Van Pelt 1

Jake Van Pelt

Megan Keaton
ENC2135
3 August 2016
Reflection
My progression through this Genre and Research course has taught me many important
and defining aspects about being a composer and researcher. Throughout the course, the various
assignments, daily activities, and projects have helped better me as a composer and researcher
through the various tasks that each put upon me. Upon entering the course, I knew that my
capabilities as a composer were at least above par. As of now I can say that my abilities are at a
higher substantial level due to projects like the Defining and Analyzing Genre Project
(http://enc2135writtingportfolio.weebly.com/defining-and-analyzing-genres.html). With the task
of having to define genre and be able to explain it in a professional manner while also being able
to elaborate upon the concepts connected, I gained a solid understanding of the idea of genre. My
understanding of genre and genre conventions was put to the test in the Non-Essayist Genre
Project (http://enc2135writtingportfolio.weebly.com/non-essayist-genre-project.html), where I
was forced to compose in two genres that werent academic papers, two complimentary
presentations to teach my suitemate about the definition and related concept of genre. While I
was successful in my endeavors, both in being able to actually write two genres as well as
actually teaching my suitemate about genre, it was not without some difficulty. At first, I truly
struggled to think about the two genres to compose in that would be able to properly teach my

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suitemate genre, as all I had known was to type up essays that may have had different structures
to fit the situation, yet never had I been given such a task to complete. After a good bit of asking
fellow classmates as to what they were planning on doing, I initially reached the decision to
make a PowerPoint and a Prezi. This proposal was rejected however, and so my chain of thought
for what I might do was reset. After giving consideration to the fact that my suitemate is an
aspiring film student and also enjoys reading threads on websites such as Reddit, I set my mind
on creating a video script and a webpage on my portfolio that would be read as an online
thread/presentation containing multiple images with explanations underneath about how factors
of each image taught the different genre conventions that help define genre. In addition to these
projects, my capabilities as a researcher were improved through the various assignments
pertaining to the per grading of my fellow group members projects. This experience helped me
see other styles of writing that help in distinguishing the author as well as getting to review the
way a critic does and by doing so, was noticed certain fallacies that people tend to make to stay
away from as well as seeing the various types of syntax and styles that may be used, thus
broadening my horizons regarding the various styles and techniques that I, as a composer, feel
capable of utilizing in my compositions. The course has also helped me develop as a researcher
with projects like genre research project, which was quite a challenge as I choose to examine the
various types of documents used in the Medical field. In order to properly complete the
assignment, I needed to have numerous credible citations which involved undertaking the time
consuming process of reading through my sources and then finding quotable sections to use in
the paper my quoting them directly or by paraphrasing them. The assignments that helped me
develop as a researcher were short assignments 4 and 5, as they necessitated that I have
satisfactory sources that I was to use in the actual project. By pushing me to research a good bit

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in advance of actually typing up the paper, I was able to better understanding my topic and also
include quotes that were quite apt for the place that I put them in. With my positions of a
composer and researcher being developed by the class, so was my understanding of genre and its
related terms.
Upon coming into the class, my definition of genre was that Genre is the
composition and manner of the way to which someone conveys a composition, whether it be
informal, informative, or to be with a certain style like country or street slang as defined by
myself in my writing into the day on 6/28/16
(http://enc2135writtingportfolio.weebly.com/reflections-and-writings-into-the-day.html). In
Dirks Navigating Genres, I learned about how in order to determine the genre of something we
rely upon our genre knowledge, past experience with reading and writing similar texts in similar
situations to help ourselves be able to perceive a genre as it was meant to be (Dirk 250). I was
then able to show this concept the next day in class where we looked at three different wedding
invitations and commented on the design of each and wrote about what we thought were the
required conventions for the invite
(https://campus.fsu.edu/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?
action=list_messages&forum_id=_758771_1&nav=discussion_board&conf_id=_416816_1&cou
rse_id=_6422936_1&message_id=_11446408_1#msg__11446408_1Id). It was during the
research tableaux
(https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B47B6qjaRKbHQWhwZW9GdmUxZ00) that the
concept of genre was further exemplified in the sense that the class posing for a picture was
essentially a genre, being the genre of an image being used to convey information, with the

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information in this case being how we defined genre. The assignment that really helped me
understand what genre referred to was the Defining and Analyzing Research Project. In addition
to being what caused me to come to define genre as the way that we as humans interpret and
classify ways that information is presented based off our prior knowledge and experiences
(http://enc2135writtingportfolio.weebly.com/defining-and-analyzing-genres.html). During the
project, I reached this definition of genre based off the content of the readings and from some of
the presentations in class. With the project also requiring the defining of factors like genre
conventions, my understanding of genre was fully cemented as a result of working on the
project. My understanding of genre was heavily utilized in the following two projects. With the
Genre Research Paper, I had to delve into the genres within the medical field, a task that I would
only be successful in if I had a firm understanding of what genre referred to. With my
understanding as a result of the first project, I was able to successfully complete the second
project by covering three of the main genres in the medical field being the genres of patient
records, emails containing confidential information pertaining to the patient, and research papers
published explaining the results of medical studies as well as offering explanations as to why the
results were the way that they were. In the Composing in Non-Essayist genre Project, I was again
able to provide sufficient results due to my understanding of genre and its related terms. To teach
my suitemate genre, I ended up composing in the genres of film scripting and webpage thread. I
settled for these genres after giving the rhetorical situation thorough thought and considering my
suitemates interests and aspirations. Without a firm grasp on the concept of genre, success in
this course would have been impossible. However, the content and assignments of the first two
weeks helped me come to understand genre as I do today, providing a stable basis to start from to
complete the other assignments and projects in the class. With a solid understanding of genre, I

