Last Spring break, I went to a high school in Yakima with a group of UW students to give a presentation about higher education. The purpose of the presentation was to encourage students to pursue higher education by sharing our own experiences at UW because a lot of students in the region do not decide to continue education after they graduate from high school. When the presentation was getting close to the end, one of our group members suddenly started talking and giving detailed information about the neurobiology research that she was working on. At that point, both the audience and the fellow group members were very confused. Maybe she was trying to explain a possible brain research opportunity for future college students. However, when the audience was students who did not even know if they wanted to go to college, no matter what her true intention was, she failed to deliver the message to our audience. Like this example shows, you have to know who the audience is in order to come up with the most effective strategies that can help you deliver the message. When writing, you do not physically see your audience as you would do while giving a presentation. However, a piece of writing always has an audience. If a writer correctly identifies its audience, then she should be able to employ writing style, tone, and convections appropriate to the contexts and the demands of the audience. 

Through the short paper assignment 1.2, I was able to practice some of the strategies mentioned above. The task of this assignment was to write a blog post in which I write about how the events, ideologies and politics in The Handmaid’ Tale are responding to the Susan Faludi’s book, Backlash. Because the blog is published on the internet, I considered the nature of internet and its usage when choosing the convections. When most people read blog posts, they want a less complex writing from which they can get information fast. Or sometimes people want to read blog posts purely just for enjoyment. This knowledge about my audience helped me choose a concise organization, a cynical tone and an informal style for my blog post. 

In order to organize my writing more effectively, I gave each paragraph a title (except for the introduction and final conclusion paragraph). This way, as they read, my reader gets a clear idea of what I am writing about for each paragraph. Moreover, if they need to go back to a certain part, they can find it more efficiently using the titles. I also used my introduction as a road map to explain my readers what my topic was and how I planned to proceed with my discussion.The information that the introduction contains will enable my readers to decide if they want to continue to read my blog or not.  

I tried to keep the tone cynical in order to keep my audience interested/entertained. I accomplished this by adding some famous quotes. For example, when explaining how Offred is indifferent and coward, I used the famous Dante’s quote about neutral people going to hell and wrote, “If Dante was true, Offred definitely booked a ticket that will take her straight to the darkest spot in hell" (Lee 1). Instead of explaining Offred’s characteristic just simply using words, my quote usage will grab readers’ attention more effectively and make the writing more engaging. I also used simile. For example, I wrote, “Women have been like Marionettes controlled by puppeteers” (Lee 2). This creates the image of this women controlled by women phenomenon in the reader’s mind in an interesting way.  

Another writing skill that I employed for this assignment was an informal style. It allowed my blog post to be more engaging for a wider range of readers. For this purpose, I used “I” in the writing. Since this is a blog post, not an academic essay, using the first person point of view made my writing more personal and approachable. Also, instead of using sophisticated vocabulary, I employed the word/phrase choices such as “go on and on”, “sly chauvinistic pigs” or “babbling” which helped me set the informal style. They also create powerful imageries in my writing. 

Short paper 1.2 was by far my favorite assignment. It is not usual for me as a student majoring in biochemistry to get a chance to be creative and write a paper like this. So, I am very grateful that I had an opportunity to explore a new writing style that I was not familiar with.