Welcome to my portfolio made for Composition 120. Composition 120 is an English course at NDSU taught by Cody Kaser. This class has taught me how do adapt my writing to fit the specific occasion or audience I am writing to. I have learned how to effectively choose an audience and engage them throughout the works I have written. The class required many virtues to be successful, including: having an open mind to criticism, promptness, integrity, and initiative. Having an open mind to criticism is important so an individual can adapt and revise papers to ensure they are more effective. Promptness was required by turning assignments on time, which is a beneficial experience because at a job they will require the same standards and nothing less. Integrity is an aspect that directly affects the audience by whether or not the information is credible, therefore one must work on finding relevant and professional sources of information. The final virtue is initiative, without initiative one wouldn't have the motivation to improve or write an effective paper and would always simply accomplish the bare minimum requirements. However, this class required a strong initiative to achieve a good grade by posing a challenge to revise the works to the best of your ability to appear more professional and appealing towards the audience. These virtues aren't only important to the course but are also important to everyday life. Below I will briefly discuss what I learned and practiced on the following two important concepts for the class.
Adapting Writing to Various Genres, Audiences, and Purposes:
Every individual has a unique writing style. However, no matter the style one has, it is important to adapt the writing towards the target audience. If a work has a target audience identified by who is going to be looking at the work, it is easier to find appealing and relevant information since the writer will have a better understanding of the group they are writing to. I learned how important it was to adapt my works to the target audience in order to more effectively appeal to them. In my Rhetorical Review, I was writing to an audience who has seen the movie before, but also have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or family or close friends who are suffering from PTSD who want a better understanding of the illness. For my second work, a Rhetorical-Filmic Analysis of the social commentary Slumdog Millionaire, I adapted the paper towards a generally older audience (due to the R rating) who is interested in the inequalities of class-ism. My final work, an Informative Persuasive Brochure on why to attend North Dakota State University has a tone written towards an audience of high school students, transfer students, or those who want to attend college. This was important to analyze this audience so I could adapt the brochure to appeal to these audiences, as well as keep the information in the brochure relevant and interest the audiences.
Integrating Knowledge and Ideas:
Integrating knowledge into works is a very important concept. A work needs knowledge incorporated in order to appear credible and as well as to give the audience data about the topic that is not opinionated, but fact. The information that one is able to incorporate into the work helps to persuade the audience towards the objective by giving examples of that objective that is trying to be proven or persuaded towards the audience. Integrating knowledge is also a very important way to present information that will keep the audience involved them in the ideas presented and keep them interested all throughout the paper. Incorporating ideas and information is also important to help provide a visualization of the ideas being presented, this is extremely beneficial usually since many are able to learn better if they have a visual representation of the information. It also helps give a context to the audience who usually should know about the topic, but however may not know everything they may need to know.
When I started writing in this class, I did not know how to incorporate information very effectively and many of my ideas were written in mixed thoughts. I learned how to better organize the information I am conveying, basing the organizational patterns off of a reverse outline. A reverse outline is where you read the information presented in the work and write a very simple outline of what is trying to be said. This helps delete non-relevant information that distracts from the objective of the paper. One learning experience from the class taught me how incorporating outside sources can be used more than just to add argument to a paper, but also to add emotion to reach an objective. In class, adding emotional writing in a paper in order to appeal to an audience's emotions was called Pathos. This emotion is a very vital aspect in writing persuasive topics and helping the audience see an objective from the desired perspective. Ethos is another term we used throughout the class, which is where a writer builds credibility towards an audience. This credibility can be built through the use of certain sources or explaining a viewpoint and having an argument to present to the audience on why your viewpoint is relevant and trustworthy. Logos was the third term that was largely used throughout the class. Logos is when the work has aspects that appeal to senses of the audience. In movies this is a very important aspect. Logos could be the visually appealing images (even in papers), the sounds, and anything that would appeal to the basic senses that an individual has. Another learning experience in the class was that writing a movie review can be more than just a normal review. There are many ways to make your work unique and therefore more appealing than the average review that is usually published. These unique and different perspectives that can be used to allow the writer to make a more unique point and keep the target audience more attentive than if they read the normal review. Overall, I would say this was my largest improvement in my writing.
When I started writing in this class, I did not know how to incorporate information very effectively and many of my ideas were written in mixed thoughts. I learned how to better organize the information I am conveying, basing the organizational patterns off of a reverse outline. A reverse outline is where you read the information presented in the work and write a very simple outline of what is trying to be said. This helps delete non-relevant information that distracts from the objective of the paper. One learning experience from the class taught me how incorporating outside sources can be used more than just to add argument to a paper, but also to add emotion to reach an objective. In class, adding emotional writing in a paper in order to appeal to an audience's emotions was called Pathos. This emotion is a very vital aspect in writing persuasive topics and helping the audience see an objective from the desired perspective. Ethos is another term we used throughout the class, which is where a writer builds credibility towards an audience. This credibility can be built through the use of certain sources or explaining a viewpoint and having an argument to present to the audience on why your viewpoint is relevant and trustworthy. Logos was the third term that was largely used throughout the class. Logos is when the work has aspects that appeal to senses of the audience. In movies this is a very important aspect. Logos could be the visually appealing images (even in papers), the sounds, and anything that would appeal to the basic senses that an individual has. Another learning experience in the class was that writing a movie review can be more than just a normal review. There are many ways to make your work unique and therefore more appealing than the average review that is usually published. These unique and different perspectives that can be used to allow the writer to make a more unique point and keep the target audience more attentive than if they read the normal review. Overall, I would say this was my largest improvement in my writing.