When I first came to this class I was asked “What is your theory of writing?” This is the first time I had heard the term “theory of writing,” and had no idea what it was. The thought of it never came to my mind before this class and when we discussed it during class and learned about all the different genres, I began to really understand what it was and tried to create my own “theory of writing.”

In order for someone to create a theory of writing they must first reflect on their past works. These past works are the papers we wrote in this class and other classes. By doing this we can see the way our writing has developed and changed as time continues to progress.

When writing our first essay, the source-based essay, in this class I learned about rhetorical situations and different genres. I learned that genre does not only refer to fiction, nonfiction, adventure, etc. but it also refers to essay, journal entry, email, magazine, etc. this helped me to develop my theory of writing as it showed me that my theory of writing should apply to all types of writings, rather than just essays. When. Writing this essay, we had to use four different genres of works related to a rhetorical situation and write a rhetorical analysis and description for each article. I chose police brutality as my rhetorical situation and found a lot of relevant articles on the topic. However, when writing this essay, I mainly focused on completing the task rather than expand on the meaning of what I am writing.

“The article “Vox Sentences: Shot by a cop in his own apartment,” by Jennie Neufeld, describes the case of Botham Jean, an African American male, who was shot by Dallas police officer Amber Guyger in his own home. The police officer mistook the apartment for her own and shot Jean. The genre of this article is a news report obtained by Vox and was written on September 11,2018. The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the incident that occurred. This is because the article doesn’t show any real opinion at all on the case. It only states facts and details about what happened and the charges she will face.”

Rather than expanding on the purpose of the article I just stated what it was and gave a minimal explanation of why. However, as the essay went on I expanded on the audience and other aspects of the article.

“The audience of this article are young people in American. This is because majority of Vox’s readers are young people. Also, the audience could be the African American community in Dallas because of how the case was handled. The text states, “The ways the Texas Rangers, the state’s head law enforcement agency, have handled the case so far have sparked concerns about how Guyger will be treated and prosecuted. It took a “spirited debate” with Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson for the Rangers to arrest Guyger, who was then allowed to turn herself in at a rural jail far from Dallas.” This shows that the African American community had to intervene into the case which would lead to a debate that would get her arrested. This group played a big part of how the case ended which is why they are the audience, and it shows the young audience a way to make change.”

This shows development in my writing as I started to expand on ideas and create meaning by expressing my thoughts and using the TEA method (Thesis. Example. Analysis). By using TEA I am able to keep my work organized and able to stay on track. I used this method a lot when writing the second essay, inquiry-based research essay, in class. This was evident in all my body paragraphs as it was an excellent way of getting my point across in an organized and clear manner.

TEA“Racism is probably the biggest cause of police violence. Police officers are more likely to stop a person of color, rather than a white person. The scholarly article, “Racism and Police Brutality in America,” by Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson, states, “A growing body of scholarly research related to police brutality has revealed that Blacks are more likely than Whites to make complaints regarding police brutality (Smith and Holmes 2003), to be accosted while operating a motorized vehicle (“Driving While Black”), and to underreport how often they are stopped due to higher social desirability factors (TomaskovicDevey et al. 2006).” This conveys that police violence is targeted more often at African Americans which is shown by multiple scholarly researches done recently on the issue.”

Although this is a good way to present ideas, I didn’t really expand on them in the analysis. However, as the essay continues, I began to develop my analysis’ more and really connect my examples to my thesis.

“One way to reduce police violence is the use of body worn cameras. A body camera is a tiny camera worn around the chest area of a police officer and it records what they do while they are on their shift…. Ariel then discusses the results of his study and states, “We have also detected large before-after reductions in prevalence of incidents of use-of-force force (see Table 3; Fig. 1): 64.3 % reduction from 2009, 61.5 % from 2010, and 58.3 % from 2011,” This shows that the use of body cameras lead to a major decrease in use of force by more than 50%. This is a huge decrease and has a major effect on police violence. Therefore, body cameras should be issued to law enforcement agencies all over the United States as it could greatly reduce the amount of force used by police officers.”

Through all of these changes that has occurred in my writing and the uses of TEA and rhetorical situations and genres, I have concluded that my “theory of writing,” is that writing is a means of communicating ideas and messages while developing and changing your way of thinking. This can be applied to my major, the field of electrical engineering, as I will be creating instructions and blueprints which will be going through changes and alterations. Also it will spread the message and idea of what I intend on creating to the people who are following it.