Reflection #2

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  • #283
    Sam
    Keymaster

    Open up the discussion board post in which you first wrote about the kinds of writing you are asked to do. Reread your notes. Then, consider and write a reflection to these questions:

    How is what you have learned about writing so far this semester similar to what you learned before you came to this class? How is it different? Illustrate your example by describing your experiences.

     

    How has your understanding of the rhetorical terms changed since the beginning of the semester? Illustrate this change, or lack of change, with examples from this or other classes our your non-academic life. What questions do you still have?

     

    What writing have you encountered in other classes this semester? Have you been able to apply what you’ve learned in this class to other class writing assignments? Have you encountered situations in which you needed to write but couldn’t use what you’ve learned in this class?

     

    Describe the process of writing your first essay. How did you go about incorporating the research and the rhetorical terms? How did this process affect your understanding of writing?

    #286
    Crystal Yang
    Participant

    I have learned about rhetorical terms before this class such as audience/author, tone, etc., but this is the first time that I have been introduced to them as rhetorical terms. I have never heard of stance before this class and had a difficult time understanding the difference between tone and stance at first. However, now I can see how they are both similar, yet different. Tone is the author’s attitude towards something, while stance is the position that the author may be in regarding a topic. I have encountered writing and even learned that rhetorical terms can be used in my speech class when writing my outline for a speech. I’ve learned that there are other rhetorical terms such as similes and alliteration that can not only be used in writing, but in a speech as well. I went by writing my first essay by reading the sources that I’ve used more than once to make sure that I’ve had a clear understanding of the author’s point of view and how they want the audience to view it. It gives me more clarity and gives me an idea before writing my essay.

    #287
    Ahmed Iftiak
    Participant

    I have learned  about rhetorical analysis in high school but not in dept. Before I used terms  Author, tone, purpose and audience   mostly in different context. like understanding the language of the book before writing about it of or describe a article for a discussion in class. But in this I learned how write a essay using rhetorical terms. Understand what the writing is? who is it for? is it include me as target audience? etc. Before it was hard for me to explain those but now I am capable of use rhetorical terms o analyses articles. Like recently I write psychology parer, which is a research paper, understanding of the rhetorical terms helped me write the paper. Know that how should I write a research  paper helped me write the essay for the psychology class. to write the essay at first I find the article that is relevant to the topic and reliable. than I read through the article to complete my task to describe the language of the article. this process further clarify  my understanding of writing. the part I am still little confuse about the genre and stance.

    #288
    Helen
    Participant

    <p style=”margin: 0in; margin-left: .375in; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 9.0pt; color: black;”><span style=”background: #FBFBFB;”>I have previously learned rhetorical terms and rhetoric before coming to this class. It’s similar in ways that rhetoric is used to persuade someone of something, and how the aspects of rhetoric also play an important role to effectively persuade a person. In my previous years of learning writing, rhetoric was purely based on researching subjects in order to establish a platform to debate off on. In this class, it’s different due to the fact that we deeply study the effects of rhetoric terms in relationship to the overall language and composition of the genre. One example is my source-based essay, the composition of the essay came from the organization of the rhetoric terms such as author, genre, tone, purpose, ad language. On the other hand, my previous classes used rhetoric as a way to project our stance on different topics verbally in class. </span><span style=”background: #FBFBFB;”>My understanding of the rhetorical terms have increasingly improved since the beginning of the semester. I have grown to deeply think about how rhetoric can be utilized to fully convince someone who may not believe in the stance given. Every time I’m reading the news or text outside of class, I already start establishing the rhetoric of the article before I even realize it. It has increased my reading skill which makes me a better reader, thus, making me a better writer as well. </span><span style=”background: #FBFBFB;”>Other writings that I have encountered in other classes this semester are reflections on historical events and scientific term papers. Since these writings are more factual and straightforward, there’s minimal usage of rhetoric. Despite this, it’s good to see how bias can significantly change a piece of writing to include or exclude crucial information advantageous to their point. </span><span style=”background: #FBFBFB;”>I first organized my essay by choosing all the sources that I was going to use from the CCNY database. In each source, I listed the rhetorical terms present in the sources from author to purpose in order to make sure that I was including all the terms in my essay. Moreover, I wrote my introduction based on the chronology of the sources and how it’s rhetoric influences the stance at the end. Before even writing my essay, I was already able to see how my essay looked like. By being extremely organized at first, it was easier to check and proofread for any flaws within the paper. Of course, by doing so, the process of writing this paper has become easier to do.</span></p>

