre convention and how the genre convention shows the message, fulfilling the “purpose: genre based analysis” and the “evidence and analysis” portion of the rubric which focus on analysis explaining genre conventions and how it shows the message. 

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                                                           Original Essay without Genre Convention Explanation 

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                                                                  Final Essay with Genre Convention Explanation 

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With the assignment, I have further developed two habits of mind, openness and persistence. At first, I was confident that my analysis in my first draft was very effective in answering the prompt, but after reading the two essays in the assignment, I realized that I should not have been that sure and considered other perspectives when writing my first draft. This reminded me to be open to new approaches in doing things. Additionally, it was boring to read some parts of the essays, but I decided that I would practice endurance to finish the work quicker. It reminded to be persistent in reading, which will increase endurance in the long term. 

With this assignment, I can be a better critical writer by understanding that analysis should effectively dissect the quote and connect this to the analysis. This can be applied in lots of academic argumentative essays to make it stronger. 

With doing this assignment, I could become a more active member in the academic discourse community because I better understand how to write analysis for a rhetorical analysis essay, thus I can give more productive peer review to others and engage in more fruitful conversation for the class. 

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Artifact #3 

Before and after of intro para, no analysis between quotes vs with analysis between quotes 

Writing the Revision Strategy Blog for week 6 helped me narrow down what I should focus on improving in my final essay. For example, beyond the most important things to fix, the blog reminded me to fix my introduction paragraph by having analysis between two consecutive quotes that explained the two genres I was analyzing. For example, after paraphrasing Silverman to explain what the memoir genre is, I paraphrased Payette to explain the coming of age genre. However, after looking at the blog, I added a sentence to explain and connect the two paraphrases, “Memoir is an important fiction genre, and authors utilize it to tell their story in an impactful way” (GA essay). Thus I better incorporated the GA essay rubric section, “source integration” by properly using quotes in the essay to not overpower my own writing with someone else's. This avoided accidental patch writing. However, after recently reviewing this, I believe that I could have made the analysis stronger and less vague. This shows how writing is a process that requires lots of revision. 

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                                                                          Original Accidental Patchwriting

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                                                                      No Patchwriting: Analysis Between Quotes

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In addition, the blog reminded me that I should talk about the relationship between the two genre conventions in how they worked together, independently, or somewhere in the middle, to show the message and rhetorical purpose. Thus I better incorporated the GA essay rubric section, “evidence and analysis,” which says that the relationship between the genre conventions can be explained in the analysis to add complexity. This makes the essay more complete by looking at the big picture of how the two main components work together to fulfill their purpose. 

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Writing this blog post, I can apply what I learned about looking at the big picture in building my argument, or apply what I learned about patch writing, to any other genre of writing. Looking at details and at the bigger picture in any type of academic writing is important to building a good argument as it makes a complete argument. Avoiding patch writing is important in avoiding plagiarism and showing academic integrity. 

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Strengthening the two skills from the blog post, I have better academic ethos because I can be seen as a more reliable source who can write more complex arguments, and have academic integrity. It is impossible to have “full” ethos as a writer, as no one is capable of knowing everything, so some things that I can still improve on in developing ethos is considering more viewpoints in developing my thesis to make it closer to being correct. The blog has also allowed me to be a better part of the discourse community by establishing improved ethos. 

 

Artifact #4 

From giving peer review, I realized that I should explain the two memoirs in my introduction paragraph because many other students did this in their essay, and it would help clarify essay concepts to the reader. This would give background to the reader so that they can better understand the genre conventions I would later explain, thus my argument which is based on genre conventions of these two memoirs. For example, when working on my next draft, I added “Memoir uses a story structure similar to fiction, but is still based on the true accounts of a person’s life (Silverman)” and “The coming of age genre is a story about someone becoming an adult and facing new realities of this world, especially when the person has faced significant hardships (Payette)” to explain memoir and coming of age in my introduction paragraph. In general, I can apply this concept of first explaining what the reader may not know to other essays. This helped me meet the GA Essay Rubric section, Organization, because I organized the essay more effectively for the reader. 

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I received Ngan Nguyen’s comment on my first GA essay draft, “When reading I understood her personal desires, but not much of external expectations.” Ngan is saying that there is a coming of age convention, personal desire vs external expectations, but I do not clearly relate the quote to the latter part of the convention. So, I incorporated this because my thesis is partially focusing on genre conventions, not just message. I could also better meet the rubric section, Thesis and Argument, because my analysis is “framed within the argument” (GA Essay Rubric). In the future, I can apply this to other essays by double checking that I prove all parts of my thesis. 

In general, receiving peer review helps one become more of a critical thinker because they practice considering if the peer reviewer was correct or not. If one makes a mistake in following incorrect peer review, then they can make their essay worse. Giving peer review can inspire ideas that one can use in their essay. 

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                                                                                No Connection to Convention 

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                                                                                       Connection to Quote

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Conclusion #1

My GA essay’s main message is using coming of age and memoir genre conventions allows Grande to show that abandonment is a cycle, and with this message, Grande hopes that The Lunch Ticket readers can vote pro-immigrant so that families are not more likely to be in this cycle of abandonment. 

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Through writing this essay, I feel that I have been able to better write analysis on literature because I can now relate the message to the audience. Beforehand, I wrote essays that focused on message or audience, but I did not focus on connecting the two in the same essay.

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Now, I can write more comprehensive essays. However, I think that I should also be careful in connecting message to audience, because it is easy to incorrectly assume what the author actually wants the audience to do based on the message. Thus, this would require more research and critical thinking. Additionally, I learned that in a shorter essay, the writer should not summarize their main points in their conclusion paragraph, instead, they can elaborate on an idea that is not talked about much in the essay, or talk about the significance of the main argument. 

