Naveen Thomas 

Prof. McDonald 

Engl 11000 

12/04/19 

Theory of Writing  

What is theory of writing? Before I came to this class, I didn’t know what my theory of writing was. Throughout High School, I just wrote my essays without thought about how I worked towards the final product. These essays were normally just argumentative essays. Now, I have taken notice of my process towards an essay while completing the Source Based, Inquiry, and the Composition in Two Genres assignments. My theory of writing includes figuring out the audience, setting goals for what I want to portray to readers, jotting down ideas/evidence, researching credible sources, and revising the final product. Some of my assignments are different from each other in the sense that they do not express my theory clearly, however, it still follows this process. Also, these assignments had differences in the process in which they are not consistent throughout all my essays. In two of the three assignments, I gave information behind the source which includes the author and organization/website. While in the last assignment, I did not do this. The most important part of my main theory, that has developed during this semester, has been identifying the audience in general. From the first assignment, I understood how important it was to identify the audience since it dictates how the writer should portray evidence or the connections to it. It gives the writer more of a guide to follow.  I have used this theory/process in my assignments in this class and a little bit for my final assignment in my Jazz class. I will demonstrate how parts of this theory are included throughout my assignments in an essay genre. I wanted to use the essay genre because I feel as if it might be the most effective way to show this theory. I just think that I am more comfortable writing in this format. 

Beginning of The Process  

Before I start my essay, I think of what I want my final product to look like and what it should portray to readers. For example, for the Inquiry essay, I wanted it to be divided into sections in which it ended up including the intro, general stats, reasons for my side, reasons against my side, problems with opposing side, and a conclusion. The topic for that essay was Why Should Physician Assisted Suicide Be Legal?  I wanted to show the readers how this issue is an important debate, especially in this country. From there, I figure out my audience, jot down ideas, and organize those ideas to give myself, again, a guide to follow. This is just what I normally do at the beginning and from there I begin the actual essay. In each assignment, I do the same thing and I will show specific examples of instances of where my theory relates to my assignments. 

Source Based Essay  

For this assignment, my topic was based on the pros and cons of political correctness. I would research this by looking through the library database. I found some sources and noted quotes of interest for the topic. For example,  

“harshly punitive social systems tend to atrophy over time; they breed strife, hostility and violence rather than harmony, equality, tolerance, and freedom; they are not places you would want to live in. To the extent that hard political correctness seeks to punish, label, and silence people, it is doing society a disservice” (O’Neill).  

 I, again, saw the importance of identifying the audience and I started giving background information on the source based on the author or website. This was the first instance of actually using this strategy in my assignments. I did this throughout this essay. Two excerpts that portray the audience are,  

The audience for the magazine is politically correct and is part of the LGBTQIA+ as well as being associated with Judaism since the article is under Tikkun.  

The audience for the blog would be those who don’t exactly agree with political correctness, however, they want to understand what exactly makes politically correct culture a problem. They want to be able look from a different perspective. 

A section of the essay that gave background information on a source is,  

Ben O’Neill lectures in statistics at the School of Physical, Environmental, and Mathematical Sciences, University of New South Wales, as well as the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.  

I would revise this essay as well. My original essay was missing a few things and through a peer review, I was able to make some revisions to it. A revision in the essay that I made was that I deleted the quote “Learning when and when not to speak and what and what not to say is a value in itself” (Alpert). I replaced it with “Not telling everything all the time, when your goal is to avoid hurting another person, is in fact a virtue” (Alpert). I did this because I used the quote before in the purpose section. I also explain that this shows how political correctness brings about the idea of self-control and how it may prevent someone from hurting another person from a different culture. This was an edit that stayed in the final product.  

