Navigating Genres Response
My initial reaction to this article was to groan in agony because I saw that it was 15 pages long. Luckily, once I started reading my agony was replaced with interest. Kerry Dirk does a good job of knowing who her audience is and writing for them. She obviously has experience with college students and knows how to keep us focused. I liked the inclusion of articles from The Onion, even though none of them made me laugh out loud. That section also made me wonder how necessary it is to keep political opinions out of informative articles like this. On the one hand, it is considered more professional to do so, but I am curious if any issues would be caused if Kerry Dirk had included political headlines from The Onion. Should students realize that not everyone is going to have the same political leanings as them and look past it or should authors realize that including their opinions in informative work ostracizes some students and thus not include them? I am also confused as to why Kerry Dirk specifically noted that she was leaving out political headlines. If she had not mentioned that I would have never noticed it myself.
This article helped to clear up the term, “rhetorical situation” for me. I had been confused about the phrase before, but Kerry Dirk’s use of examples helped me to understand.
I thought the last question in the discussion portion of this article towards the end was thought provoking. Personally, I prefer to have a lot of freedom when I’m writing. It is more of a struggle for me to come up with important things to say when I am limited to a certain format or topic. However, when I am experiencing severe writer’s block, it can help to be more or less told what to write.
I totally agree with your opening statement!! When I first opened up the link I was overcome with agony as well! However, it ended up being a really beneficial and vital read! I too think that Kerry Dirk does an amazing job gearing his writing style to his audience, Dirk definitely knows his audience! In addition, I am with you, I was never really sure what a rhetorical situation was. But, after reading this story I know exactly what it is! Overall this story was a great read!
ReplyDeleteI agree too that this essay looked like a boring read and gave me a sense of agony. But then, after starting to read the essay, I found it to be very insightful to the reader and brought up a lot of questions that could be up for a debate. I agree that this essay shows that you have more freedom than people think when it comes to writing and that is could be beneficial and helpful to many writers
ReplyDeleteyeah I defiantly thought this article was going to be an absolute pain to read when I first opened it, but after a while I got some great points from it and I'm defiantly glad I read the whole thing. The whole article seemed geared towards a younger audience which made me take a lot more out of it and made it an easier read overall.
ReplyDeleteHi Stefanie
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see that you enjoyed the text. Many texts in college-level are lengthy, so it might be helpful to develop reading techniques in order to get through with them easily as a college student. Considering your "The Onion" doubt, I don't think it would make Kirk's writing inappropriate if she used a political headline as example since it would not constitute personal bias, but only the reproduction of a headline.