Composition in Two Genres was my favorite assignment in this course. I liked the idea of being creative with your topic and expressing your thought in that artwork. I was motivated to do this assignment because I projected in my head how it is going to turn out. I had high expectations, and I hoped I was going to realized what I imagined. There were many differences between this assignment and others such as the genres of artwork. I loved that we could choose between many genres and create one that fits our topic. However, I also noticed that I was not rushed doing this assignment. Usually, when I performed other assignments I was stressed and rushed which made me not focus on the writing. Despite the differences, Composition in Two Genres was significant due to its structure. I wanted to choose genres that my audience would be willing to see. I wanted something engaging and creative for my audience because adolescents can be delicate sometimes. My choices of genres were affected by my audience because I considered many factors such as location, setting, pictures, etc. The rhetorical strategies I used to engage with my audience is pathos and logos. The reason I used pathos is that I wanted my audience to feel the need to stop the excessive use of social media. I did this through my meme where I introduced a new illusion of being financed by social media for the times spent on it. I also used logos in my second genre since I provided statistics to express the reasoning for my topic. Overall, I think that composition in the two genres was an amazing opportunity to expresss some new ideas and our creativity.

This essay gave us so much freedom to express our thoughts without having to go through so many articles. With that being said it was not as easy as I thought. It was a great essay that helped us organize our side of a story in a better way. However, I felt like I was repeating myself a lot and I tried my best to change that. I chose a video and poster for my essay. A video seemed like a good option because of how it can be spread through social media. The intended audience for the video is young adults and parents because of the responsibility they hold. The video included different perspectives, protests, and a few other things. Through the two genres, I tried to send an awareness about how criticism from the people of a community on the rape issue can potentially hurt a victim’s mental state. Convincing parents to be more upholding and understanding toward their children was also intended.

To start I really like the concept of this essay. I love how much it varied from our average essays. When writing, I felt more connected to my words because I was not limited to what I could write. I felt as though this essay gave me the freedom to express myself. With the past papers, we wrote, there were more rules. We couldn’t share our own opinions and our writing had to be very much statistic based. This paper, although it was not opinion-based, I felt as though I could inspire people through my writing rather than just analyze a text or provide information.

Honestly, I chose to use a visual genre because I expected it to be easier. I was wrong. Although this essay was, in my opinion, easier than the last two, it was difficult to find photos that would provide my audience with the proper inspiration I believed they needed. I chose to use a quote on a billboard and an infographic in an Instagram post. Both I thought were very useful within my essay, but I do believe I could’ve done a better job finding more photos or even making the information my own.

Before I started writing my essay, I already knew that I wanted to write for women who don’t think they have a voice. When thinking of what rhetorical strategies could draw in my audience, I thought drawing on pathos would be perfect. I stated in my Audience Strategy that because we are emotional human beings, it is easier to persuade people by appealing to their own personal feelings. That is what I attempted to do when writing. I wanted to try and relate activist, Angela Davis, to the audience and prove how if someone, who may look similar to you or come from a similar background, can do what she did then so can we. I thought I did a good job when trying to appeal to women’s emotions. Overall, I really liked this essay and hopefully, I can do more like this in the future.

I loved creating my Composition in Two Genres compared to writing a traditional essay. I felt I was able to be more creative and more myself when making my political cartoon and meme. I also found the brainstorming process to be easier and less stressful. Looking at the example essays and reading everyone’s responses to each prompt assigned throughout the duration of this assignment was also very helpful. Not only was the brainstorming process less stressful, but the entire process of this essay was just easier for me to handle. This could also be because we were called to utilize an assignment/topic we already completed for this course in order to do this specific essay. I think it was a wonderful way to end the semester before completing our Final Portfolios. I knew I wanted to do a meme and political cartoon after looking at the example essay about abortion. When I saw that essay, my ideas immediately began to flow. My intended audiences encouraged me to make my compositions relatable, funny, understandable, and ironic. I felt that these elements would engage my audience the most. I drew on pathos for this assignment as humor relates to emotions and can be very helpful in relaying a message. Also, if one laughs, which is a positive reaction, at the message being relayed, I believe this can enable one to more easily consider the message being portrayed. If one can consider and think about the message, then they can also begin to agree with whatever is being portrayed. Overall, I am very proud of the work I did and was very pleased to see what my group members composed.

