After experiencing this advanced composition course, my awareness of the different forms of composition has increased tremendously. This awareness allows me to feel more confident in professional setting with knowing what type of writing style I should when composing my work. One the first day of class, I was completely convinced that advanced composition was merely a filler course at ODU.  Then, the class began with defining what advanced composition actually is. Advanced composition focuses on the development of mature writing. Advanced composition aims to help the student forge a professional style in expository writing. By using the study of the stylistic and analytic principles, students learn to utilize effective prose writing. Before the first day of class, I wouldn’t have been able to understand the full spectrum of what advanced composition had to offer its students.

This course helped me understand the growing technological divide that exists in many classrooms and workplaces all over America. Because of the use and dependency of technology is expanding, I learned that it is imperative to be digitally literate. At first, I believed as someone could “read” a paragraph on the computer or “decipher” a text message that made the digitally literate. My viewpoint on digital literacy was very limited. Digital literacy actually is defined to be the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information. Digital literacy requires both cognitive skills and technical skills from its user. Of course as a “millennial”, I can understand the everyday use technology, when it came to use technology in a professional setting I actually struggled. I hardly used technology unless it was to research, type a paper, or send an email. I resented the use of technology because I felt that it was destroying all the facets about writing, language, and culture I loved the most. Being born after 1984, I did not appreciate being a “digital native” because it seemed more like a “curse” than a “blessing”. I agreed with some of the articles we read in class that believed that rhetoric of “digital natives” does falsely assume that today’s average student totally understands numerous ways technologies shape the human experience. That conclusion made me what to resist technology even more. However, through this course I was able to learn to appreciate what it means to digitally literate. Being digitally literate is similar to any other form of literacy in regards of limited access to the knowledge. It is a privilege to be able to afford a laptop or a smartphone, and a lot of people within America and without do not have access to it.

As the weeks went on, we began to learn more and more in the course. From this, I begin to form ideas more fluidly from practicing writing so much. The more I wrote, the easier it was for me to understand the rhetorical nature of writing. At first, rhetoric was a foreign concept to me. I had heard the term before, but I didn’t understand the meaning of it or what made it so important to scholars. From advanced composition, I learned that rhetoric is the faculty of discovering in any particular case all available means of persuasion. The rhetorical situation involves a “message” that is being expressed like information, reasons, evidence, etc.… to either add to or persuade an audiences’ beliefs or knowledge. In the rhetorical situation, the communicator is in a position of authority. It is their job to provide ethos, and have elements of correctness to the information they are trying to convey. Learning about rhetoric helped tremendously while I was writing because it helped me pinpoint a purpose. When I was writing in the past, I didn’t always understand who or what I was writing for, but when you start to start to use rhetoric for a guide when writing it allows you to think clearly as to what information you are really trying to convey.

After being able to properly use rhetoric in my papers, the next helpful tool that I learned from this course was the real meaning of genre. When I used to think I genre I simply would think my favorite types of books, songs, or movies. In literature, genre is more than a mystery novel or realistic fiction. Genre is defined a schema of prior knowledge which others share to bring situations in which we read and write to express ourselves efficiently and effectively. Writing is a social act that creates explicit outcomes and expectations. Learning how to write is a social act as well. Genre-based pedagogies allow the writer/reader to understand how language is used in specific context, and the purpose of structure enables the writer/reader to utilize in-context information more effectively. Genre provides the necessary basis for critical engagement with cultural and textual practices. After understanding what genre was, I was able to dictate how I wanted to express my opinions and research in papers. Genre allowed me to have more focus when I was writing, which then led to clearer, more informed writing from me as a composer. I am able to analysis information with more purpose than I did in the past.

This advance composition course makes me feel more prepared as a writer. I feel that now I have the proper tools to communicate information in any situation. I can now pick apart the different situations that call for certain writing styles, and use them accordingly. I have more confidence as a scholastic writer, and I feel as if I am more adept at jargon I once did not understand.