Alfred Du
ENGL 11000
Professor Naomi Pierre
20 December 2019
Theory of writing is different for everyone. I like to compare my theory of writing to a car with limited amount of gas. When you are on a full tank of gas you don’t have to worry about being stranded in the middle of the road. With a full tank of gas, you can continue and reach your destination you had set from the start. During this time, there seems to be too much running thoughts and ideas, but no real grasp on them. However, I think running out of gas can sometimes be a good thing because you are forced to stop and therefore you are able to concentrate and formulate and put together ideas. Being stranded allows you more time to brainstorm and to perfect the idea. Also, being stranded means that it is a chance to ask for help from people driving by. Eventually someone will stop to help you and you will be back on the road to your destination.
As most students, I wrote because it was merely an assignment that needed to be finished. I was taught to always support my evidence with facts. But by the end of the semester, I learned that there should be more to writing- like having a purpose. Each essay that we did, we focused on rhetorical elements—such as audience, stance, medium, language, and more. One of our first essays was a source-based essay followed by an inquiry-based essay. Each one of these emphasized the importance of the audience. Delivering a message to our audience effectively was the ultimate goal. Also finding reliable scholarly sources was something new to me. There are endless number of sources online, in books, and other medias, but choosing the correct and most reliable one was important. After that, we learned about composing in different genres such as magazines and websites. The writing styles of magazines and websites were different from essay-based writing. Each of the genre focused on different topics. For the magazine, I chose to do about influential civil rights leaders. The emphasis on the magazine was to inform people about the history of African Americans and their struggles. The other genre was a website where I took other people’s stories and lessons that they learned throughout life and shined a light on it. The website essentially was about what we could take away from other people’s lessons in life as readers.
The first essay which was the source-based essay, contributed to my theory of writing the most. During this time, I learned so much as to why people write. It also may be the fact that it was the first type of essay we did in class. After writing this essay, we had to continuously use some features from the source-based essay as an outline for our other essays. This type of essay was completely new to me and made me reflect on the other writings I had done before this course. I learned how to search for scholarly and reputable sources and how to incorporate them into my essay. Also learning to cite my sources and writing in MLA format was new to me. Nonetheless, I struggled, learned, and improved lot in this course. I preferred in-person lectures over the online course part of this class because I was able to hear other people’s feedback which led me to improve my writing. It also gave me a clearer idea as to what my writing should be about. Receiving feedback from my partner in class was useful as I tried to perceive and understand their way of thought. My partner gave me pointers to include more textual evidence and etc. Lastly, being able to look at sample essays and outlines was really helpful to me. I was able to understand their way of writing and how they delivered their message.
My theory of writing helped me to gain more insightful knowledge on writing and reading. I was able to construct a well, thought-out thesis with factual evidence to support it. Having a strong thesis is critical because it highlights the main points of the essay and conveys a message to the reader. Thus, I was able to read about a topic, formulate an opinion, and explain the reason for my stance on the subject. The thesis was something I could always refer back to and stick with in order to build more evidence and support.
My theory of writing can both be applied in and out of the classroom. Throughout this course I have learned the purpose of writing and why people write. Most importantly, everyone writes because there is a meaning to it. For an example, their writings can be descriptive, persuasive, or informative. But like all writings, they are trying to send messages to the readers. My theory of writing allowed me to better understand readings from other classes and how to incorporate what I’ve learned in this class for other essays. For the other essays, I would need to use primary sources and reliable sources as evidence for my thesis. I also had to cite my sources and write in a certain format in other classes, which I learned through this class. For me, I chose to do an essay for my theory of writing because I felt that it allows me to express myself better through this style of writing. The outcome will be different compared to something like a letter. A letter is more personal in my opinion and people are more likely to grasp my reflection through an essay.