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was able to move onto the next major concept of research.
In the second week of the summer, my understanding and picture of research was that it
typically looked like going into books or online sources and recording quotes to be used in the
research paper attached to the research one is doing
(http://enc2135writtingportfolio.weebly.com/reflections-and-writings-into-the-day.html). This
was exemplified during the research tableaux picture taken on July 7th
(https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B47B6qjaRKbHQWhwZW9GdmUxZ00). The project
that really helped change and redefine my understanding of was the Genre research project as it
has out of all of the projects so far, taken the most time and resources too complete
(http://enc2135writtingportfolio.weebly.com/genres-in-the-medical-field.html). The project
required me to utilize at least 10 sources, of which at least one needed to be an interview. My
past experiences with research were in a similar manner however, this project took the depth to a
whole new level for me. In high school during my Junior year I had to do a research project of
which my subject was Reaganomics with some of the basic requirements being to have at least
seven credible sources of which 4 needed to be print (although my teachers let google book
sources count as print sources). While this helped give me a premise to work off when
approaching this assignment, I still was a bit unsure of certain factors primarily regarding the
level of detail and frequency of citations that I would need to include in order create an
academically credible paper. The assignment that first began to truly help in redefining the way I
understood research was project 4, which required 3 sources that I intended to use on my Genre
Research project. Considering how the sources needed to be ones that I intended to use in the
project, that meant that I needed to actually fully reading the source. This differed substantially

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from what I had done in the past because on past research papers, all I had done was type up
the paper and then go back through and find optimal places to add in citations to meet the
requirement for the class. The way I used to find sources was by finding something with a title
similar to my topic, then use the find function to search through the text trying to find
keywords that would fit the context of my paper
(http://enc2135writtingportfolio.weebly.com/reflections-and-writings-into-the-day.html). This is
quite faulty though as I may have potentially taken some excerpts out of context, hence causing
the reader of the paper to get the wrong idea about a what a certain source was actually trying to
say. Both projects 4 and 5 were important in the alteration to how I defined research as they both
challenged me to truly read my sources and consider how I would correctly utilize them in the
essay. Another important factor about research I learned was the distinction between primary and
secondary sources, being that Primary sources get information directly from a subject while
secondary sources are those that make use of primary sources as noted in a tweet on July the
12th I also learned more about how to find sources, of which I noted in a tweet during the
Library presentation on research on July the 12th being that you can use Wikipedia if you use
the sources listed on the page to actually find the information.
My third term that I came to understand in a different way is design. When I entered the
course, my initial thoughts about design was that it was primarily referring to the aesthetics of a
document like the pictures and colors used in a brochure. While I was not wrong, there was still a
crucial part of design that I was missing and that was that in addition to the actual ascetics of the
composure, design also referred to the layout of the document, being similar to syntax but with
more focus on the way it will cause the reader to see the document than actually understanding

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the overall meaning of it. Design has been quite important for me to learn because I had to make
use of it extensively for Project 3. I had a good bit of trouble with getting the design right for the
project because I was trying to pick the genre before I fully addressed the audience. I suppose the
concept of having to compose in a genre other than that of an essay at first startled me for I really
didnt have any experience with anything other than essays and PowerPoints. My general stress
that the project was giving me was clearly stated in a tweet (insert hyperlink) I posted on the
night before the project was due. Additionally, that same night I also made another twet (insert
hyperlink) in a desperate attempt to get help regarding how I would go about doing the project.
In the early hours of the morning on August 1st, I had a breakthrough. After consulting with my
suitemate as to potential genres that could honestly teach him, I fiannly settled on doing a video
(which was never accomplished, but the script for it was) and making a sort of webpage (which I
later changed the genre to being that of a blog as the second genre lacked the genre conventions
that would cause it to be considered a webpage). The design of the genres was quite important as
I needed to be able to present concepts to my audience (being my suitemate) in a tactful manner
yet, in two distinctly different ways. The design of each genre is heavily influenced by the genre
conventions associated with each genre, being that a video (script) (insert hyperlink) typically
has two characters engaged in dialogue with each other that can include one of the characters
informing the other character about something, falling into the more specified genre of an
educationl video (scrit). As for the design of the second genre, the design itself is what was
initially the problem for me to deal with. This is because the design of the webpage was that it
had a number of pictures with each picture receiving a explanation for how it helps illustrate the
concept of genre or any of the concepts associated with genre like genre conventions. After a bit
of though with regards to what I was to classify the second genre as, I decided to label it as being

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a blog (insert hyperlink), due to its design having various posts and comments from a single
author and no links to other pages.