I felt composing my composition in two genres was way easier than trying to write a large traditional essay. It differed in a way that it felt looser in the way that we are allowed to do things in our own way, there are so many genres to choose from. I chose to do an Instagram slideshow/ infographic because I was suggested it and a political comic because I can draw pretty well. The first was directed towards an older audience with mostly just words but not in a way that it felt like reading an essay but just a quick fun-fact type of way. While the other political comic was directed towards a much younger audience using simple cartoons to allow them to understand it easily. The only issue I ever really encountered would be trying to think of what I’m really trying to create, like the idea of what I’m drawing and showing. My chosen intended audiences really gave way to my choices of genre especially the political cartoon part which is also used to attract people to read it. I chose to draw on pathos, appealing to the emotions of my audience in their own interactions with the police to mix with my provided information.

Composing these two genres was extremely different compared to the traditional essays that I have written for the majority of my academic life. This is because since the two genres I have chosen were creative genres I had to do a lot more expressive thinking by creating visuals instead of bodies of texts and mountains of paragraphs to effectively convey my message clearly to my targeted audience. I’ve always believed in the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” I believe anybody of any age can clearly analyze a picture rather than bodies of texts. Also, because I am a resident of New York City I want people in my city to be safe and educated about the matter at hand, therefore, the selected audience of my genres was targeted towards residents of New York City and the younger generation (specifically teens). For my first genre, I used Pathos because my first genre was a meme, I want to invoke the emotion of joy and happiness in my audience because I believe that the emotion of joy will maintain itself in the person’s memory and helps them remember what was conveyed by me in their memory. In my second genre I used logos to appeal to my audience, my second genre was a poster whose intended audience is people who ride the MTA every day. I used logos in this genre because the MTA is used by an extremely wide variety of people from different cultures with different ethnicities. I thought the most effective way to persuade and inform these people is through logic and reasoning. I portrayed logos in my poster by posting the correct way to wear masks and the misconceptions that people may have about the transmission of the virus.

My composition in two genres essentially differed from a traditional essay in the way that these essays were written. Rather than a typical introduction, body, and conclusion for my composition, I was able to divide the essay into the two different genres and sub-sections which helped organize the overall analysis of my compositions. Furthermore, through this essay, I was able to analyze compositions I created rather than analyzing a pre-existing composition. My essay focused on some of the many reasons to pursue a college education. This means the primary audience is high school students in New York City or around the United States. Taking this audience into account, I considered visual genres to be adequate in encouraging students to apply to colleges. Visual genres are meant to be visually appealing to the audience. Younger generations also tend to prefer this type of genre over another genre such as lengthy written works. More specifically, I chose to use an advertisement and a poster to convey the overall purpose of my compositions. The main rhetorical strategy that I used through my composition was logic. The overall purpose of the composition was to persuade students towards pursuing a college education so, using facts and statistics about the many benefits of having a college degree is essential when attempting to persuade people towards this certain matter. Furthermore, I chose to provide this information in shortly stated bullet points to allow for ease of reading since these compositions would generally be found in locations where people can glance at them and take in information quickly without the genres losing their attention.

