Within my portfolio I incorporated pieces that best demonstrated my growth as a reader and writer. Not only my growth, but I also chose to include the works that also illustrated my strengths within those categories. The first ever essay that we’ve written in this course was the Opinion Editorial. I’ve genuinely never written an Opinion Editorial, therefore, it was very new to me as it probably was to many others. My very first draft was not perfect but one of my strengths was summarizing/paraphrasing the readings and interviews that I conducted for my writing piece. For instance, I utilized a source that spoke about a personal anecdote to strengthen my argument which was why college should be free. Additionally, within my first draft, I was able to embed quotes correctly and make my writing sound smooth and easy to comprehend.  However, one of the misconceptions regarding my writing was the fact that I waited too long to introduce my argument. I ended up delaying my stance since I was rambling too much about why college should be free and that could’ve caused some confusion for the audience. To add on, another one of the mistakes that I committed was as I attempted to offer some methods and strategies to be considered so that college can be made tuition free, I actually ended up introducing an entirely new argument. I contradicted my own argument just because I failed to write the paragraph in a certain way. To repair that, I reworded my paragraph in my edited final draft. Instead of saying that “perhaps college can not be made tuition-free” and then proceeded to give alternative solutions against my stance, I instead mentioned how even though college being tuition free is not a simple process, there are some things that can occur while the plan of making colleges tuition-free are in place. After having written this essay, as a reader and writer I acknowledged how to introduce my argument more clearly and earlier, how to properly word my sentences and how to not contradict myself. I still had room for improvement though. If I had the chance I would’ve worked on analyzing my stance and including more of my own input on the subject rather than summarizing as much. 

  Moving forward, the following piece that I worked on was the visual essay which was Essay number two. For this piece I did not edit my reflection and self-evaluation, however, I did revise and edit the visual piece itself. My visual essay was regarding the stance of my first essay which was that college should be converted tuition-free. For this visual essay, I decided on doing a subway ad as the genre which was successfully stated in my reflection. Everything that you see in my visual essay has a purpose for it. I didn’t have to do too much to my visual essay. I just came to the realization that my first draft of my visual essay had too much wording on it. For a subway ad, you certainly don’t want a wordy image because people will not have enough time to read it while they walk by or just won’t read it at all. Therefore, for my final draft of the visual part of the essay I ended up removing a quote that I included to make it more simple while still getting my point across. Moving forward with my self-evaluation essay, I did a decent job at dissecting my visual essay and analyzing everything from why I chose the genre in the first place, to the diction, and the images. To exemplify, I stated that I chose subway ad as the genre because “a large quantity of people take the subway, such as college students” and that’s because most of them are on a budget to try and keep up with the expenses. Another example of a good analysis that I provided is that as for diction I intended to use truncated sentences to make my ad a quick and simple thing to look at. Considering that people are in a hurry and wouldn’t want to stop and read an entire paragraph. I was also able to successfully state who the audience was, which was college students or students who are planning on attending it. The medium was also included within the self evaluation. The way that my subway ad was going to be delivered was well, in a subway. Something that I certainly wish I would’ve worked on was to further discuss what actions I wanted my targeted audience to take by seeing my image. Overall, this was one of the best pieces that I have composed considering that I received an A plus and I also noticed that my skills on analysis from my first essay compared to this one has improved by doing more of the “how” and “why” rather than the “what” as much.

My last and final essay is the Critical Essay (Essay number 3). This was probably the hardest essay that I have written since it’s primarily based only on analyses. I always tend to summarize everything no matter how hard I try to analyze texts. I’m currently working on improving it but after a very informative and helpful discussion with my professor I can say that I was able to understand exactly what I need to do. In terms of my only strength, it was discovering credible sources online. I  searched for websites that pertained to my particular topics. Yet, I did my best to try and find credible sources such as: people that conducted studies and people that have experienced it themselves because it’s good to hear a person reflect on what they went through to use it as a primary source. As for areas that I can improve there are many to speak on. To begin with, I implemented a passive voice into many of my sentences. I now understand that in the sentence the subject must act upon its verb and not the other way around. Furthermore, the part that I got the most points taken away from was the fact that I did not really connect the other sources I utilized to my primary source. I must speak on how it relates to my primary topic; whether my sources go against or support it. Furthermore, instead of summarizing the text throughout the entire paragraph, I should instead shift my focus on what the argument is, how the author is making the argument, what rhetorical moves did the author use, etc. This was the piece of work in which I learned the most from and it truly helped me into understanding how to analyze texts in all aspects.

Not only did my writing pieces have major improvement; my discussion posts have improved tremendously regarding including the elements of a rhetorical analysis. I uploaded one of the first discussion posts that I did in this course named “The Rhetorical Situation.”. I was supposed to choose an Op-Ed to write a rhetorical analysis on. Additionally, I was required to include the author’s purpose, genre, tone, etc. However, now that I had time to reflect I now see that I was only summarizing the text. Yes, I embedded my textual evidence but the important components like the rhetorical analysis and such weren’t spoken of.  Aside from this discussion post, I also uploaded one of my most recent discussion posts to show my improvements over the last few months. In the most recent discussion posts I was required to do the same thing as the first discussion post for an article named “ ‘Asian-Americans Are Being Attacked. Why Are Hate Crime Charges So Rare?’ ” But this time I actually fulfilled the requirements. I can say I proudly spoke of the author, audience, the author’s “central argument” which was “ that these attacks were no “‘random attacks’” and these crimes need to be called by what they are and that’s “‘hate crimes’’” and the tone in which I analyzed the reason it was chosen. I stated “By utilizing an outspoken and calm tone the authors were able to successfully get their point across without disrespecting anyone and making it easier to understand.” As a result my analysis skills have definitely grown. Not to its full potential because like for everything else there’s always room for improvement and you can never be too good at something. 

