Jose Real

Kneece
Writing 2
18 May 2016
Reflective Essay
The process of creating this writing project was an accumulation of my learning in
Writing 2. It forced me to evaluate what the main lessons of this class were. Furthermore, I
decided not to write on the most important aspects, but rather the ones I struggled on the most.
My first writing project had good ideas, but there was no flow in the piece. The second essay was
underwhelming and did not express itself as most wished it did. Creativity is what personally
allows me to fill in the cracks of my writing, which is why the two genres I picked for this
assignment are a song for children and a poem for adults. The comparison between these two
genres will show how different they can be according to its audience, even though they have the
same structure
These genres are not easy to establish, especially because of the rhyming required to
succeed. However, they are by far one of the most creative, and creating a different genre with
the conventions that I chose to write about would result in a faulty assignment. Before choosing
my conventions, I decided to look at the corrections I received for my previous writing projects.
Most of the critiques I received were that my work needed organization, but my personal
critiques were that my diction was not up to part with the rest of the class and my persuasion
skills on my essays were weak. Because of these flaws, I decided to write about them, which is

Real 2

how I made the song and poem genres about three important aspects about writing (to me):
organization, diction, and logos, ethos, and pathos.
In order to approach the song, I first had to see a few examples first. I searched for lyrics
of my favorite songs and noticed its structure. They were all written in stanzas, and those stanzas
were separated by verses, chorus, and bridges. In order to make it appropriate for my audience
(10-12 year olds), I had to simplify my diction (ironic) so they could understand such lyrics.
Since there were three conventions that I wanted to write about, I decided to separate them by
section. Diction was mentioned on the first verse, organization was mentioned on the second
verse, and logos, ethos, and pathos were mentioned on the bridge. The chorus consisted on the
importance of writing, in general.
Approaching the poem was much harder, mainly because I had to look at examples of
poetry which I do not enjoy as much as I do music. However, I found that there is a vast amount
of poem types, all using imaginative imagery and figurative language. My diction had to be
stronger for my audience (4th year undergrad students) and the format had to be more elegant. To
write about the conventions I used, there was a separation of stanzas per convention, ending with
a stanza about the importance of writing.
To have some liability in the statement of both of my pieces there needed to be some
reference that asserts what I mentioned. I used an excerpt from Mark Bunn that comes from his
piece, How to Read Like a Writer, that says, This is a fairly uncommon word, so it stands out,
drawing attention to my choice in using it (84). Mark Bunn gave an example of a rare word in
his piece that allowed the essay to stand out, which allows it to build on diction. Laura Bollin
Carroll constructed the piece, Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis, where she said something
particular about pathos, Pathetic appeals(pathos)...can come across as emotionally manipulative

Real 3

or overly sentimental(55). Here she mentions the counterargument that pathos has which is that
it may be seen as overly emotional and unnecessary. Furthermore, I decided for the logos, ethos,
pathos section of my genres to have this counterargument, but also mention its positives. The last
reference I made was of L. Lennie Irvin, who built the piece, What is Academic Writing?,
where he spoke about the main characteristics of a successful Academic Essay. Irvin said You
should divide up the proof, which means structuring the body around clear primary
supports(68). This quote shows the inclusion of organization as a characteristic of a successful
Academic Essay, which I decided to use since a good flow allows an essay to be easily readable.
Most of the information that I translated from PBe was the same, there was not much change,
mainly because since writing that PBe I already knew what my weaknesses in writing were and
that they had to be written about.
Throughout this writing project, I learned about the difficulty of making these genres, but
even more difficult was modifying these genres so they can work for their target audience. I had
to use the conventions that I wrote about in the actual genre to make this successful, and I
believe it is on its way into becoming one.