    #293
    Xiaoqin Jiang
    Participant

    I have learned about rhetorical analysis in my high school literature class. For example, genre, tone, and purpose. And it’s different that I don’t know what’s the language that author uses in the article before, because my high school teacher rarely talks about this topic. For me, I think rhetorical terms can help us better understand the central idea or theme of an article. I have encountered the fun paper (essay) in other class this semester. The fun paper is more needs we use our own words to describe the facts and analyze the results. It’s very different from we study in this class because in our writing, our summaries can be multifarious, but the essay of psychology is strict because there’s only one result we can get of the analysis. The process of my first essay about that when we know the rhetorical situation after, we can get a consequence that from the author stance, tone, language and so on, then we can know why does the author write this article, and what is the significant of the article.

    #298
    Nika Medilishi
    Participant

    I have learned about rhetorical analysis in high school as well as writing a similar essay in class.  In this class, I learned the rhetorical terms in more detail and as of now, I understand it much better than I used to. I had an understanding of what the outline for rhetorical analysis was, however, I still struggled to understand the full concept of it. I’ve learned much more about the analytical thinking and how to break down a piece of writing and then analyze it. Learned about genres, tones, and languages that authors use to persuade their audience. I have not had a writing assignment in other classes just yet. However, they are coming up and I think I will use the strategies I have learned in this class to improve my assignments in other classes. Figuring out the author’s agenda behind the writing and the purpose of it can be very helpful in the future. It was an exciting learning process for me because even though I had a similar assignment in high school, I learned a lot more and in much more detail about rhetoric which is very crucial in literature.

    #312
    Anthony Liang
    Participant

    I have learned rhetoric in the past in high school but we we weren’t writing essays with it, just only writing a paragraph analyzing a text with rhetoric terms. In this class, I learned a bit more on rhetoric terms and how to use them and identify it more. I also learned how to improvise with writing with rhetoric because the recent assignment where we wrote an essay connecting 4 sources with rhetoric was a little unusually and we all had to adapt our writing styles to fit the criteria. In my sociology class, we have been writing weekly blog posts and in speech, we have been writing speeches. So far, I haven’t used what we learned in this class in my other writing class yet since my persuasive speech (for speech) is near the end of the semester and currently in the process of writing an academic paper for sociology so it will most likely be used in that. The most important thing I felt that we needed in order to write our first essay is organization. In order to keep the essay from being too weird to read, we needed to organize our paragraphs in a way where it makes seen while introducing rhetorical terms in each section. With explaining the rhetorical terms, I could use some of my research to back up my claim on how the rhetorical term is being displayed. Overall, I feel that this assignment affected my understanding of writing because it gives our brain a break from what we are traditionally used to and allows us to understand our sources more in depth and be able to utilize them more effectively.

