Rhetorical Knowledge

I believe that the most important aspect in writing a paper is to make sure that you address your target audience on their level by using information that is relevant to them in order to keep them interested.  Addressing an audience can be difficult if you do not know who your audience is going to be; by providing counter points of view, you can appeal to different perspectives.  It is important to keep your readers' interest by getting to the point and not rambling off meaningless, irrelevant facts which could cause readers to lose interest.  I enjoy reading blogs because their authors type whatever they are thinking, freely expressing their opinions.  On a blog, you can be blunt and straightforward without worrying if what you are typing is right or wrong.  Not only is it is interesting to read blogs, it is convenient to reply to comments.  I find that it is easier to understand a blog writer's emotional response to a topic because of the writer's freedom in expressing their views in the blogs.  My research has been extremely informative and relevant to the topic this semester, but one thing that I regret not adding to unit 1 is the growth in green jobs over the next decade.  Green opportunities in the job market have been growing; this fact was relevant to my topic but I was already over the 2500 word limit.

Composing Process

My most useful technique when composing an essay is something I call brainstorming.  On the day that I get an assignment, I open a blank Word document and just freely type my thoughts on the topic for about 5-10 minutes, doing this 2-3 times a day until I feel as though I have enough information to create an informative essay.  In between typing my thoughts, I get ideas that I feel are important to my essay; usually by day three, I am ready to research the topics that I have brainstormed in more detail.  It is a process similar to marinating a steak—the longer it soaks, the better it tastes.  Peer reviews are useful in that they provide different perspective; they gave me ideas and styles that I didn't previously think about.  Feedback from my peers provided some great ideas to expand my essay, as well as ways to link paragraphs better to improve the flow of the subject matter.  I added photos to some of my blogs and essays, but it was frustrating because the images would not stay centered.  Images appeared to be in the center of the paper but when I would hit save, they would become off-centered and look unorganized. 

A good habit that I developed this semester was time-management.  Instead of waiting until the last day to finish my essays, I would complete my work a few days early, thus giving myself time to add something or subtract something from it.  It also allowed me to look at my work with fresh eyes because every time I would read it, I would find careless mistakes not seen before.

Conventions

When writing sentences, I tend to ramble on, ending up with an extremely long sentence.  In the future, I am going to focus on being more concise and break sentences up with commas or periods so that my essays flow smoothly.  I also tend to forget what tense I am writing in, jumping from present to past tenses without noticing.  One way to fix this problem is by putting the essay away for a while and then coming back with fresh eyes.  I am more productive with proofreading and catching the little mistakes that I didn't notice before. 

For documentation on Unit 1, I cited websites at the end of my essay in the order of the information used.  The only genre I had difficulty with during the first half of the semester was our very first assignment.  Trying to find a song that reflected me was tough.  I wanted to use something different than everybody else, which is why I found the Tom Petty song.  I had to make my lyrics informative and flow with the song, which was difficult.  When I finally finished, I thought that it was pretty good, but I probably spent more time than I should have on that assignment.

Writing Technologies

Using digital technologies for this class has been beneficial because they help with grammar through spell check, and with vocabulary through the thesaurus. When in the brainstorming phase, I can just minimize my essay and surf the Web to look for supplemental information and ideas to address in my essay.  I cannot think of any negative ways that digital technologies can affect our class, other than perhaps hurting our eyes!  The wiki is user-friendly, provides an easy way to communicate with each other, and reduces the consumption of paper.