Responding to "Choosing a Genre to Compose In"

The purpose of my research for my previous paper was to find out how to become a successful American Sign Language interpreter, and one of the reasons for this is so that I can help spread awareness of the Deaf community. For project three, I decided to focus on a broader audience by spreading awareness than just simply trying to reach out to the smaller audience of people interested in interpreting. I chose the genres of a website, a poster, and a poem (which I'll be putting on my website). I chose these three because I thought that two of them would be a good way to start spreading awareness (website and poster) and the poem was something I wanted to use to get the actual message across in a more creative interesting way.

A lot of my audience is probably not that familiar with the Deaf community which is exactly why I'm doing the topic of ASL and the Deaf community. Many people in the "hearing world" make negative assumptions about a deaf person, viewing them as incapable of many things, or not as smart, or talented as a hearing person. This isn't because people are tying to be mean, or rude, they are just not educated on what it means to be deaf.

The poster will be the main way I connect with my audience which will lead them to my website. The actual website will have a variety of different things. It will have an informational section of what it means to be deaf, how to interact with a deaf person properly, it will also have basic signs to learn, as well as a creative section with poems and pictures and such to give more of an "insider view" of what it's like in the Deaf community.

I would say my favorite genres to compose in are poetry, short stories, vignettes, and anything that I can be creative with really. While I don't mind writing structured essays, I prefer to do more creative forms of writing. If I knew more about how to film and edit videos I think this would be another genre I would want to do. I may not be good at it, but it is a genre that I have always enjoyed.