    #319
    Ange Louis
    Participant

    Its similar in that a lot of the writing classes that I took previously before in that we really tried to break down the texts to see what the author was trying to accomplish with the article. I feel like it was more focused on language,tone, and mood in my previous writing classes while in my current writing class it takes into account the whole rhetorical situation and not just parts of it. For example, when looking at a story like “Frankenstein” previously I would have mainly focused on the plot and how the different events of the story were shaping it, but it all surrounded the meat of why the author created the story. Now, I would have to take into account everything from the tone of the story to who wrote it int he first place and see how that affects the purpose of the story. In the beginning of the semester I had no idea what a rhetorical situation was I only knew what rhetorical questions were. Now I feel like I have learned so much about rhetorical situations, especially from the source based essay where I had to learn how to apply them to real articles. I’m still confused about the genre aspect because I feel like there is a list of genres that I don’t know but moving forward I will learn more. Most of my other classes are math and science based so there haven’t been writing in those. I take a theater class where I don’t use rhetorical situations because it is mainly about making inferences on what’s going to happen next. When writing the essay, it wasn’t that complicated to incorporate the rhetorical terms into my essay. I chose articles that I fully understood and I felt like when I did research into the writers of the article it made analyzing them rhetorically so much easier. I could get a sense of the purpose of the article form this. This affected my understanding of writing because it gave me a new lens to see a piece of writing through. Writing isn’t just about how you interpret something and how it makes you feel but also how the writer was able to write the article and the purpose of it which at the end of the day will affect you regardless. Writing is just as much a part of the writer as it is an open interpretation to the public. When I realized this, it gave me a new angle to write at and put as much effort as I can into my writing since it is a reflection of me no matter the piece.

    #323
    Amy Ho
    Participant

    What I have learned about writing so far this semester is similar to what I have learned in the context of research. I wrote a research paper in senior year of high school which was similar to the sourced-based essay where I searched a database for specific type of sources and also see if they are reliable. Also, the reading assignments and discussions were similar things that I did in high school where everyone in the class formed a fishbowl to ask questions and talk about the article.
    Before this class, I did not know that author, audience, tone, stance, purpose and language were rhetorical terms. I always thought that these basic concepts was not something I had to analyze. I was taught that the content of my sources were more important. So far I haven’t done any extensive writing assignment for my other classes, but a topic that was similar between this class and my psychology class was “The Braindead Megaphone” reading by George Saunders. I connected the ideas from the reading to what I was learning in psychology which gave me a better understanding towards this reading and what I was learning in psychology.
    The source-based essay was somewhat of challenge for me because of the method and format that it had to be done in. I was still in the mindset of writing about the themes oof my sources rather than focusing on the rhetorical terms. This concept was hard to get used to at first but during the conference with Sam she taught me a trick. She told me to write down all the rhetorical terms and answer them for each of my sources. Then use my answers to check my essay so that it help me make sure that I talked about all the rhetorical terms from my sources. This method was extremely useful because it kept my focus on analyzing the sources rather than talking about the main idea. This process taught me that writing does not have to be about my the message that is being conveyed, but that I can also write about the rhetorical terms of sources to help me understand it better and to see if it is reliable.

    #328
    Mohammad Rahman
    Participant

    From my research, I was able to find multiple articles that discuss both sides of abortion. They included abortion being both legal and/or illegal. I honestly never though of abortion on this deep of a level until I did this source based essay. I found out that in some countries, such as India, it is completely banned. Even though the Indian laws have made abortion illegal, it is still something that is practiced on the low. In fact, Indian abortion have risen more than ever before in the years. And this is a fact for other asian countries as well But over here on the western side, abortion is more lenient. Some countries are for it while others aren’t. I was able to gain alot of data and information of abortion, which helped me understand more about abortion in our current society.

    #333
    Sara Sanchez
    Participant

    In comparison to writing I have done in the past & writing I have done for this semester, both had to be in the form of essays with sources to support my main topic or argument. For essays based off literary works, I was given the option to choose my own topic so long as it was within those works. In contrast, essays I’ve done in the past were research essays or were based off literary works, whereas this semester I’ve had to learn & write about a rhetorical essay. Unlike writing I’ve done in the past, with the rhetorical essay I was given no limitations as to what I wanted to write about. Also, because rhetoric is a new form of writing to me, I had to learn & understand how to write about topics in an argumentative & persuasive way without writing in the first person. Since the beginning of the semester, my understanding of rhetoric has changed in the sense that I know how to analyze articles in this manner & learned how to write my own article through the topic of my choosing without showing personal involvement. Before this semester, I never learned about rhetorical writing & was mainly required to write research or argumentative essays where I had to state my own personal beliefs. The only other essay I’ve written so far this semester was an essay that required a summary of one’s argument as well as my personal opinion on the matter. This is where I can see where some rhetorical terms coming into play without writing rhetorically. The process of writing my first essay for this class was almost like writing the essay for my other class, except that essay was not based off a topic of my choice therefore I did not need to find my own sources & I didn’t have to list the rhetorical terms within that paper. For this class, I started out my essay with an introduction, summaries of my sources, rhetorical analysis’ of those sources & a conclusion.