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I may have not fully met the MLA Format and Documentation Style requirement because I was unsure on how to reference certain sources in my Works Cited page. For example, I cited the Sue Silverman article as follows, “Silverman, Sue William. “The Meandering River: An Overview of the Subgenres of Creative Nonfiction.” Writer’s Chronicle Features Archive, Sept 2008, pg. 4” (“What’s its Purpose? Genre Conventions Influencing Voting and Emotional Cycles”). However, I was not completely sure if the publisher was Writer’s Chronicle Features Archive, and was not sure of the publisher for another article that I used. Additionally, I did not completely meet the Source Integration section because I used a weak sentence between two consecutive quotes that explained two different genres. The sentence between them should have had more analysis on the significance of these two genres to better greater them in the essay. 

Beyond that, my GA essay met all the other rubric sections because I analyzed the three main parts of the essay, audience, message, and genre conventions, had effective quotes and analysis, met the world requirement, and used academic writing. 

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The GA essay was strong because it completed the main task effectively, explaining the connection between message, genre conventions, and audience. For example, I used textual evidence to explain how it used the genre conventions, which I then used to show the message. Then, I used the message to explain how the author wanted the audience to react a certain way. Weaknesses, as stated above, would be having stronger analysis between my quotes and a potentially more accurate citation page. 

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Artifact #1

Memoirs have a genre convention of using fictional elements like setting, dialogue, imagery, and beyond, whereas academic essays like the GA essay utilize the genre conventions of structure. Because memoir is an account of a story, it does have story elements, which flow differently throughout the essay. Using different structures from these fictional elements can make the writing more creative and interesting for the reader as well. However the GA essay uses structure as a genre convection. Structure makes it easy to follow a logical argument, where the thesis is proven with chains of  evidence and analysis that build on one another. 

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                                                                                    Structure from Evidence and Analysis

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                                                                                       Setting Without Structure

My memoir’s audience, Narratively readers, expect to read stories that celebrate humanity. However, without an image that the reader can rely on, it is harder to follow along what's happening, and the events feel less real, the opposite effect of what is wanted. The GA essay, however, is read by an academic scholarly classroom audience that wants to explore the truth. Creating an understandable argument using structure is effective here because it makes it easier for the audience to consider the author’s argument. 

The memoir convention helps show the story’s message more creatively. In writing, the author tries to explain things through figurative language or actions as opposed to directly stating the message. Thus, the genre convention of using fictional elements allows the message to be creatively told. In the GA essay, the genre convection of structure allows the GA essay thesis to be proven because a repeated and apprehensive structure allows the reader to easily follow the development of the thesis. 

From this comparison, I learned that even though different genres have a purpose, this purpose varies. For example, the memoir’s purpose is more of a life lesson, and the GA essay’s purpose is an analytical logical argument. 

 

Artifact #2

Memoirs use 1st person, while academic essays like the GA essay utilizes 3rd person. A memoir is when someone tells a part of their story, so using 1st person is integral because the writer themselves can tell their own story. It is expected that their biases are shown, because the purpose of the memoir is to know their biased account, to get their side of the story. In the GA essay, 3rd person helps build a necessary ethos of the writer. Ethos means that the writer can be trusted to give information, meaning that they should be objective. They should not use I statements because they would be bringing in their own opinions into the writing. 

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                                                                             Objective Point of View in GA Essay

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                                                                          First Person Point of View in Memoir

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The use of these two different genre conventions help reach my memoir’s Narratively audience, and the GA essay’s academic discourse community. For example, in my memoir, the Narratively audience wants to read diverse perspectives to celebrate humanity and learn more about the world. They are seeking different people’s opinions, thus, the first person point of view is appropriate. However, the GA essay’s audience is an academic and scholarly community that wants to explore more logical ideas based on evidence. Thus, using the third person is appropriate in presenting objective evidence based information. 

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The use of 1st person in the memoir also helped effectively tell a message for a story. For example, using 1st person allows the reader to actually read a story as opposed to evidence or a logical chain of thoughts. Thus, they can see what worked well in their story, and find out the message from that. Using 3rd person in the GA essay helped create a thesis driven argument throughout the paper because with the 3rd person, evidence was used throughout the essay to show logical objective arguments. 

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Overall, from this comparison, I learned the importance of genre conventions to cater to different purposes. Each are effective in doing different things, so it is important to use the correct genre conventions. 

 

Final Reflection 

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It is important to identify a text’s genre because the reader can then know what to expect from the writing piece, what sort of structure, if any, it may follow, and if this is something that the reader wants to read. It is important to identify genre conventions because it makes the writing piece stronger. Genre conventions are used because each genre has a different audience and purpose, so different techniques or conventions are more effective in catering to these differences.

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I think that the concept of genre and genre convention will help prepare for different kinds of writing outside of WR45. At the University of California, Irvine, I will have more writing courses, social studies classes, math classes, and science classes. Each subject adheres to different conventions, and different teachers may ask for a few variations in the actual genre connections expected. For example, I have already seen that in my writing courses in the past and present, I use the MLA 8 citation style, whereas in other humanities courses like a social policy and public service class, I have to use APA 7 citations. This difference may be due to the nature of research in the different subjects, and how best to account for acknowledgment with these different sources. 

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Outside of UCI, when finding out how to do certain types of writing for my job, or potentially writing customer service complaints will require me to research which genre is most effective in achieving my goal. Then, I will have to adhere to the genre conventions and perhaps stray from some of them to create an effective piece.

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