May 6, 2021

Zi’s Theory of Writing

The definition of my theory of writing is self-organized, intended, and adaptive written communication. Self-organized meaning subjective to my own creation using writing and everyone is entitled to their own creation. Every writer has its intended purpose and audience, a way to aim where you want to deliver your information. The theory of writing is also adaptive because it is a practice to improve our writing through experiences of reading and writing. I think writing is a continuous process of learning, a way to train our written language through repetitions. In my experience, each time I write a piece of writing I can always spot my flaws and through revision, I bring clarity to the writing. The memo writing is a great example of this, the subject is smokers in my local park which is my self-organized subject. The intent of this memo is to provide my thoughts about the issue of secondhand smoking in the park and communicate with the targeted audience is President of Brooklyn, Eric Adams. The adaptive part is learning from Howard Schultz’s Starbucks memo, analyzing his writing in pieces to find different approaches that I can use in my memo. 

My theory of writing coming into this class is how well I formulate my thoughts and put them onto a piece of writing. My theory of writing has evolved to be more conscious about the context, purpose, and objective of my writing. There are many genres of writing, and each genre has its own audience, subject, and purpose. For example, a memo is a genre of mail writing that is business-related, purpose to announce to share an idea among colleagues within a workplace. Then the Technical description writing, a genre of the informational article. This form of writing is more informational writing, with the purpose of providing detailed information about a product. The audience is subjected to the product of choice that the writer is describing. Both writings use rhetorical situations to create a context of persuasion. In other words, they are trying to deliver their writings in an effective and convincing way.

The assignment that contributed to my theory of writing the most is the rhetorical analysis essay. This assignment guides me to learn more about the rhetorical strategies that writers used. In the process of analyzing three lab reports, each article is written by university professors that have a great understanding of their field and professional writing style. My research and reading of the articles made me understand the writing format, strategy, and structure of a lab report to present our information in a convincing way. A lab report is a genre of writing just like articles, but it is research-based in the purpose of delivering the experiment results of their study. The tone of a lab report is formal in a professional way, in this manner to state their hypotheses and use research statistical data to back it up. Lab report articles generally appeal to logos and ethos, they use credible facts and effective results to support their study. This assignment made me understand the intent of writing and adapted to this new way of writing stated in my theory of writing. 

The relationship between my theory of writing and how I create knowledge is the theory of writing helps me create knowledge. Knowledge can be shared through writing, so my ability to write convincingly is the key to create knowledge. An example is my Technical description assignment, I’m creating knowledge about the mechanism of a hand-cranking pencil sharpener. The technique to writing a technical description is to understand the writing behind mechanism description. By describing the physical properties, the appearance of the pencil sharpener, and why it is designed in this way. Then the component parts and sub-parts, how they interact with one another, and the functionally of each component. These are all knowledgeable information to learn about a product, my theory of writing is used as a guide to delivering relevant facts in a technical description.

My theory of writing can be applied to other writing situations both inside and outside the classroom. Writing situations outside the classroom can be writing emails that are government-related or business; I often help my parents send emails to affiliations of government and business. On my own time, I write out my thoughts and feelings, it is a processing method I used to clear my mind. Making thoughts that are invisible, visible using writing helps me process problems better. Writing situations inside the classroom can be writing reports, essays, responses, or what I’m writing currently. I believe every time we write, there is an intention behind the matter of the words. For example, the introductions discussion post is an intention of mine to introduce myself by talking about my hobbies, experiences, and interests. My theory of writing is a self-organized, intended, and adaptive written communication, a form of communication to myself or others.

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