Please respond to the following questions:
*think through the process(es) for each project--article, editorial, rhetorical analysis--and examine them side by side; what connections and differences do you see between the different genres and audiences, the different rhetorical situations
*what is important to understand about a rhetorical analysis after completing one
*what can you take from this project to move forward with
Remember reflections should be thought-out and specific--use details, refer back to past assignments and/or readings, etc. Shoot for 300-400 words.
I honestly thought that the length is what gets me. Writing in the appropriate styles for all of the, was just fine, it was simply the length. I don't know why, but everything I did was just too short. I suppose I was trying to compensate for my pas performance where I tend to ramble. But other than that, I feel as if I understood and connected well with the writing style, audience, genre, and voice. It found the review to be the most fun because we didn't have to use any outside sources and we could write exactly the way we wanted to write. Whereas the article needed some in depth analysis and research as well as the rhetorical analysis. That part was not fun for me. At all. I could have easily written what I wanted to write and have it stand alone, but it was incorporating sources that seemed to hinder me mentally.
ReplyDeleteUnderstanding rhetorical analysis is rather simple when you think of it as themes that relatable to real life. It's more or less a reflection on reality rather than a reflection of itself. To me, that is the most simple way I can define what the importance is in rhetorical analysis.
I can take from this project a way to improve myself. It was not my best work because I did nearly all of it the previous night. It wasn't that I had difficulty with time management, it's that I could not figure out how to incorporate any of my sources in a coherent way. So I scrapped just about everything I had written and began fresh. Granted, the idea for the paper was the same, I was just going to start over. I learned that for me, finding the quotes you want to use, explaining how they fit in your idea, and THEN stringing them all together is the best way for me to write a paper such as this. I will try this method again for the next assignment and see if it goes the way I hope it will.
• Now that we have completed three very different assignments for class, I am starting to notice how I adapt my writing process to compliment different types of writing. For the first assignment, the editorial, it did take me a bit of thinking to come up with the idea and to brainstorm how I was going to tackle the project, because at first it was really confusing to me. This is different than my writing process had been in the past because I rarely planned ahead of my writing, I just kind of would sit down and write whatever came into my head. For the editorial I did revert back to that type of process, but mainly because it was an assignment that was very easy for me to connect to my personality. The rhetorical analysis really threw me for a spin to say the least. First I just about had a mental breakdown trying to figure out what to write about, which was new to me. I usually do not have that huge of a problem coming up with an idea. Also, after reading my first draft and realizing that I sound like a kindergartner I basically rerote it, and that is definitely the first time I did anything like that. Usually I will edit my work to check for typos and things but this was the first time I really looked at the content critically and reworked it until I truly felt I produced the best I could, not just something to turn in. As far as writing for the different audiences, I would say the voice of my writing stayed the same throughout, because I feel like it is very important for writers to stay true to their personal voice, where it differs was the attention I paid to the argument and how airtight I made it; les so for the editorial and a lot more for the rhetorical analysis.
ReplyDelete• After completing a rhetorical analysis I really appreciate how difficult they are. Not only to come up with an idea, but to support it throughout without just stating opinions. It is a difficult balance to achieve and it was a good learning experience for me, and I am sure it will help me a lot for next quarters writing class because it will be a lot more based off of supporting with facts.
• Moving forward from this project I learned a valuable lesson on powering through a mental flub and still producing a final product that I am proud of. Although I struggled a lot with this project I did work very hard and I do think I managed to pull it together in the end, at least I hope I did. It shows me how actually editing the content of a piece can make it a lot better, and I should start doing that more in the future.
