Dear Professor Vives,
Throughout my educational career I have
always enjoyed my reading and writing classes.
I never seemed to totally dislike having to write essays and papers. For this reason, I was definitely not
dreading taking my ENC 1101 and ENC 1102 writing courses in college like most
students. I took ENC 1101 in the summer
and it was very beneficial to my writing.
Now after taking ENC 1102 I feel my writing has improved even more. I do feel that the topics I learned in ENC
1101, including discourse communities, the writing process and the introduction
of genres, were a great foundation for this course now. Throughout this course I have learned about different
genres, how to successfully research, find a research gap in a conversation,
and put together a complete academic article.
When beginning our main research project
I was not very confident in myself that I would be about to create such a large
document. One of the first things
assigned was to begin collecting sources for our research topic. I had never really used the UCF library
search engine to its full potential before.
I definitely feel I am now able to effectively search for any topic necessary
and know the tips on how to refine searches.
I learned that the key words you use to refine your search are the most
important. When searching for articles
on the web if you do not use the correct key terms you will be given millions
of articles. This is when I began
realizing the different genres that exist in writing.
Before
ENC 1101 I always thought genre simply meant a type of music. I now have the understanding that a genre can
also mean a type of written document.
Some types of genres can include academic articles, a magazine,
newspaper, brochure or even a restaurant menu.
Each different genre has a different purpose. For example, the purpose of a restaurant menu
is to inform costumers about what types of foods the restaurant serves. This purpose is much different then the purpose
of an academic article, which is to inform other researchers about a topic and
conversation. The difference of each
genre is mainly because of the different audience each genre is pertaining
to. If a genre is made for an average
college student to understand the writer should not be using different lexes’
they will not understand.
One of the hardest times of this
semester was when I had to define my research gap. I was confused on how I could come up with an
original claim when there are so many researchers already talking about my
topic. I felt that they would be able to
come up with every possible claim in the conversation. However, after lots of thinking I was able to
come up with an original claim. I
realized that I could actually aid in the conversation of research topics. This changed my thinking about student
writing. It was also interesting to hear
about everyone else’s original claims through their presentations.
Looking back at the beginning of the
semester I can confidently say I feel I have become a more experienced
writer. I have fully accomplished
writing a research paper in the genre for an academic audience, understand how
to research academically, and understood how to enter my voice in an academic
conversation. Professor Vives, I want to
thank you for helping me throughout the semester. I definitely feel I have had a successful and
smooth journey through my ENC 1102 course.
Sincerely,
Kimberly
King
