Inquiry-Based Essay Reflection-

For this essay, my topic was Race as a social construct and how is not a myth. The purpose of the essay was to discuss how race is a social construct and how it affects our daily lives. After each essay, I learn more than what I knew before I knew in August. This essay thought me how important research for your papers is and it is more than just searching up the topic on google. I have also learned in an Inquiry-Based essay it is okay to be “aggressive” with your points and not cautious. The last thing I learned from this paper is that it is okay to connect a paper with my personal life.

My audience for the paper are people who believe race is a myth, people who agree with my claim, and people who want to educate themselves about the topic. The impact that the audience has on my tone, genre, and language is significant. The topic of race can make people uncomfortable and that says a lot, I had to make sure the claims I made were honest and blunt but at the same time tolerable. I wanted to get my points across and put it in a way that even if it makes people uncomfortable they can still learn and read it. During this essay, we practiced peer-review which helped a lot, it allowed me to get other opinions on my essay because I am a little biased. The drafting process was calm because Ian helped me and gave me great points on the one-on-one session we had. The research I used was the database and sources I found online. However, the database did play a huge part in my paper and I felt the information was more credible. Overall, I have learned a lot about writing and this paper has made me a better writer.

Compositions in Two Genres Audience Reflection- My audience is white Americans who are unaware of their privileges, white Americans who believe that race isn’t real, people who are want to educate themselves more on the topic of race and how it affects people of color, and black people who had no idea that people felt like race is a myth. I determined this by trying to understand what the purpose of the paper was, which was to educate people on the impacts race as a social construct has on people of color in America. The people who are at an advantage in America are white Americans and that is why they are my targeted audience. The genres I chose to work in was social media post and newspaper/magazine article. I chose these two genres because my generation uses social media more than anything else so if I wanted to get my message across my best bet was to use a social media platform. I chose a newspaper/magazine article because magazines are used to target the older audience who aren’t used to social media. I feel my genres relate to my audience because Race in America affects all Americans almost every day and it is an issue we have dealt with since the founding fathers. The topic of race is discussed on all social media platforms and newspaper/magazine articles so that is how the genres relate to the subject matter. These compositions will separate them from other compositions because my topic is different from everyone else’s and the way I use my compositions to explain my topic will stand out.

Mid-Term Reflection- The approach of the study of writing builds on what I have learned during my high school career in many different ways. In the past, I have taken two AP English courses that went through rhetorics, when to use tone, and audience but if I am being honest I either forgot or it wasn’t explained well enough for me to understand. With this class, I have learned how to explain a rhetorical situation in-depth and I have learned how to express the purpose, stance, and genre. As I wrote the last paper I used Genre for my sources to explain the type of source it was and that helped me weed out the audience what the source was made for. For example, if I identify the source as a magazine I could say that this source was made for the everyday citizen or a person who is subscribed to that magazine. If I identity the tone of a source I could write that because the source has a playful tone its purpose was to joke around with the audience. Now that I have a better understanding of these terms and how to use them my writing and reading style has been affected. When I am writing a paper where I have to use sources I will look for different terms like the author, audience, purpose, and stance and I will be able to approach my paper in a way that is easier for me to identify. Before I didn’t know how to identify the tone or the audience of an article in a way that made sense or would fit into my paper. I wouldn’t say what I learned departs from anything I learned about it was very similar. Overall, I would say everything I have learned so far has helped my writing become better and I know there is more to learn which is exciting.