Thlog #1

After only 2 extremely productive lectures, I feel like I have learned so much more in Writing 2 compared to all of my other classes. One thing I’ve noticed is that it is much easier to be engaged in class when you have a professor that is lively and fun. For example, Zack’s uplifting personality makes it so I don’t want to fall asleep during class and gives me more motivation to do the assigned writings.

Before starting Writing 2, the only meaning of “genre” I was familiar with was the different types of music. I knew that country, hip hop, pop and rock were all different genres of music. All of these still are different genres of music, but I’ve learned that genre expands way out of the music world. Basically anything in the world is its own genre. Within genres are conventions that make up the genre. It is important to note that there are always various conventions that make up the genre, but not every convention is used for every example of the genre.

After reading Dirks, Navigating Genres, I learned that writing doesn’t have any rules. It all depends on your audience/purpose for the writing in which your main goal is to please the audience. Also, Dirk made a clear point that we always use past examples of whatever topic we are writing about to help shape our writing. For example, when assigned a research paper we already know the format of how to write it because of past research papers that have already been written. We use works in the past to inform us of important things that should be included in any type of writing that we do, while still writing original material.