Inquiry Essay  

In this essay, I wrote, again, about why Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) should be legal. I was on the side of the debate that PAS should be legal and that it is important for it to be a choice for those suffering from an illness. My research was pretty similar to the last assignment; however, I did use sources from outside of the database. Some of these sources were from NY Times and The Atlantic. I wrote down quotes and rhetorical terms associated with the article. These terms include genre, audience, purpose, stance, medium, and rhetorical situation. An example of a quote that I wrote down is, 

“He, too, had under six months to live and, he, too, was suffering to such a degree that he begged for medical aid in dying. But that option was not available in Maryland, where he was in an assisted living center. He ultimately chose to end his life by refusing to eat, drink and take medications. It took him 10 long and miserable days to die” (Rehm). 

I didn’t use some sources that I originally had because they repeated points that were already stated in other sources and were veering off the main road that I wanted to follow. Which was to stay away from the in-depth look at each court case about the issue. One source was “The right to assisted suicide and euthanasia” by Neil M. Gorsuch 

 I incorporated parts of my theory into this essay, similarly to the source-based essay, by showing the background information behind a source. Two sections of the essay that show this are,  

The patient’s spouse is Diane Rehm, who hosted her own show on NPR for 37 years. She also, in 2016, helped PAS legalization movements in California and is currently making a documentary called “When my Time Comes” (Rehm).  

A source that can give some statistics about who might use PAS is Medscape. Medscape is a website that offers medical news and articles. It is also owned by WebMD. This article, specifically, is written by Roxanne Nelson who is a registered nurse and has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. 

The revision process also was included in this assignment. An example of this is, the first edit I made was that I addressed the difference between Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) in the intro. I did this because I felt that the difference between the two should be addressed earlier rather than near the end of the essay.  

A noticeable difference between this assignment and the Source Based Essay is the identification of the audience not being clearly shown in the essay. It never needed to be addressed to fulfill my expectation for the essay while in the previous essay, it had to. However, I will clarify that the audience for this essay includes those who may have lost someone to a disease and those who may be suffering from a disease. Another difference is that even though I addressed rhetorical terms in the notes, I never put all of the rhetorical terms in the actual essay. I felt as if it wasn’t necessary to include it. 

Composition in Two Genres  

In this assignment, I chose a newspaper article and a letter as genres. My topic would be funding my High School so that they can get new laptops. The laptops that they have are mostly broken and this was a topic that I felt close to. For the research, it was quite different from the other essays since I didn’t note much about each source or quotes. This process was more based off just my thoughts as I go rather than notes I have taken. I did have sources that I found through my research that I didn’t end up using. One of these sources was a source from EdTechnology which did not provide enough evidence of how many people they question about technology benefits. They just say a percent and I felt that it wasn’t credible enough. 

This assignment uses the theory in the sense that the audience being identified is clear which is similar to that of the Source-Based Essay and the Inquiry Essay. For example,  

My audience for this issue is the West Hempstead community and Todd Kaminsky. Todd Kaminsky is the New York State Senator for the Ninth District which includes West Hempstead (NY Senate). The significance of this issue to the community can include parents who might have children who attend this school and that education could be enhanced if this cause is supported. The community could also include teachers at the High School who might want to use more online activities in the classroom. Lastly, it could include students or other alumni who feel the same as I do on the issue.  

 I specifically stated this in the rationale part of the assignment. The revision included adding more pictures to my newspaper article. I did this because through a peer review session, I was told that more pictures make it look more like a newspaper article. In the beginning, my newspaper article had two pictures, so I ended up adding three more that showed statistics. Most of the statistics showed, based on 1,000 teachers, the percent of those who believed technology helped in their classroom. I didn’t add anything to the letter portion since I felt as if it didn’t really need anything to make it sound or look better. I did end up changing parts of my rationale and reflection to talk about the obstacles I faced while figuring out Todd Kaminsky’s views on technology. I did this because I didn’t include much of his views in any other part of the assignment and felt that it needed to be addressed why it wasn’t there. This was due to the fact that his views on technology aren’t online. Overall, this process was different from the other essays, but my theory still played a role in the essay.  

