Goals:

To me, the biggest point of this class was to think about why and how I write.First, we talked about what constituted good writing, and it made me rethink all the rules I had come to write by. I realized that writing depends very much on its context, which was made really clear to me when we did all that work with rules of good writing. We then expanded upon this by discussing what literacy really is, making me reflect on the way people come to understand the information that is presented to them, whether it be through writing or another medium. This made me think about my audience interacting with my writing rather than just taking it in, which I think was another goal of this course. Our work with rhetoric made me think about writing as a conversation rather than a one-sided argument, and caused me to reflect on the importance of context as well. We then discussed remixes, and that reinforced to me how much all of our understanding of the world around us depends on others' understanding of it; all of our work builds on work we've already seen. This was made more clear by our study of genre, as it showed me that people follow certain expectations to effectively get their point across. Our inquiry project then made me learn how to write to extend a conversation rather than to end an argument, which is a different but equally valuable approach to writing than I've taken before this semester.Overall, this class made me consider how many different reasons there are to write, and therefore how many factors can change depending on that reason. I think the point of it was to show that writing is not just a personal thing but a way to communicate with others, which comes with the responsibility to make effective choices