The strategy I used to select an article for this assignment was to simply find one that interested me within the topic I was given. My group’s current subject is entertainment, so I chose to focus on movies, and more specifically the latest movie I saw in theaters: Dunkirk. I found an article by ScreenRant that explained the plot line of the movie since many people found it confusing. I am glad that I used this process to select my article, as my personal interest made it much easier to analyze the text. The author’s strategies that I chose to focus on were organization and substance as those two immediately stood out to me the most while reading the article. Personally, I did not think the article fulfilled its purpose to its potential, and organization and substance were the two biggest reasons why. My thesis clearly stated this and did not change throughout my analysis, and I don’t believe that it needed to.
Since it was a short article and not a long text, I did not annotate or write any sort of notes on the article. I simply left the article open on another tab and referred back to it whenever needed. I did struggle some with deciding whether to cover the topic of organization or substance first, but eventually came to a conclusion. I ended up covering organization first because most of my problems with the substance occurred at the end with the analysis section of the piece, whereas the organization covered the entire article. Originally I had these two topics switched but it did not flow as well as I wanted it to, and eventually changed it when making the final draft.
The process I followed in writing this assignment was mostly the same general process I follow with a few minor changes. I created a first draft, revised it, and completed the final draft. I typically would get a peer review from one of my classmates, but unfortunately I was ill on the day of peer reviews and I could not find anyone else who was willing or knew enough about the subject to offer a helpful peer review. The most help that I received was from my instructor, and not for the writing process, but rather for selecting an article. My instructor guided me along the process stated above in our conference, and was a great help in finding an article that suited me.
The most difficult aspect of the assignment that I found was trying not to be too repetitive. Since there was not much text to work with from the article, there were times that I found myself repeating something I had said earlier for a different section of the article and had to change it. I faced this challenge just by constantly going back and rereading my own writing to make sure there wasn’t any overlapping sections. My personal goal for the next assignment is to better the selection process for finding the right article on my own, as that is something that I will need to know how to do.
In the end I’m proud of the piece of analysis that I wrote. Although it could’ve been made better by getting reviewed by someone other than myself, I still believe that it successfully answers the question of the assignment. I hope to keep pushing myself in the future to make my writing better and better.