Week 4 Reflection Blog

This week we did not have to do a lot of reading. However, we had a lot of drafting to do. We finalized and submitted our Genre Analysis memos, drafted research proposals for Project #3, and completed Tutorial Genre Analysis and Project #3 Audience Analysis activities. We also read an article on the ethics of rhetoric by Steven B. Katz and developed and posted the first drafts of our tutorials.

I would say that working on tutorial has been the most challenging assignment so far because it is a group project. I am extremely lucky to have partners who are both terrific team players and awesome writers and editors. However, planning, assigning roles, and monitoring progress of a group project is always more challenging than working alone. That said, though, group projects are an excellent tool to teach you how to collaborate on collective writing projects.

The Katz reading was also challenging. His thesis seemed somewhat bold. Katz argues that ethic of expediency embedded in technical communication was one of the factors that caused Holocaust. However, once I got through his argumentation, deeply rooted in classic philosophy and modern rhetorical studies, I could see his point. Although I did not really agree with his overall conclusions, I see the merit of discussing ethical aspects of rhetoric and technical communication. Simply put, what we communicate, and how we do it, should serve a good purpose rather than becoming an end in itself.