    #334
    Escarlen Ibadango
    Participant

    I have learned about rhetorical terms before and analyze short essays. However, we never went in depth with how much we would define rhetorical writing it would only be based on two or three rhetorical terms. In the same way that we had to read articles and go in depth with all the rhetorical terms. Before I had difficulty differentiating stance and purpose. As stance is what leads onto the purpose. For in my speech class I had to use the stance and purpose to present to my class my topic and go onto making it into my introduction. I’m still confused about  language in the way that the authors use it to connect with the tone. However, I have not encountered any classes where I don’t have to use rhetoric in any of my classes. For my Source-Based Essay I had to first find essays on my topic of the effects of coffee and define all the rhetorical terms with evidence from the sources to back it up. Always trying to analyze on ways that the author connected all the rhetorical terms and ways that it can connect between the four sources. As I first wrote them on paper and then organized it by typing it up to have it clear.

    #336
    Syed Shataj Hosain
    Participant

    In my opinion, when we do research about something it’s like solving a puzzle with little form of information. We want to know what, why, when things happen and also focus on the most interesting thing when we do writing about some specific topic. I feel like I developed my writing skills a lot better when I did my first research paper. I learned what’s genre, stance, tone and all the rhetoric form of language which developed my writing skills a lot better than before. I have learned how to organize my writing and also developed the base of brainstorming throughout the writing. Writing made my thoughts clear and convincing no matter what’s the topic. Before I used to get lost or confuse about how to start writing in a better way. But now I know how to maintain the glow of writing with proper tense and all type of rhetoric devices.

    #337
    Edwin Moody
    Participant

    This style of writing is very different from anything I have done. The main difference has been that instead of using sources to make an argument, we dissected it to find which forms of rhetoric were used to make a point effective. This makes my own writing more like a checklist than the argument style papers that I have written in the past.

    The main difference this has made in the way I do research is that I subconsciously pick out the forms of rhetoric that are used. This definitely helps analyse a source.

    I have not done much writing in my other classes, but I’m sure this style of writing analysis will help in future research.

    #338
    Tatiana Lema
    Participant

    During my junior and senior year in High School, my teacher introduced us to Rhetorical Analysis Essays in which we had to step by step choose literary devices to be able to further analyze a topic. For example, we were often given a rhetorical analysis as homework assignments or as test. However, some differences that I can notice about what I am learning now with what I had learned previously would have to be the way the structure of the analysis is.Since the beginning of the semester my understanding of the rhetorical terms changed because of the newly introduced topics of author/audience, tone/stance, genre, purpose, and language. Being able to further look into these terms has allowed me to grasp the entirety of the text. Although I have been exposed to these new terms and meanings, a few questions that I have would be; How can one transition from term to term in an analysis with out sounding to abrupt? and How does one know they have efficiently analyzed a text? I am currently writing a report in my architecture class regarding a site analysis for riverside park on 148th street. Being able to consider some factors like audience/reader in being able to read architecture and its placement has been efficient in writing  well structure essay. However, the majority of these terms can not be used properly since I am describing physical things than literal things. When writing my essay I first wanted to be able to have an understanding of my sources so when being able to include my research I made sure that the sources I had found were relevant in topic and had enough information for me to be able to cite and converse about. I then tried using these sources in a way of solidifying my paragraphs. This exact method of having said paragraphs already in place without really understanding how each of them related to one another. This gave me a struggle to then be able to compare the documents. I would much have spend more time understanding how to smoothly transition my paragraphs into one fluent essay.

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