Textual Rhetorical Analysis Revision
I chose to revise my textual rhetorical analysis essay because I felt like it was the paper I had the most room to improve on. It was the first big essay of the semester and I was still stuck in old habits while writing it. For the assignment, we were supposed to pick and article–my topic was sports–and analyze it. Because I am not incredibly sports savvy, this was difficult for me to find an article I thought I could really delve into. After some looking I found and article about concussions in contact sports and thought it was very interesting, so that is what I went with.
I do not think I read the article in depth enough or enough times because my outline is somewhat scarce. It looks like it has more information than in does, so when I was writing my paper, I found that I was running out of things to talk about. The place in my rubric where I lost the most points was in the substance area. According to the rubric, “Some content is superfluous or not clearly connected to focus. Audience’s needs are not consistently accounted for.” So that means that I need to take the audience into more consideration. It also makes me think that I am being redundant and perhaps added unnecessary content–something I have always struggled with.
In order to improve in the substance category, I would have talked more about the videos. In my original draft, I talked a little bit about the content of the videos, but not enough. In my revised paper, I would add more about what the videos said. For example in the first video I the article, it mentions the term “sub-concussion” many times and goes into detail about what it is; however, I never mentioned that term once in my essay. I would have talked about how even though the written article is about concussions themselves, this video is a good supplement to add more information about sub-concussions. The first video also used ethos by talking to scientists who have been doing extensive research on brain injuries in contact sports. NBC uses actual scientists to back up the points with research which makes them more credible.
In my revision, I would also add more information on the second video in the article. In the second video, NBC also used ethos in this video as they interviewed a neuroscientist, but they also used paths because they pulled at the audiences emotions. There was an interview with a former NFL players’ wife. Her husband struggled with addiction and depression and eventually overdosed. His wife was relieved to hear that the symptoms of CTE (a brain disorder caused by head trauma) matched up with what her husband was experiencing. In the video she said she had “got her prince charming back.” This story makes people sympathize for the widow which is a good use of pathos.
Another area on the rubric where I did not score well was in the organization category where my comments said, “Organization is conventional, showing some attention to audience needs.” In order to fix this, I went into my original essay and changed the order around to make it flow more nicely. I changed it so the third paragraph from my original draft is now the first body paragraph because I thought that stating that the author used credible sources was important. The first and second paragraph in my original draft I changed to be the second and third body paragraphs in my revision. I thought they should stay together because they are talking about similar things. Because I changed the order of the body paragraphs, I had to edit my thesis. I just changed the order of points I listed to match the new order of paragraphs.
The last change I made was adding a photo of the thumbnail of one of the videos. I thought this made the essay better because instead of rambling on about explaining what the picture looked like, I just showed the audience. Before taking this class, I never would have added images into an essay unless my instructor specifically required it. I have learned from my professor in this course that if I feel that a picture adds and helps the audience understand better then it is fine to include them. When I added the picture I had to cut some senates out. By the picture being in there, it explained itself so I took out my describing the thumbnail.
The one paragraph I did not change at all was the paragraph where I talked about how the author had no sources talking about why people think it’s good for kids to play contact sports regardless of the risk of concussions. I also did not change the into or conclusion paragraph because I thought they were sufficient.
By revising this essay, I have learned to take an essay that I did not do very well on and make it better. As I said my group was supposed to analyze an article about sports which is something I do not have a lot of knowledge on, so when deciding what to revise I really did not want to go back to the paper that interested me the least. However, it was the essay that needed the most revision. In a work environment I am going to most likely have to work with a topic I am not extremely interested in at some point, and I will not want to come back to fix thing about it. Times like this where I have to continue to work on a project that were hard for me are the times when I grow the most as a writer and communicator.