Van Pelt 1

Jake Van Pelt

Megan Keaton
ENC 2135
2 August, 2016
Project 3 Rationale & Reflection
The first genre that I utilized for the project of composing in non-essayist genre was the
genre of video. Given how much time the average teenager/young adult spends watching a
monitor on average, it only seemed fitting for me to make a video to help teach my suitemate,
who is also a freshman here at FSU, the concept of Genre. With my suitemate, Chad, also being
an aspiring film student, the genre of video would only be more appealing to him. The video is
scripted to portray a scenario where Chad and I are hanging out in the dorm when he remembers
that an assignment might be due quite soon. So he asks to use my computer and after he is
relived to discover that he thought wrong, he notices my second genre and inquiries about it. The
video is to then play out with myself elaborating to Chad about the main conventions of genre
including style, design, syntax, and audience with the video ending with Chad saying that he
seems to have a good bit better of an understanding of genre in this context than he did, as when
he first read the title, he thought that the genre was referring to the genre of things such as action
and Sci-Fi genres in film. With regards to the level of success the video would have in actually
teaching Chad the concept of genre, I would have to say that the video would have been quite
successful. In the video I use practical and easy to follow examples of genre as cover all the
basic parts that make up how genre is defined and perceived. The video helps break down the

Van Pelt 2
whole concept of genre into manageable parts that have their relationship to each other well
explained for the audience (being teenage to young adult persons in general). The video may
have some shortcomings in that it is mainly teaching the genre conventions through verbal rather
than visual means and as such, may make it a bit difficult for some views to understand the
relationship between concepts to some extent. Also, with Chad actually being part of the
presentation as opposed to watching it, he may still have some questions that need to be
answered as the video is basically me being a teacher for him. So for the verbal Ying of the
video, I made the visual Yang of the webpage.
The second genre that I utilized to help teach Chad the concept of genre and related
concepts was the genre of a webpage on my portfolio website that had a series of images with
explanations about how the images represented a concept of genre. For example, one of the
images was of a Curious George book cover. I posed the question to the viewer about what the
cover made the viewer think of as well as who the audience of the book was likely to be. I then
explained as to how the cover contained certain genre conventions typical for the genre of
childrens books, being the use of bright colorful pictures throughout the book for the design,
simple short sentences for the style, and basic language for the syntax. The webpage was
designed so that Chad would be able to view the images and think about what he perceived the
images pertained to with this being an example of genre in the sense that each picture related to
something different from the others. Some of the pictures were of words that had been positioned
to be in the shape of what they were describing. For example, one of the pictures had the words
arranged to form a heart with the actual context of the words being a direct quote from the Bible
from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 describing love. I included this image to show the words formed in a

Van Pelt 3
visual sense what they were describing which is like how the genre convention (context of the
words) determines the genre (image the words were shaped as). I believe that the webpage
worked quite well as it helped draw comparison to the way genre and genre conventions work by
putting it in a visual context. There still may have been some issues though, primarily relating to
the fact that some of the pictures kind of relied on the viewer having a similar thought process to
what I had when viewing them, regarding what each image was trying to convey and about the
genre conventions that parallel the different aspects of the image.
My understanding of genre has been enhanced by this project as well as by the class in
that I went from thinking of it only as pertaining to style, to now relating to style, design, syntax,
audience. By thinking of genre as the actual medium of communication, I know can better
determine the individual genre conventions of a specific genre. When I view say a brochure, I
now see who its audience is, the design of the pictures in it and of the actual brochure layout
itself, and the style of text on it. From this I can now be able to conclude for myself what I
believe the brochure is for as well as the type of person it is geared for. With a better
understanding of genre, I also have an increased perception of rhetorical situations and their
effect upon the selection of genre. For example, I now can see why a visual presentation may be
made to review something like a companys finances compared to a simple essay type of paper.
The concept of rhetorical situation also makes a good bit more sense now than it did when I
entered the class as now I understand that rhetorical situation refers to the audience and what is
needing to be addressed, from which the genre is then determined in preparing to respond to the
rhetorical situation. With social media and interconnectedness being major factors in todays
world, various new rhetorical situations appear that I can better understand. Take for example

Van Pelt 4
why to contact a good friend, a person chooses to simply send a picture of them self in a
snapchat as opposed to sending a text. It could be attributed to the saying that a picture is worth a
thousand words however, if the rhetorical situation is more closely examined, one can see as to
why a simple picture was chosen over the text. With the picture simply getting a picture from a
friend indicates that they wish to communicate. When people get to know each other for a while,
they soon come to better understand that person and the unique behaviors about them, like how a
person with a certain facial expression may elicit a humorous response from the onlooker who
interprets that the face means that the person is unamused. With the two people being good
friends, the rhetorical situation does not necessitate the use of text to communicate because facial
expressions can be used instead due to the fact that the person receiving the picture can gain the
information they need solely from the senders facial expression. During the project, I gained
further insight into rhetorical situation when Mrs. Keaton requested that I think more about the
ways that Chad and I communicate when I had said that I intended to make a PowerPoint and a
Prezi. After giving it some thought I settled on writing a video script and making a webpage on
my portfolio website to explain and elaborate upon the concept of genre and its related terms. I
choose these two genres because Chad is wanting to be a film major and so during the scripting
of a video, I would be able to explain genre to him in order for him to understand the context of
genre in the video when I was describing it. As for the second genre, I picked it because I know
that Chad often browses long strings of videos and discussions online on various websites. So by
formatting my website to be a bit like Reddit where there is a video followed by some
thoughtful comments, I felt as though Chad would be able to follow with ease and eventually
come to understand genre in a manner quite similar to that of my own. The project did
complicate my methods by which I compose as I was forced to take up genres quite different

Van Pelt 5
from the traditional genre of an essay. While at first this was a challenge, after giving the
circumstance some thought, I reached the conclusions I did about what genres would be best for
teaching Chad, to which they were both successful endeavors. The video did some more thought
than the webpage did, as I was at first, uncertain as to the way to actually structure the video,
should I make like a recording of a tutoring session, simply explain everything in monologue, or
perhaps make it a circumstance where I actually incorporate part of my work and have my
audience be in the video, to learn genre as the script was written in order to understand what I
would be talking about