English 271 Reflection

           When I first entered into this class I wasn’t very excited because of my past experiences with English classes. During my 101 experience, the learning objectives seemed to be mostly focused on how to properly use a comma. However, the number of creative opportunities that were apparently present in our first assignment “Wikipedia Article,” mirrored the chances that we got to employ our own ideas in all of the following assignments. Honestly, when I first signed up for this class I wasn’t positive what expository writing was. In the first couple weeks, we immediately discussed what expository writing consisted of and set out to write our own form of a Wikipedia article, the pinnacle of expository writing. At this point, I thought that recognizing an author’s intention on an essay would be a breeze. They want to give you information on a topic, duh. When we moved onto rewriting the news and later assignments, I quickly realized that the intentions of an author are much more complex and intricately woven into their writing.

            When writing post #3, I tried to incorporate a little voice into my essay while not only, staying true to the expository format, but also staying true to my audience. During this assignment and also while reading the articles about facial acupuncture, I noticed how much of a difference the reader perceives when there is bias in an article. Recently, whenever I read an article online or in the newspaper, I find myself trying to seek out any sort of bias that the author has included, whether it be explicitly or implicitly. Also, without thinking twice, I’ll ponder the ways that their style and voice affect the piece of writing, and how I would modify it to reflect both my personal tone and my opinion. Although the first three posts were difficult for me I really learned how to take apart a piece of writing and analyze the audience, intention, and style.

            I was more comfortable writing the following posts because I had a clear objective. For example, in the extended definition essay, I enjoyed having a clearly defined word and then expanding on it using present examples. At first when I decided to use Herman Cain as my example for charisma, I wasn’t so sure it would work out. However, while writing, I found that it was easy and fun to expand on a definition using this rhetorical mode. The rhetorical mode essays showed me the different kinds of essays that can be composed using expository writing. All in all, this class has taught me to subconsciously analyze writing in new and more specific ways, and what kinds of essays to apply expository writing to.