In this essay I will be self- analyzing my Technical Description essay on Solo Stove Lite, particularly the rhetorical situations it uses and the class learning outcomes I achieved through writing it.

            The purpose of this essay was to describe Solo Stove Lite in terms of organization, function, parts and subparts and other details that any customer or layman can use to understand the product. The understanding of this purpose helped me achieve the fifth learning outcome through multimodal composing. I used both writing and visual graphics to achieve the purpose. The exigence of the essay was to create a description that sells the product, so this pushed me to focus on picking elements that made my product stand out from the rest. Identifying the exigence helped me realize the sixth learning outcome, formulating and articulating a stance through my writing.  As I wanted to create a description that promoted the Solo Stove, my stance throughout the paper was to stand in support of the product and its unique market value. When I was writing the essay, I realized that my word choice was primarily descriptive, I only used facts and data but I backed it up with descriptive language and this led me to understanding my stance (showing the product under the best light) and I tried to retain it throughout my essay. The research of the facts and data I needed for this essay helped me practice using online databases and the internet to locate sources appropriate for this project and thereby achieve the seventh learning outcome. I could not use reviews as it was a technical description but I could use resources from the products website, although there might be an innate bias when you are analyzing your own product. Such observations made this process certainly exciting.

            The genre was an essay, but as it was a technical description there was a requirement of achieving certain criteria listed on the table of contents. This helped me achieve the fifth learning outcome, I was able to engage in genre analysis by switching from paragraphs to an essay format. I initially wrote the essay in paragraphs with headings and subheadings to organize the essay appropriately and then I tried to switch up the genre by adding connectors and creating one cohesive essay. The genre also required us to use the APA format, working on this essay helped me achieve the eighth strengthen my source use practices in terms of quoting, citing and evaluating. I learnt how to cite videos and articles on the products website where the author wasn’t mentioned. I even learnt to cite sources that do not have a date attached to them. As a beginner navigating the APA format, this experience was extremely educational.

            The audience of the essay are customers or prospective customers. To that extent, I have ensured that every technical word has been defined and every complicated term has been broken down into its simplest form. I ensured even ‘304 Stainless Steel’ was explained in terms of what it constitutes and its advantage over alternate choices to cater to the needs of the audience. Such decisions were an attempt to achieve the third learning outcome which was to negotiate my writing goals to match audience expectations regarding conventions of genre and medium. A table of contents page was made to match these expectations as well. The medium of playing with both visual graphics and words aligns with this intent.

            This assignment has been an exercise that explores the scientific prospects a creative process like writing can entail. I certainly struggled with the objective nature of this writing and the process of editing owing to its large word count. Yet, after writing this essay I am confident that in a professional setting, I will be able to tackle this problem with a refined skillset.