Exploring Rhetorical Situations in English Composition

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English Composition 1 with Lab has been helpful to me, and I have learned to think more about my writings. With the six objectives in mind, I have successfully achieve them; although, there are areas to be improved.

I wrote multiple writing projects, which involved many genres and media, in my English Composition 1014 course. Each of these projects had different rhetorical situations, which had different impacts on the audience. The rhetorical situation also depended on the medium I had to use. For example, my Multimodal Photo Essay, which was a position paper, was about bringing classical music back into the classroom. The position I took was towards the benefits of classical music if it was incorporated into classrooms. My rhetorical aim …show more content…

I have learned to critically read and think whenever I am given an article to read. In the Summary and Response assignment, I was able to explain, interpret, and analyze what the article was trying to convey. For example, when I read the article entitled, “How My Illiterate Grandmother Raised an Educated Black Man” by Jermaine Starr, I was able to identify the author’s purpose for his essay. One method that helped me to identify the aim and analyze the article was the reading skills that I learned. Pre-reading and annotating the text as I read, helped me to critically think. Starr gave many examples about his grandmother background and values, but not all of the values and details were relevant to his purpose of writing this essay: to acknowledge the positive influence his grandmother had on him. I had to use critical reading and thinking to select examples to include in the essay. For example, the quote “She put books in my hands as early as three years old. Never mind . . . that neither she nor I could read . . .” supported the fact that though she was illiterate, she valued education. The summary and response assignment helped me to realize that I was able to critically think and read. Therefore, I am happy to say that I have improve on my critical thinking and reading skills from the time I came. I also learned to be aware of whenever I am using critical thinking …show more content…

The grammar and usage in all my writings, however, is a little poor. Most of the time, I am ignorant to the simplest grammatical and mechanical mistakes. The composition of text was different in every project. For example, the Storify and the Multimodal Photo Essay required me to include more pictures, but the Summary and Response and the Compare and Contrast Essay required more writing and text. In the Storify and Multimodal Photo Essay, the pictures were used to carry the thesis statement instead of the words. The text in these projects were used to explain further what each images meant. In the beginning of the English course, I was unfamiliar with the format used, but as more projects were assigned to me, I became more familiar with the format and I am able to write in the appropriate format without referring to the given template. I, however, am sometimes confused with the format on the work cited page especially in the Multimodal Photo Essay. Through my analysis, I discovered that my grammar and usage needs to be improved. The more drafts I wrote, the more I become less aware to the incorrect usage of grammar. Mechanical and grammatical errors occur when I do not thoroughly look through my essays. Therefore, I have mastered half of objective four, which is composing text in various genres and having good control with the format. I hope to be

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