Preface
Everyone has a different style of writing and can incorporate different elements into that style. Over the course of this semester, I have learned a lot about writing: the different elements, revision, and my social cause. Each of these three elements together has helped me to improve my writing style and also to better understand the writing of others.
This semester, I have learned to develop techniques such as how to build ethos, pathos, and logos – something that I had never really considered before when writing. I now know that pictures can add an incredible amount of pathos to a piece of writing by giving readers an actual visual to add greater effect. It is also important to establish credibility, or ethos, by citing credible sources or using proven statistics to support your claims. This makes your work more believable to the reader. The transmittal letters also taught me the importance of keeping in mind an audience, since they were to be addressed to a certain person or organization. Until this course, I never realized how much the audience needed to be taken into consideration. It makes sense, however, since they will be the ones reading the piece and analyzing what you are saying. It is important for a writer to craft his or her writing style around the type of audience that will be viewing his piece. I also saw an improvement in my blogs throughout the course as my writing developed and I became more understanding of writing objectives and my social cause.
One of the major things I learned about in this course was revision. Before, I only thought of revision as mere editing. When I was required to revise in high school, I would simply just fix spelling and grammatical errors or edit a couple of sentences. My epiphany of revision came when I realized that you can actually change complete ideas in your work through revision. Without realizing it, I had always believed that a writer was restricted to the ideas of his or her first draft, and that when he or she went back to revise, only minor improvements could be made to what was already there. By taking some time and setting aside works of writing to be looked at and revised later, I came to realize that one’s perspective and attitude about a piece can really change from just a small amount of time not focusing on it anymore. For example, I changed and revised a lot of my sentences and pictures from the very first project that I did: the photo story. I didn’t like a lot of the sentences I used and some of the pictures that I had picked. Just by revising this one piece, I realized that my style of writing has improved and matured since the start of this course, and that some of my viewpoints had changed since I first completed the project.
I also learned a great deal about my social cause: female feticide and infanticide in India. This was actually a topic that I knew nothing about until this course. I picked this particular social cause while browsing through the internet because it sounded interesting and I wanted to learn more about it. The only thing I really knew about this issue was that there was a discrimination against girls, and that they were being killed for it. Throughout my research during the course, however, I learned a lot more detail about the practice of feticide and infanticide in India. One of the main reasons for this practice is because of the low social status of girls. In Indian society, girls are very expensive because of practices such as dowry. Dowry is when the bride’s family has to give valuables and gifts as payment to the groom and his family when the two get married. It is an extremely stressful time for a girl’s family, and becomes even more so when there are multiple girls in the family. This is where the practices of feticide and infanticide come into play. Female feticide is the practice of getting an abortion after the gender of the baby is revealed to be a female. This practice has become more and more popular recently because of advancing technology and ultrasounds that permit the women to not have to wait until the birth of the baby to find out whether it is a girl or boy. Female infanticide is the age-old practice of killing a newborn, infant, or baby girl because of her gender. These killings are usually done in a cruel way.
Overall, I’ve learned a lot about elements of writing such as pathos, logos, ethos, and audience as well as about my own writing. These writing elements, my new idea of revision, and the research of my social cause have contributed to the development and improvement of my writing throughout this course.
This semester, I have learned to develop techniques such as how to build ethos, pathos, and logos – something that I had never really considered before when writing. I now know that pictures can add an incredible amount of pathos to a piece of writing by giving readers an actual visual to add greater effect. It is also important to establish credibility, or ethos, by citing credible sources or using proven statistics to support your claims. This makes your work more believable to the reader. The transmittal letters also taught me the importance of keeping in mind an audience, since they were to be addressed to a certain person or organization. Until this course, I never realized how much the audience needed to be taken into consideration. It makes sense, however, since they will be the ones reading the piece and analyzing what you are saying. It is important for a writer to craft his or her writing style around the type of audience that will be viewing his piece. I also saw an improvement in my blogs throughout the course as my writing developed and I became more understanding of writing objectives and my social cause.
One of the major things I learned about in this course was revision. Before, I only thought of revision as mere editing. When I was required to revise in high school, I would simply just fix spelling and grammatical errors or edit a couple of sentences. My epiphany of revision came when I realized that you can actually change complete ideas in your work through revision. Without realizing it, I had always believed that a writer was restricted to the ideas of his or her first draft, and that when he or she went back to revise, only minor improvements could be made to what was already there. By taking some time and setting aside works of writing to be looked at and revised later, I came to realize that one’s perspective and attitude about a piece can really change from just a small amount of time not focusing on it anymore. For example, I changed and revised a lot of my sentences and pictures from the very first project that I did: the photo story. I didn’t like a lot of the sentences I used and some of the pictures that I had picked. Just by revising this one piece, I realized that my style of writing has improved and matured since the start of this course, and that some of my viewpoints had changed since I first completed the project.
I also learned a great deal about my social cause: female feticide and infanticide in India. This was actually a topic that I knew nothing about until this course. I picked this particular social cause while browsing through the internet because it sounded interesting and I wanted to learn more about it. The only thing I really knew about this issue was that there was a discrimination against girls, and that they were being killed for it. Throughout my research during the course, however, I learned a lot more detail about the practice of feticide and infanticide in India. One of the main reasons for this practice is because of the low social status of girls. In Indian society, girls are very expensive because of practices such as dowry. Dowry is when the bride’s family has to give valuables and gifts as payment to the groom and his family when the two get married. It is an extremely stressful time for a girl’s family, and becomes even more so when there are multiple girls in the family. This is where the practices of feticide and infanticide come into play. Female feticide is the practice of getting an abortion after the gender of the baby is revealed to be a female. This practice has become more and more popular recently because of advancing technology and ultrasounds that permit the women to not have to wait until the birth of the baby to find out whether it is a girl or boy. Female infanticide is the age-old practice of killing a newborn, infant, or baby girl because of her gender. These killings are usually done in a cruel way.
Overall, I’ve learned a lot about elements of writing such as pathos, logos, ethos, and audience as well as about my own writing. These writing elements, my new idea of revision, and the research of my social cause have contributed to the development and improvement of my writing throughout this course.