Unit 1 Reflection

12
Across
  1. 2. I thought there was only one “real” and proper way to write an academic essay. The five paragraph essay has been a staple in my education for as long as I can remember. When reading Melzer's Everything’s a Text it made me rethink how I saw literacy. It made me think of all the ways I have seen writing. From political speeches, to journal articles I saw those as a way to write academically. Additionally, I also learned more about how codeswitching was used in real life. I knew of the word and what it is used for but never connected it to how people use it in writing. The word “genre” also gained a new meaning. I assumed it meant the type of story I wanted to read, not necessarily the different types of forms we use or look at in our lives. Reading everyone's genre deep dives work made me think about how many different genres we consume everyday. It also gave me a new perspective on how we think and use these genres. For my project, I did flags. Before the project I knew flags symbols had meanings but I never thought that every aspect including the colors had a meaning as well. Furthermore, when reading Kadin’s work about screen savers, it made me realize that almost everything in our lives is specifically designed to try and appeal to an audience even if most people do not realize it.
Down
  1. 1. to compose a message, I assumed, were usually in an essay form. After reading the one message two genre assignment it led to me thinking of spreading messages in a new way. Writing a poem and creating an image to show that message is something I never thought could be done for academic purposes. It was very interesting to see how others wanted to share their message when it is not in an essay form. The genres composed were simple but still got the message across clearly. The assignment also taught me that not only do we consume genres but we can create them for multiple purposes. The NYT may create them for a political reason but a friend might make a poem to show how much they appreciate you. Either way, any genre is a way people express their opinions to appeal to others. This makes persuasion or awareness more apparent than it would be in a regular essay. Typically when there was a position I wanted to take I wrote an argument essay with a professional claim and evidence. Not having structure to write an academic piece is something I (and most students) are not used to. Especially since I took AP Seminar and now am taking AP Research the structure of the five paragraph essay is heavily relied on. There was a specific structure all the writings AP Seminar focused on. I know in SUPA I will learn how to keep those strategies to write for classes that need the five paragraph structure, but also learn how to add more of my creative voice when writing academically. Overall, I learned there is not one structure for literary writing and there are many genres used to convey messages in a clear and concise manner.