The biggest difference between the three projects is probably the way that I approached audience and tone. They were very distinct in each and it was a challenge and a good learning experience to write for the different genres. I am used to writing in a more formal tone and to a g (so the rhetorical analysis was probably where I was most at home), so it was good to go outside of my comfort zone and connect with the audience more directly than I’m used to. A big similarity that I found was that the level of analysis always needed to be deep and to convey something past the surface of what the piece we were talking about actually was saying, so not a whole lot of summary. I think one of the most important parts of a rhetorical analysis is using evidence from the piece you are analyzing effectively. If you use too much but don’t explain your thinking behind it then you lose your audience and end up with more of a summary of the piece, if you use too little then you aren’t establishing a good ethos and the audience will have a tough time believing the things that you are trying to prove. I think this was a good project to have under my belt moving forward with the class and the rest of school. Probably the most important thing I got out of the process of writing the paper is the way I go about reflection and revision. I’m now asking more questions and actively participating in my works once I’ve completed a first draft instead of just fixing the surface details and turning that in as the finished product. I pushed myself on this assignment and now I know that I’m able to take a few days after writing the rough draft of something, and come back to it and have the ability to add substance to it where I might not have before and how to approach it from a more critical perspective.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of similarities and differences between these three different genres. Some similarities are you have to write them all for a broad audience. You have to connect to the audience because all of these are geared toward some sort of audience. They are for the public to read not just your teacher. That is what I had to get used to because I was always taught to write to your teacher. Some differences were how long they have to be. The analysis was the longest because you really had to go into depth with the movie. You couldn’t just scratch the surface of a movie because there is so much more you can pull out from a movie. With a song you had to go deep but it was only 3 minutes long verses a 90 minutes movie. The one I thought was the most different was the editorial because we had to make a metaphor and with the other two we had to see take something and research to see what it really was about. After completing the rhetorical analysis I learned a lot. I didn’t think I could go that deep into a movie and get that much out of it. I learned a lot by just researching and finding things that people usually don’t pull out from such a popular meaning. In this movie there were tons of themes that I did not get the first time I watched this movie. I had to really pay attention and figure out what they were really trying to portray. I can take a lot from this project. This project really showed me I could take one thing and make an analysis that lasted for 8 and a half pages. I never thought I could write a paper on a movie that was this long and so in depth. I learned a lot from this assignment and I think it will help me a lot in the future.
ReplyDelete*Each process was different but the approach was generally the same with the purpose of the piece. The subjects were different but each paper, I wanted to inform the audience of something, and make it easy for them to connect and understand what my point was. I think the review and the article were the same with the formatting. It was a shorter piece, and both were casual. Although one was talking about rhetorical situation and the other was a freelance music review, the approach and audience was the same. I was aiming to connect and be relative to the audience, bring them in and engage with the piece. The analysis was also like the review, but the audiences were much different. The analysis had an academic audience so the writing was more formal, and although I still tried to engage the reader, it was on a higher level than the previous assignments. Regarding the analysis and review, both were critiques and required me to dig deep into the piece, idea, and purpose of my writing. The review was still casual, but it had the same purpose of analysis. I need to look at the song and dig into the true meaning of the lighthearted lyrics. With the analysis, the movie was the same way. A thrilling movie, I had to look passed the point of entertainment and dig into the issues the movie faces and portrays.
ReplyDelete*It’s important to understand that the analysis can come from anywhere, however it needs to be specific yet still cover the entire movie. That’s a little confusing but what I mean is that the idea or issue being discussed in the paper needs to be specific and something to dive into. However, even with a specific issue, the support must come from all spectrums of the movie in order to support the claim. Some other things would be to establish good ethos. Ethos is everything in an analysis. Without it, the analysis is worthless, so have good and reliable sources to connect to the claim.
*The two big things I found this project to give me was format practice with citations and using quotes, introducing them and analyzing them while still keeping the flow of the paper, and the whole analysis part. The quotes are great practice for future papers and the introduction of the quotes, the evidence and the interpretation sequence is a good flow practice for the paper as a whole. The analysis part would be learning how to focus on one part of something, dive deep into it, and then connect it to an entire film while also using evidence to support a claim about the film. Pretty much the paper in a nutshell, but the focusing part really tested me so it was good to go through that process.
