Antonio Johnson
English Composition
Maxwell Schnuer
11/22/22
Up to now I would say that my relationship with reading and writing has its ups and downs. The things I enjoy about writing is creativity. There are so many different ways people can write such as making poems, lists, stories, and more. Also, with these versions of writing you can use almost any subject to talk about which makes writing so versatile in general. However, writing can come with many obstacles which many people often face. Some challenges I typically go through is knowing where or how to start, whether it is an essay or other forms of writing like doing google slides for a presentation. Another challenge I went through was wondering what to do with the ideas I gained. I would think about how to structure my writing and making sure my ideas are in the right order. As I continue to go through those challenges, I believe that they will help me become a better writer.
When preparing for the phase 1 assignment I at first wasn’t sure about how I can write an essay or make a presentation that highly refers to reading and writing but with the help of the examples we were given, I had a much better Idea of what to do. We were assigned to read and annotate three texts for practice. The three texts were “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan” by June Jordan, “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes, and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. These texts were helpful for me because they each use different strategies for reading and writing. Hughes wrote a poem about himself, while Tan wrote a story reflecting on her literature experience and how her family relates to that and Jordan wrote about language relating to ethnicity. As a result, I decided to write and present about my writing experience and how I grew overtime throughout my school career. I wasn’t exactly sure of how I was going to write about that because I didn’t want to simply write about how I was doing my reading and writing assignments from before. So what I did was include how reading and writing changed me as a student.
My phase 2 assignments have really helped me become better at doing rhetorical analysis. Using thew same three texts from phase 1, I would analyze them by figuring out what the speaker is trying to do for the audience, whether it’s using ethos logos or pathos. When the speaker uses ethos, they refer to experience, when using logos, they’re using facts and logic, and finally when using pathos more emotion is being revealed. When making my own analysis I preferred to use logos because I can use facts by doing research and using the sources, I find useful. I researched about sign language and wrote about what it is and how it benefits people, particularly those that are deaf. I also used images to provide visuals for the audience to understand more easily of the point I’m trying to make. In my opinion, this assignment was the easiest because we can use any type of writing templet to do our rhetorical analysis
Going into phase 3 we were preparing to do a research paper which is somewhat similar to what I did for the assignment before so I already had an idea of what I had to do. The subject I chose to write about was slang and basically describe what it is, its origins, and basically how it is used. The simple part for me was finding the sources that can be reliable and the part I found most difficult was putting the paragraphs for the essay in an order that would make the most sense. However, I managed to do it by looking for scholarly articles through JSTOR where I can use key words that are important for my research, then I would search for articles that use the same key words. This was helpful for me because that way I don’t have to keep searching and scrolling only to find articles that are barley relevant.
Overall, I would claim that these assignments I have done, help gain my skills in writing. With rhetorical analysis, I got better at explaining what the author is trying to do with his or her audience along with the impact on the audience. I became more confident when doing research essays, knowing I just have to come up with any ideas that can go well with my argument and look for sources that support the points I’m trying to make.
