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Evin Code
5 August 2015
ENC 2135
Erin Workman
Assignment 4
Coming into ENC 2135, my theory of writing was based off of everything I
learned my junior year of high school in my AP Language and Composition class, which
doesnt sound very reassuring. In all honesty, on the first week of class when Erin
instructed me to make a map and tumblr post depicting my Theory of writing I had no
idea what to do, but I just took a step back and considered what I usually do when I write
an essay. My initial theory was a bit vague and didnt present any strong ideals. My key
terms however were strong and I believe they are still important parts of writing and
serve to shape what an author wants to say. In developing this theory, first I would think
about what I was going to write about, usually it would be an argumentative essay so I
would think of my three main points or ideas that would be the body of the essay. Next I
would consider how I plan to engage my audience into my work through the use of
appeals, either targeting their emotion a or their logical sense with a set of facts to back
up my claim. Writing is just a form of communication between author and reader. The
author has a specific purpose for what he is writing and targets an audience. One of the
most important parts of a piece are the ideas it presents. These ideas must be portrayed
with appropriate appeals to the reader in order to engage them in the work. Another key
component of writing is the rhetoric the author chooses to use to infatuate the reader with

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his or her ideas. Furthermore, it must be properly structured with varying syntax in order
to accomplish the writers purpose.

With every assignment I worked on my theory was being unconsciously altered

along with it. My work with genre in assignment one solidified my understanding of what
exactly a genre is and its importance in writing. Then in assignment two, I began to grasp
what it meant to deliver strong claims that have been backed up by multiple sources. Not
only this but I was able to understand the role different uses of language play in multiple
rhetorical situations. Later on, in assignment three, in which more work on genre was
carried out, I saw how the portrayal of similar information in different mediums and
genres could skew the readers perception of the information that was being presented.
This was just another reminder of the importance of choosing the correct genre.

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My theory of writing has grown tremendously throughout this course. Every

assignment, journal entry, and tumblr post altered my theory in some way. The journal
entries were most influential on my theory of writing. Usually they way it worked, was I
would learn something new about writing from the journal entries and then I would
attempt to apply that to my next assignment. For example, in journal two I learned that
audience is the group of people that the author is trying to influence with their work.
Audiences can be grouped by many different classifications such as ethnicity, age,
gender, nationality and more. The author may be attempting to engage a large group of
people such as a population or a small group by using esoteric language. The author may
explicitly state the audience by addressing them directly or the author may never state the
audience, leaving it open to interpretation. Most of this knowledge of audience I drew
from Gloria Anzalduas work in How to Tame a Wild Tongue and Chris Wilchas video
The Target Shoots First. Before analyzing these two works, understanding of audience
was very different than what it is today. I learned that sometimes authors dont always go
into the writing process with an intended audience in mind. For example in Chris
Wilchas documentary he clearly stated that all he started out doing was taking a video
camera to work with him everyday and then put the tapes together to make a
documentary and the audience decided itself. Yet in Gloria Anzalduas piece she targeted
specific groups of people including ignorant Americans that dont understand her culture
and a myriad of groups of Spanish-speaking peoples, which shaped her work.

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Out of all the concepts Ive studied this semester, genre is the one I find to be
most important in my theory of writing. Entering this course, my idea of genre went
along the lines of Mystery or Non-fiction but I now know genre is much more than
just a category to place movies and books into. Much of what Ive learned on this subject
came from journal three and my work in assignment one in which I had to depict the
meaning of genre through our remediation. In Kathleen Blakes work titled Navigating
Genres, she writes, Similarities within genres help us to communicate successfully,
meaning that certain types of writing have distinct characteristics designed for
accommodating that specific situation. Dirks definition of genre explains how it is a tool
for writers to use, whereas my definition prior to this only related to identifying a piece.
Anzaldua uses genre as it is described by Dirk because she is writing with a purpose and
her tone reflects what she is trying to accomplish. Another important key term in my
theory is Reflection. Before refining and perfecting my definition of this term through
the work completed in this course, I considered reflection to be merely a thought process
of how a piece was written. Now I understand that reflection is much more than that.
Reflection is crucial for growing your skills as a writer and much more. To Kathleen
Blake, reflection is step-by-step process used to enhance writing to achieve authors full
potential. She says that reflection is a Dialectical process by which we develop and
achieve, first, specific goals for learning; second, strategies for reaching those goals; and
third, means of determining whether or not we have met those goals. According to
Yancey, following these steps of reflection will allow the author to learn from their own
working, enabling them to be their own teachers. Reflection can have different meanings
depending on the circumstances; sometimes it only refers to revisions. The different types

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of reflections identified by Yancey include Reflection-in-action, constructive reflection,
and reflection-in-person.
Looking back, it is clear to me that I have grown tremendously as a writer and a
reader as a result of this course. ENC 2135 and Erin Workman have taught me things
about aspects of writing that I hadnt even known existed going into this course. The
theory of writing that I have developed I will carry with me into every endeavour that
requires me to read or compose any work of literature. I will never be able to look at a
simple article in the newspaper without considering the rhetorical situation the author was
put in and how he used his genre to communicate a purpose.