Before this class, I did not have much experience with different genres of writing. I was used to the standard 5-paragraph essay. With each assignment, I gained more experience and confidence in a new style of writing. The first assignment, the newspaper article, was difficult for me because the writing process was much different than anything I had experienced before. I was only used to academic writing, and struggled with the concept of instructing others through an article. By the second assignment, I was a little more confident in my skills, and was able to write an editorial in a “music magazine” that analyzed a music video. It was similar to the article, but was slightly more academic. I was able to apply my past knowledge with what I had just learned, resulting in a successful editorial. Because the audience for both the article and the editorial was great amounts of the world population, it felt similar to write them. However, the little differences that made the audience different allowed me to add nuances specific to the assignment.
ReplyDeleteThe rhetorical analysis was a culmination of everything. Although it was very different than the other two assignments, I was able to apply what I learned to the paper. Because I choose a movie involving popular culture, I almost felt as though I was simply stepping it up to the next level. I was able to make it a piece of academic writing, while still making sure that it addressed the social issues that everyone experiences. The rhetorical situation was very similar for my rhetorical analysis and editorial, for they were both dealing with “racy” videos.
Rhetorical analysis’ are very interesting because they take the idea of a review and step it up to an academic analysis. They allow the writer to analyze and bring about issues that may be bypassed by the average member of the audience. I believe that it is important to understand that not all rhetorical analyses will be the same. If one is focused and expertly incorporates logos to back up their thesis, however, they will be able to be successful.
Moving forward, I have a better understanding of what it takes to analyze something from a rhetorical standpoint. From all three projects, I have learned so much about style and process, and I believe I am a much more versatile writer.
Well… the first article was a newspaper article targeting three specific audiences with three specific readerships. I chose the Denver post with entitled me to reach an audience with the reading level of middle school kids instead of my high school writing teacher, which has always been my audience. Newspaper formatting was also new, and a bit challenging to figure out. The second was a magazine article that was similar to the newspaper by the fact I had never attempted to write an article before. The third assignment was the rhetorical analysis of a movie, which I have never come close to doing before. In high school it was all about five page essays and research papers, where as we have been writing opinion based pieces. In the beginning of the class we began talking about the subject of rhetorical situation, or a situation that causes a person to write. Then we began examining the different audiences and genres, and how genre sometimes determines the audience. In the first two projects the audiences were the public, just random everyday people who choose to read the newspaper or magazine, where as the rhetorical analysis is targeted toward people with a college education that have previous knowledge on the subject of the paper. The first two assignments were truly for people who have never heard of the subject compared to people knowledgeable about in my case American Gangster. I believe that after writing a rhetorical analysis it is important to understand ones audience and the fact that they are not going to read the paper blindly, without knowledge on the subject. Rhetorical analysis has opened my eyes to the different genres and how audience is determined by genre. Also, I believe that the analysis will help with future research and incorporating sources into a paper. In the end the analysis made us dig deeper than we normally would for a paper, and find the inner meaning of a piece of writing or other form of media.
ReplyDeleteThe first difference that I noticed was between the first two assignments and this latest rhetorical analysis. During the process of developing the first two assignments, we were directing are argument towards a much larger audience of readers, using easier language, and developing a strong supported argument. For this last project, are audience was targeted more towards a scholarly audience where language becomes a little more difficult and structure becomes critical. For this analysis, I needed to specifically watch out for summarization in my paper opposed to our last two, which included a little more freedom to write. Although, in all of three of these projects the most important point was to make your argument clear and support in one way or another using the sources available. Rhetorical situation, audience, and genre played a role in all three of these assignments as well. Thinking about my own writing process and after completing my rhetorical analysis, I think that these key components are the most important part to writing any argument. Rhetorical analysis allows an outside party to analyze and fully grasp all of that is important in what an author may be trying to speak out about.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I can take from all of these assignments is these terms that I had never looked so deeply into (genre, audience, pathos, logos, ethos, rhetorical analysis and situations). All of these terms and techniques are what make up good writing. This assignment helped me personally when I think about transitions and how important they are in all of my writing. After completing this assignment I feel like I have a better understanding, to not only make my own writing, but to really understand the writing styles of different authors taking the ability to take something from that.