With this easy, it was very different from the approach that I took with the other two essays. I didn’t write paragraphs or even conduct any research since it was based on what I have already written. I think that overall I handled my strategy pretty well because it easy for me to come up with my writing once I got the idea set. I knew that with my topic of immigration I could use visual genre which is why I decided to use a poster for the first composition. Originally I wanted to create a video since there is already a ton of posters made based on the rights that immigrants have, but due to some unfortunate circumstances that happened to me recently I wasn’t able to get that done although I really wanted to. However, my poster still made the same points that I would’ve made in the video. I wish that I would’ve had more time to make my poster more visually pleasing but I think I did a good job with still making the vision into a reality. If I had the chance to do this project differently I would take my time with creating my own genres and be more creative with my approach. When I chose to do an op-ed, I knew that it would be a good choice because I would get to insert my own opinion on my topic and it would be much easier to fill in the rhetorical analysis that would come after it. I tried my best with adding rhetorical strategies to this essay such as Logos and Ethos but I know that I didn’t do a good job at it because I didn’t add enough evidences and resources to back up my claims or for other to reference to in the future. Overall I did enjoy this essay but if I had to do it again I would definitely manage my time better.

As for writing the composition in two genres essay I felt that this essay was very different than any other essay that I’ve written for this class. The writing structure wasn’t the basic body paragraphs, introduction, and conclusion, but rather a writing piece based off of pictures. I enjoyed engaging in this form of writing I felt that I wasn’t as repetitive as my other essays, I got straight to the point and moved on. I also enjoyed this form of writing because I got to add in my personal view on an image that some might not see. My intended audience for my composition of two genres were for people who wanted a visual representation of what is going on with immigrant detention abuse throughout the Unites States. I also wanted people of any interests to learn about what is actually going on that the media does not showcase. I incorporated the poster of the “Community instead of cages” for my second genre to show people that we all make up a community and shouldn’t be treated different from our different backgrounds. Using a form of pathos I wanted to target people who may have felt like they were unwanted or weren’t supported in their community to know that they are what makes up a community regardless of where they came from, and what language they speak. I felt the need to use that poster to have a piece of emotion that I felt at least a few people can relate on. For my first genre piece of artwork I chose a political cartoon to broadcast what the government is actually doing to solve this issue, without a form of sugarcoating it.

So, my process from getting from my original audience strategy to the final composition was relatively simple. My original strategy was to try to appeal to the target audience of the next generation. People under 30 that would be the new doctors, politicians, etc. The reason for this is so that we can take charge over the past generation and start changing things for the better that our ancestors left for us to solve. Issues such as pollution. This did not change from the original strategy. My targeted audience remained the same. Following the strategy however I had trouble finding a political cartoon and poster that coincided with each other in a specific way, using the topic of Marine Pollution to lead into World Pollution. After which I decided that if the political cartoon and poster reach the audience in the way I want, then world pollution will be a part of that as well. So, I found a political cartoon that was more general covering both fields. Following this I decided that using a meme or a small comic may work as a better visual que instead of a poster to inspire people to act. In our time posters are not as motivational as they used to be.
A meme seemed like the best way to approach the younger generation, so I found one that expressed my ideas and used that as well. So, in comparison to my original audience strategy, it did not change a whole lot. Either than the fact that I decided to use a meme instead of a poster to better appeal to my audience and changed the format in which I wanted to present it. Regarding rhetorical choices, everything just flowed honestly. For the rhetorical situation I wanted to express the ideas of future generations having to deal with the problem we started. Which I think turned out rather well. The genre stayed the same since I think people need to see or touch to believe, meaning visual genres would work better. Stance did not change; my stance is the same as it was before. In comparison to writing the Research Essay this was quite different. It had to be more focused on the rhetorical practice of pathos, which I realized I use a lot to attempt to prove or convey my ideas. I could not use factual evidence like in the research-based, so I focused on visual ques to do it. However, I did realize that I honestly still need a lot of work for my Rhetorical Analytics, I feel like I have issues properly expressing as to why something was written or created. I tend to over generalize sometimes as a result it ends up missing certain important elements. I think I did okay for this Essay, but either way I need a lot more work and I am planning on writing a lot more which will add on to my idea for the theory of writing.