Month: September 2017

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Rhetorical Analysis Reflection

The picture above reflects how I felt about my assignment. The minimum words for the assignment was 600 words and I somehow managed to write nearly 1200 words. Looking over my work, I knew I had to shorten my assignment. And after an hour and a half, I had only managed to take out 200 words. This I believe was a big flaw of my paper but not only that, my research I did led me down a difficult recovery road. Prior to doing this assignment, I had looked up what a rhetorical analysis was. This can be found in my planning page. https://eportfolios.isucomm.iastate.edu/bsmlatic/2017/09/06/planning-for-the-rhetorical-analysis-assignment/. In the planning post, I actually defined pretty much exactly what they ask me to do which is analyze the writer’s techniques and persuasive skills. However, for whatever reason I decided to forget about my planning and began writing about the article in general. I believe I summarized the article along with exploring my author’s writing techniques. This wasn’t what was needed,  and I should have just taken out the summary part or kept it very brief. A few things that I think I didn’t completely screw up was my attention to detail. Sure I wrote a lot but the things that I did write about, I made sure to fully explain my thoughts and my ideas. Going into detail can be a good thing because it provides a clear picture of what the author is really trying to do. Another thing I actually altered from my rough draft to the complete draft was I added in headers for the first time. I usually don’t put headers into my papers because we had always been taught not too, but I decided they did organize the paper really well so I added those in. One thing I’ll definitely fix in the future is my APA style. I am almost 100% sure I messed this part up but to be truthful, I don’t know how to do the style.

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Small Change Response Article

General Thoughts

My general response to this article is met with little surprise. The article’s main driving point is that social media has become a major tool for less empowered countries to speak out and let their voices be heard around the world. For me, this was already common knowledge and growing up in a boom of the internet, I suppose this isn’t new to me. For me I agree entirely with this article but one thing that the author posts that I thought was very true was that often times on twitter, facebook, and other platforms, the people tweeting aren’t even from these countries, and instead they might just be tweeting to tweet as it’s the newest craze. I think one point I’d like to make is that people’s eye might not be open to what’s actually going on, and instead are having news fed to them by these same social media platforms. Regardless, I don’t think one can argue that the explosion of social media has opened doors for these countries.

 

Analysis

I think in the article the author shows an effective use of logos to present the the argument. Throughout the entire article, the author uses pieces of evidence of events that actually occurred to showcase the certain problem that was happening and then he proceeds to show the solution that usually involved social media or the internet coming in to help. Certain examples of this could be found in the book (e)dentity by Stephanie Vie on pages 77-78. The author includes an actual story about 4 black students who sit in’s to speak out against racism. Eventually, without any sort of internet to help, nearly 78,000 students across the nation were sitting in racially abusive establishments. The author even points out that “the lack of the internet” didn’t stop this message spreading. He then continues on by providing another example in 2009 in Maldova when twitter was taken over by thousands of tweets from protestors and people who saw on twitter  speaking out against their country’s communist government. As we see in both case, the authors use of logic to explain his claim that how mass messages are sent is changing is prevalent. He shows that without the internet, mass messages still spread to a large group, but not as quick and not to as many people. He then provides an example where another protest that was spread across not just Maldova, but the entire world. It’s because the author uses logical facts and real life events that helps me, the reader, really believe that the internet and social media has actually made a big impact.

 

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Planning for the Rhetorical Analysis Assignment.

September 5th 2017

For this planning post, my assignment is to make a plan as to how I’m going to approach this assignment. To start, I would like to define what exactly I’m being asked to do. They stated “Rhetorical Analysis” is what I’m meant to do, but to be honest, I have no clue what that means, so let’s define it further. They go on to say a Rhetorical Analysis is looking at how an author fulfills or fails it’s purpose for the particular audience. Also, on the assignment sheet, they try and push me towards analyzing the persuasive strategies the author uses to convince me of seeing their point of view. Finally, I looked up the definition of Rhetorical Analysis. Paraphrased, it seems that Rhetorical Analysis is a technique that writers use by breaking down articles into parts and then explaining how the writer uses their own style of writing to entertain, inform, or something entirely different. With this being known, I think one of the best chances I have is picking a sports article that is looking to persuade the reader on something such as predicting why a team will win the championship. For this, I’ve picked a topic that I know well in terms of sports, soccer and I picked an article about Liverpool winning the English Premier League. Here is the article link. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4753122/Can-Liverpool-win-Premier-League-superb-pre-season.html Hopefully this article will allow me to correctly analyze and get a good grade on the assignment.

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Reflection on Summary Assignment for ENG 250.

September 5th 2017

In today’s reflection, we were asked to write about our thoughts on our summary assignment and post it here on our portfolio. The article I chose was one written for the McGregor vs Mayweather boxing match. On initial thought, I thought overall I did a good job presenting the article in a fair and non biased way. Not only that, but I had a few of my peers review it as I felt it was important to get another viewpoint from another unbiased source. Firstly this was one of my very first college papers I had to write and I wasn’t scared as I was nervous. With college writing, the obvious change is it’s more serious and because of this, as a writer I learned that you have to carefully reread AND rewrite to provide the best product. Most of my writing that I enjoy to do and had to do in school wasn’t a summary of a random internet article and because of this, I did feel a little bit out of my depth. The most important part for me was making sure I actually summarized the article clearly for the reader. I enjoy talking so often summaries turn into a long read which is incorrect to do. I felt that I did a good job giving the reader exactly what the writer intended and wanted the reader to think which I feel is an important part of an summary. Making sure to give the authors meaning or purpose of writing. I also mentioned that I got a few peers to edit and look at my work. All of them had told me that my grammar or my phrasing of certain words could have been better but my content and summary of the article was flawless. It was reassuring to hear and help solidify the mentality that I did a good job. Next time I write a summary like this, I think I will use some of the steps such as rereading the article and taking notes over initial points. One of my faults as not just a writer but as a person is that I often move too fast and because of this, sometimes miss key details. However, this is college and I’m in a space that will really let me improve myself so I’m confident that over time, I will grow and hopefully this problem will go away.