Thlog One

This first week of Writing 2 was extremely interesting. My classmates seem like extremely easy-going people, especially because they are mostly interested in adventuring and travelling like me. I met Kayla, River, and Gary, when Zack divided us in groups to introduce each other to the rest of the class. I really enjoyed that activity because I actually got to know their background, and their interests.

The topic we’re currently learning about is genre. We looked at the relation between country music, horror movies, and letter recommendations, and each of their conventions. I was initially extremely confused, as I have never really thought about finding specific features that describe a genre. When we were looking at the characteristics that indicate country music, one classmate supposed that it almost always contained complaints about something. Another classmate said that the singers almost always have an up and down southern drawl accent, having elongated vowels. We then looked at horror movies and its conventions. I was not too fond examining the three horror movie clips, as I awfully dislike horror. We then looked at Zack’s students’ email requests for letter recommendations and its conventions such as including due date, appreciation of the teacher’s time, when they knew the teacher, etc. The reading of ‘Navigating Genres – Dirk,’ disclosed the overall understanding of genres, as well as the different expressions and having to adapt writing depending on specific location. It also specifically explained the main conventions of thesis statements in papers.

In the second lesson, we were asked to free-write on questions based on our (students’) understanding of textual genres, as well as specific parts from our readings. This then continued to teach us about Elbow’s 1^st and 2^nd order thinking. 1^st order thinking consists of having no pressure, saying or writing whatever comes to your mind and used usually when communicating with close friends, or starting a formal paper. 2^nd order thinking is more so the self-critical, controlled and structured way of thinking, used when editing or revising papers.