Reflection

Analytic Reflection

            Over the course of this semester I have learned the ins and outs of rhetorical velocity through public discourse. These few months have been very insightful and engaging. We have learned about the most significant genre's and their philosophies. The classes provided us with opportunities to refine our skills in critical thinking and practice developing oral and written arguments that respond to the complex situations we tend to face in our daily society, both in politics and in the wider public sphere. The most essential portion of this course is the community based post and readings that contribute to our learning of the material. These joint works helped many of consider how our skills may be applied to resolving issues of the use of discourse arising within the society. The interdisciplinary readings, writings, and short assignments taught us how to discover the connections among disciplines. The course actually encouraged and we learned to developed strategies for synthesizing the knowledge we acquired during our study in this course. The six required projects let us emphasizes fluency and coherence with our written expressions. I immediately took a liking to the advanced writing class after I read the syllabus knew that we would have to produce essays using an analytic approach. I'm interested in receiving critical analysis in my writings concerning stasis or argumentation. The ability to incorporate rhetoric in my writing helped me to explore ideas, observations and experiences. I intellectually admired when we got to share our blog presentations with peers. This course without question developed my appreciation and understanding of literature. I embraced the challenge of exploring a variety of issues. The sometimes lengthy lectures on social, historical, geographical, ethnic, political, and discussion of literary texts proved to be very informative. These texts varied by genre, historical period, and or country of origin. Still, my goal of the course fine tuning my skills that are crucial and necessary to understanding how literary forms produce meaning. At times carrying out the reading study process was frustrating. I stuck with it though because I figured that it was mandatory in order for me to benefit more from this course it. That’s why I’m glad that we were often asked to provide a writing sample reflecting on what we read.  Plus in class discussions of how we did it and how we used what we were taught in our class. I noticed the practical experience to be gained by taking this course serious. Reflective writing gave us the chance think about what is happening in society more deeply and to learn through experience and certain instances. From day one we were granted the opportunity to discover how what we would be taught in class could potentially help with your real world academic tasks. Writing thoughts down made it easier to think about them and make connections between what I might be thinking compared to what I was being taught. Ironically those original written reflections also served as a source of reference and evidence in to this day. I learned that the purpose of reflective writing was to help me learn from a particular practical experience in public discourse. I was further more equipped with the ability to make connections between rhetorical velocity theory and its practices. Reflecting back on this semester, I was able to make sense of what I did and why so I was able to do it better next time. Without me reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten or its learning potential could even be lost. It is from the feelings and thoughts emerging from these reflections that generalizations or concepts are often generated. Also I won’t take for granted that generalizations can consequently allow new situations to be handled in a very effective manner. This course typically focused on the power and prevalence of propaganda or rhetoric in the media and American society.  We also studied how it affects our opinions and decision making when writing public arguments or persuasive pieces. My favorite interest was how we studied the art of persuasion through fallacies, different editing techniques, learning how to construct a wiki article and write a white paper.


                                                           Works Cited
Donald Lazere, and Paradigm Publishers. "The Citizen's Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric." Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy (n.d.): 244-49. Print.

Eberly, Rosa A. "Becoming a Citizen Critic: Where Rhetoric Meets the Road."

The Elements of Reasoning. By Edward P.J. Corbett. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, n.d. 121-38. Print.

"Marshall McLuhan." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Mar. 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

"Maya Angelou." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Mar. 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

"Michelle Citron." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2013.

Editing Analysis

For the smaller task of this short assignment I chose an article that needed to be clarified in simpler terms for a wider audience. To me this is one of my immediate natural strengths because my writing is of the described as such. My goal was to decipher all the inappropriate jargon and determine the material that was actually necessary to allow the article to be more universally received. So I broke down the article word for word until it seemed satisfactory in laments terms. For the larger task of the second portion on the assignment I chose a different approach, to summarize an article by shedding a brighter light of the subject. Since the article was based on the life story of an original pioneer I was drawn to it. During the process of this assignment the one article that came to mind was, Lazere “Avoiding Oversimplification”. Donald Lazere's article contains a plethora of information mainly dealing with fallacies, and more specifically with oversimplification. His position provided a guideline for me to abide by for not distorting the articles with to much saturation of the original language and wording. Though this seems to be something that is trivial and insignificant, it's really quite important.