Final Anthology

Introduction:

My assignment blog focused on blog posts that reflect different composition-related topics discussed in class. Most of them are written in narrative format, starting with an anecdote that proves a point later on. Most of my blog posts are written in this form unless they require a certain genre. The underlying theme of the assignment blog is “food, feelings, and film,” the title of the course, because each one pertains to at least one of the words. Most of the blog posts are between 400-600 words long; writing within this word requirement helped develop a writing mindset: to be clear, concise, and to the point. Understanding this particular nature of writing allowed me to write well on longer or graded assignments because I understood the word count is negligible, as long as the same principle is applied. Composition is centered at quality, not quantity. 

The five blog posts I chose are: Strange Skewers and Squid, Confession of a Meat-Lover, the Proust free-write, the Eat Drink Man Woman voiceover, and the pie free-write. The first two are my favorite narratives I wrote over the semester and discuss both cultural and gender identity with relation to cuisine. They focus on “food” and “feelings.” The Proust free-write is also a narrative with a quote taken from Proust’s famous madeleine passage. This piece focuses on “food” and “feelings” as well. The voiceover represents how we learned to take our writing skills and apply it to different types of rhetoric as we progressed through the semester. The voiceover incorporates the “film” aspect of the course. Finally, the pie free-write is an example of a blog post we wrote incorporating all three aspects of the course title; it is also one of my more creative pieces. 

The pieces I chose are arranged from simple to complex: the first two are anecdotes dealing with culture and gender respectively; the third is an anecdote but with a twist: it is not only longer but also incorporates a quote from Proust’s famous madeleine passage; the fourth is written in a different genre: it is voiceover of the beginning scene from Eat Drink Man Woman; the fifth and final post incorporates many aspects of the course: inspiration from a film, feelings, food, creativity, and analysis. 

 - http://chentastico.blogspot.com/2016/12/blog-post-1-strange-skewers-and-squid.html - Strange Skewers and Squid

 - http://chentastico.blogspot.com/2016/12/blog-post-2-confession-of-meat-lover.html - Confession of a Meat-Lover

 - http://chentastico.blogspot.com/2016/12/blog-post-3.html - Proust free-write

 - http://chentastico.blogspot.com/2016/12/blog-post-4-eat-drink-man-woman.html - Eat Drink Man Woman voiceover

 - http://chentastico.blogspot.com/2016/12/blog-post-5-forgotten-feelings-pie.html - Pie free-write

Conclusion: 

Writing blog posts was an effective way of starting off the semester with a lot of writing exercise to help us ease into the class as well as to get familiar with our own style of writing in the long run. They helped us develop strong critical thinking and writing skills because we were assigned blog posts after most lessons so we could concentrate on understanding the lesson shortly after we are introduced to it; this style of teaching helped root that knowledge inside us (for example, we had to write a blog post comparing genre and audience shortly after we learned about both key terms). We also developed our editing skills, and learned to apply them to different genres of writing, a technique I grew more adept with over the semester. 

We wrote in different genres, which allowed us to explore writing further than just a persuasive essay. For example, my voice over started off with “The fish has been gutted, the meat has been breaded, and the kitchen has come alive! Join us, as we witness Mr. Chu preparing his signature dish,” almost like a TV-show. This type of writing is not usually taught, but we were given the opportunity to experiment with it in this course, expanding our composition horizons. Another sentence, “We made promises to each other that night about the goals we wanted; we parted for our cars in the rainy parking lot as the clock struck ten, hoping that each of our promises would be kept. The night passed in an almost magical scene - the rain, the emotions, and the final goodbye,” is symbolic of the class because we learned to express emotion in our sentences, anecdotes, and arguments. Very few times are emotions conveyed in a regular persuasive paper. 

I believe the extent to which we diverted from persuasive English essays was what made this course unique. Even though it’s not labeled a creative writing course, many aspects of the class definitely help improve our understanding, critical thinking, and writing processes when it comes to expressing our thoughts liberally through composition.