Jazz Essay  

In this essay, I had to pick an album from a jazz musician and talk about each song as well as the background info of the album. The album I chose was The Clown by Charles Mingus. It was not exactly like essays we have done in English in which we normally identify certain information about the source or the audience. However, I was able to use my theory in the assignment. This essay uses the idea that I put background information on an author of a source. A sentence from my essay that clearly shows this is, the liner notes for this album was written by Nat Hentoff, who wrote liners notes for Soulville by Ben Webster and Sittin’ In by Dizzy Gillespie (Khoshbakht). Again, I didn’t use the theory as much for the is essay, however, it still contributed a little bit. The theory is something I could still put into use outside of English class. 

Overall Reflection  

I entered this class as someone who really didn’t understand writing and now, I believe that I am a lot better as a writer. I still don’t think I am an amazing writer; however, I feel more confident in my skills.  

Rhetorical terms have been the most beneficial to me since it allowed me to actually identify certain aspects of a source. I could identify the audience of a source to understand what the author was trying to convey. I had trouble with it in the beginning, but after the source-based essay, I felt a little more comfortable with them. I’m able to use purpose and genre easily, however, rhetorical exigence is more difficult to use.  

The Source-Based Essay was not my greatest essay. It was new for me; I didn’t really know what to do at the beginning. I chose a topic that was debated, however, there was not a ton of articles based on it. It was slow and honestly one of the more difficult essays to understand what the goal was. After beginning my process, I was able to figure out a plan and how I wanted it done. I used subsections to organize everything. This will be a reoccurring theme in some of my essays. Overall, this essay was a direct influence in making me a lot better with the rhetorical terms. 

The Inquiry Essay was more familiar to me since, again, I have written a bunch of argumentative essays in High School. I chose my topic by looking online on a website about topics that are controversial. Once I saw the topic revolving around PAS, I researched it to see whether I could write about this in a genuine way. After researching, I felt strongly about the topic and actually could have a side in the debate on whether it should be legal or not. The essay came out pretty good and I felt as if it accomplished what I wanted this essay to end up like. This had the highest word requirement; however, it didn’t feel as if that was the case since, I could just write about the topic for a while. 

The Composition in Two Genres assignment was the most interesting to me. I thought it was the more creative assignment which meant that I could do almost anything with it. I chose my topic since it was an issue that I faced in school that never got fixed. I felt that if new laptops would be funded for, then teachers and students could partake in more online activities to better the education. I knew my audience had to include the West Hempstead community; however, I didn’t know who else to convey my message to. I wanted an elected official, but I didn’t know who to choose. I ended up choosing Tod Kaminsky since he is a NY senator responsible for this area. I chose my genres dependent on which ones could make it the most effective. I ultimately choose, again, newspaper article and letter. The whole process was not boring or just a bunch of resources/quotes. I could just write as casual as I wanted to so that I could sound like the genre I was using. This assignment was very new to me and I enjoyed it.  

Honestly, I never fully enjoyed most of the English classes I have taken. I usually feel as if it is not teaching me anything new and that I waste my time writing pointless essays. This class made me realize that it isn’t true. These assignments were, for the most part, new and really helped me understand certain ideas. Whenever I look for a source, I end up trying to understand the rhetorical terms for that source. I jot down ideas/evidence more frequently if an assignment has anything to do with research or writing in general. One thing that was also new to me was the reflection process after every assignment in which it has helped me think more about what I was writing and how I could improve certain issues in my essays. These are just ideas that were interesting that no other English class has ever incorporated into the class.

 I am happy that I ended up taking this class since it does have an actual benefit and isn’t just a waste of time. The assignments weren’t the most difficult things in the world, and I got something out of it. I think that this was a necessary class for me so I could better my skills for other classes that might involve research. In the end, this class has been interesting, and I did enjoy it. It was good class to have freshmen year to set me up for other writing assignments that may happen in the future. Hopefully, I can become a better writer as time goes on.