Danny Zhen
Professor Seth Graves
ENG 2150
21 May 2019
Assignment 1 was a different take for me on writing rhetorical analysis essays, where I am generally used to analyzing works of written literature rather than a work on a show. At first it was confusing as to what I should be analyzing, but once I started, I found there were a lot of aspects that could be looked into with certain lenses. I enjoyed doing this assignment because it wasn’t the typical analyzing a reading and talk about what made it good, but more how something was created to tell a certain story. I did feel there were similarities between analyzing what makes up a story and how a story is told. I learned a lot about the underlying process that contemporary works go through to make a commentary on an idea. This assignment gave me a deeper understanding of how different mediums use their unique aspects to create and tell a story in a particular way. Most of these aspects usually get overlooked despite playing a big role in the success of a creative work.
Assignment 2 felt very tedious due to the nature of research papers. I felt through out the whole writing process I needed to have evidence near my points regardless of its influence toward the topic. It put a large emphasis on making sure what was being said is accurate and has a basis for a certain claim to be made. It felt as though the evidence was speaking and I was just there to connect the evidence with the claim of the paper. I also learned more about the different types of reliable sources through the use of a database. It helped me get a better sense of what reliable sources of information are as well as how certain claims get brought up. This in turn helped me find strong evidence to support the points I was making. Despite that, I found that it was somewhat difficult trying to place these findings in a way that makes sense. There were a lot of information I found, but while writing the paper, it was difficult to put in some good information because it wasn’t relevant to what I was talking about.
During my writing, I focused on being specific about the subject and claim I was talking about. Previously, I would write assuming the reader has a general sense of what I was talking about, which in turn, made my writing somewhat unclear at times. So to fix that, I started to focus on putting what I say into context to make following along easier. Doing that made me feel it was making the essay unnecessarily longer because I felt it didn’t have much substance to the thesis. But it, however, made the claims that I was making stronger because my claims were given context as to where they came from. My approach was to introduce the context, then made the point, and then explained the importance of the point. I feel that I still need to work on being more specific, as I still feel that there is still more room for improvement on making my overall writing more specific. Certain things like picking the right word to describe something and making sure that the reader understands what I am referring to are some small things that can help make my writing clearer.
I would say I am most proud of my Assignment 2 work because I am not too experienced with writing research papers. Despite that, I felt that I did a decent job writing it because of the mindset that my ENG 2100 professor taught, which was that most of the writing in a research paper is not my own. That meant that a large portion of the paper should be cited because the claims being made are drawn from the hard work of others. This mindset helped me to really focus in on finding out the source of the claim to help support my topic. There were, however, points in my research paper that didn’t seem to do a good job in being convincing due to the claim being off or the evidence being used incorrectly. Looking back to during the writing process, I did feel that while writing those points, I struggled to draw out the importance of those claims. This is something I need to work on, as sometimes I feel that I am writing something that doesn’t really fit or have a purpose in my writing. Even when the point does relate to the claim, it may not be clear as to why it connects because of how it is said. Overall, I feel that moving on, I should work on the wording of my writing, as it can make or break the reader’s understanding of what is being said.
During my writing process, I would plan out the structure of my essay in a way that shows a progression of my claims. This helped for revision after peer review, as adding the suggestions of my group won’t throw off the whole essay. I felt that the group work helped me to identify and deal with problems that I may not be aware of, which helps to make a stronger paper. During the revision process, I mainly focused on fixing weak points that didn’t really do much to support my claim or points that needed more details. I went back and took the advice from the peer review session and implemented aspects of each advice to fix some of the issues in my paper. The group work aspect along with the overarching topic of the assignments made revising easier because it made it clear as to what needs to be added or changed.