Andrew Dennis

ENGL 1102-022
Mrs. Germain
5/5/14
E-Portfolio Reflection #4

Editorial Reflection

Apprehension is the perfect way to describe my initial feelings toward the multi-modal
project. After receiving directions for the assignment from Ms. Germain, I felt overwhelmed
with the list of requirements and the different types of genres necessary. Therefore, my first step
was developing a strong topic and thesis. While musing on a suitable topic, one quote appeared
in my mind, Do what you love and the rest will follow. Using this advice, I immediately
settled on Why Violent Video Games Should Not be Banned as my topic for this three-part
project because video games have been a large influence of my life. As a shy child, video games
helped me develop friendships and became such a passion that I plan to obtain a Computer
Science degree to design video games.
After settling on the topic for my project, I then decided on the three genres in which to
present my argument. After researching the various options in Real Questions and reflecting on
the previous assignments, the blog posts, comic strip, and editorial all seemed like viable options.
In addition to reading Real Questions, researched numerous editorials online related to the video
game theme.
Because of the initial research and the topic was related to a topic I am passionate about,
writing the paper itself was relatively easy. I designed the paper to reflect an online editorial by
including titles and links to other areas on the website. Also, since editorials typically have an
information writing style, I felt comfortable using my normal diction and as a result, the words
almost began to write themselves. The only challenge was striking a balance between respecting
the tragic events that have unfortunately been intertwined with video games and jesting at the
advocates who desire to take banning video games to the extreme.
Since I felt comfortable upon submitting the editorial, I was not surprised to receive
positive feedback on the assignment. No suggestions for changes were made for this portion of
the multi-modal project. For the multimodal project overall, receiving the grade which I was
striving for felt extremely validating and the assignment helped me understand how multiple
genres can present the same argument in vastly different ways.