Reflection

Throughout this course I learned a lot more than I had previously expected, given my experience with past English courses. I felt as if the structure and teaching points of the course made it much more informative than others. I got a far better understanding of the rhetorical situation and how it should shape the way you construct your essays. This benefitted me the most in my rhetorical analysis, a piece I was extremely happy with. It felt like I was able to create my essay in a way that made people care about what they were reading. This is also due in part to the way ethos, pathos and logos were utilized throughout my work. Better yet, being able to understand how other people use these techniques helped with my comprehension and analysis. Therefore, I was able to produce a product with purpose. 

Creating as a group this semester really helped me produce some really great work. Peer reviews gave me a lot to think about every time we did them. Even when we didn’t spend class time, I would still exchange my work with peers to the point where it’s a habit now. Having a second set of eyes to check sentence structure and give you pointers is extremely helpful and produces the best work. Working in our podcast group also helped us make a really great product. It was really enjoyable to work in a group, and making the podcast was honestly more fun than it was work. Max and I especially had fun recording and piecing together the audio and adding music and sound effects.

This course taught me a lot about how your composition should vary depending on the Rhetorical situation. One of the biggest proponents of this idea is that the course was multimodal. I learned quickly that writing an essay is far different than a video response or an entire podcast. With each mode of presentation, there are strengths that need to be played into to produce work with the most purpose. Comparing Anna Lappé’s essay to her Ted Talk was an example that proved this. Utilizing the strength of the mode you’re presenting in means writing with a different style for each. Different modes are necessary depending on the rhetorical situation, and how you want to appeal to ethos, pathos and logos. 

Overall, I’ve taken a lot from the course and my writing has definitely improved over the last semester. One of my biggest takeaways from the course would be the importance of good planning and how to write for a purpose.