In conclusion, after having completed this course and completed many pieces of work, it has totally changed my perspective of what writing really is. To me, writing can be perceived as one leading the reader to different thoughts and ideas. One can do so by starting with reliable information and then making surprising inferences and valid connections. It can lead the reader to a deeper understanding of some other person. To sum up, writing is capable of taking the reader to a deeper understanding of one’s own, or someone else’s reasoning.

Rhetorical Analysis Draft #1.pdf

This is the first draft of the first Opinion Editorial essay that I’ve ever written! In this essay I didn’t have much issues with formatting my essay the way that I should have for the desired website in which I decided I would pitch my Op-Ed to. However, I did instead of directly stating my argument in the beginning of my essay, I gave examples way before I even decided to state what my argument was in the first place. Moving forward, another one of the mistakes that I made in my essay was that I ended up contradicting my main argument by introducing a new one. My argument in simple terms was that college should be free. However, I stated within the end that perhaps college couldn’t be free and then proceeded to give alternative solutions aside from how college can be made free.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tHn8eEZYz4kgAFRkyJvlAWl-ypg5f_19UKWmBbtnHrc/edit?usp=sharing

The link above represents my final edited draft of my Opinion Editorial Essay. To improve my writing I introduced my argument in the very first paragraph of my essay to kind of guide the readers and help them understand what I’m talking about. Additionally, to fix the issue about introducing an entirely new argument I reworded my paragraph. I came to the conclusion that my main point wasn’t delivered because of the wording. Instead of mentioning that perhaps college can not be made tuition free, I mentioned how it would not be easy but while it happens there are some things that can occur to make tuition more bearable for students.

The link attached below is a visual essay that I created. I decided to create a subway ad since the subway is a place that attracts hundreds of people daily. My visual essay pertains to why college should be free. One of the reasons that I included was how it wasn’t fair that the government subsidized higher-end schools instead of the schools that actually need it the most. I technically called them out yet in the most respectful way possible.

Along with my visual essay is also my reflection and audience strategy. Within my audience strategy I truly took the time to dissect every thing that I did in my visual essay and analyzed it to its fullest extent. Before in most writing I would find myself only writing the what and not the why and the how. 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wVTqGTok-5zZTkxCfB3Rm3qvgizbwAxCpYtfjc-lijA/edit?usp=sharing

Hello everyone! This is the draft of my Critical Analysis Essay. I still have not yet finished the final draft, however, I’m working on fixing a lot of things. 

file:///Users/frayelin3/Downloads/Essay%203%20Final%20Draft.pdf

This is my first rhetorical situation post. I had to choose an Op-Ed, discuss the rhetorical situation, who the audience was, the purpose, author, and include textual evidence to support my answer.

The article I selected was “I’m a Public Defender. My Clients Keep Getting COVID-19 While Incarcerated” and was written by Liz Oyer. Before the COVID-19 outbreak was initiated we all began to take precautions in order to keep everyone from distributing the deadly virus named COVID-19. However, multiple jails initiated basic COVID-19 precautions later than everybody else resulting in most of the incarcerated individuals to acquire this COVID-19. One of the methods attempted consisted of incarcerated individuals being instructed to sleep “head to toe” while bunking with others to reduce the likelihood of transmission. Yet, when the men were tested “1,500 out of 2,500” men had contracted the virus. As a result of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the incarcerated people, the author, who is also the public defender, desires to put to use all of the tools that they have to protect these people. When it narrows down to hospitalized/nursing patients, or any other individual that is not viewed as inhumane because they’re incarcerated, they’re prioritized. However, the author hopes that the incarcerated people receive the “vaccinations” that have been released and “compassionate release, home confinement” and last but not least, “clemency(…).” There’s absolutely no reason to continue to incarcerate more people even when the jails are breeding grounds for this virus. And those that are seriously ill, or are at risk of contracting this virus should receive a diminished sentence or if not, an understanding release to protect them just as others are being preserved. 

This is one of the most recent rhetorical situations done. The purpose of this discussion post was to discuss the rhetorical situation on the article: “Asian-Americans Are Being Attacked. Why Are Hate Crime Charges So Rare?”. Additionally, the instructions were also to speak on the central argument, the authors purpose, the intended audience, the genre, style, and tone. This was the discussion that was posted :

The article “Asian-Americans Are being attacked. Why Are Hate Crime Charges So Rare?” discloses about the horrific injustices that Asians are currently facing. Asian’s are constantly being attacked because of peoples racist sentiments towards them and their conspiracy that Asian’s were the leading cause of the Corona Virus when that clearly was never the case. This leads to the author constructing the central argument that these attacks were no “random attacks” and these crimes need to be called by what they are and that’s “hate crimes.” Theres absolutely no way that Asian’s happen to be the only ones killed and attacked and then these actions being viewed as “attempted murder.” Not only that, but many individuals aren’t even arrested or given any consequences for their actions. The author incorporated multiple examples to prove the fact that hate crimes aren’t being taken seriously and that Asian’s aren’t receiving the protection/justice that they deserve. To exemplify, the author discussed about Salman Mufllehi being accused of attempted murder of the brutal stabbing of a man in Chinatown. In other words, Salman was technically accused of wanting to stab a man in Chinatown even though he clearly did. Thus, the authors purpose was to make the audience which is people who might contain hate for Asian’s to think twice before committing a harmful act. The audience could also be the authorities so that they can acknowledge that it’s time for a renovation in the way that these situations are handled. By utilizing an outspoken and calm tone the authors were able to successfully get their point across without disrespecting anyone and making it easier to understand.