Essay 1 Self Reflection! (:

1.       How would you tell the story of your thinking and writing process? Complete these sentences: “When I first began this assignment, I thought…..” and “AS I did some thinking, writing and research my ideas changed and I thought…”

When I first began this assignment, I thought, “Oh my God! I have no idea how I’m going to do this! I don’t even know where to start! Stress load, here I come!” As I did some thinking, writing and research my ideas changed and I thought, “Well, I suppose this isn’t SO bad, but it’s still stressful.

 

2.      How did you choose a text to analyze for this assignment?  What criteria did you use when selecting it?

Oh man, I had NO IDEA what text I wanted to use. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to find one. For whatever reason, I knew I wanted to do a video. So, I jumped on YouTube and just started searching. I came across the Sarah McLachlan BCSPCA Animal Cruelty video and I thought, “This is perfect! There’s SO much rhetorical appeal in this video.”

 

3.      What was the most difficult problem you faced while writing? How did you go about trying to solve it?

The most difficult problem I faced while writing was actually writing the paper. The ideas just weren’t coming to me. So, I stepped away for a while that way I could gather my thoughts. Once I came back to the computer, I made some progress with writing the paper.

 

4.      Whose advice did you seek while drafting, revising and editing? What advice did you take and what did you ignore? Why?

I took Mrs. Thomas’ advice, of course! She always knows what’s good and what needs to be fixed. I always try to take most of her advice because I know in the end, it will help me get the best grade possible. I also took Elizabeth’s advice, since we worked together for the peer response. Her advice helped me a lot too.

 

5.      What do you feel are the strongest points of this essay?  What are the weakest elements and how could you improve them?

I feel that my strongest points of my essay were my intro paragraph and the parts where I talked about pathos. My intro paragraph had a pretty strong hook to lure the audience in and my thesis statement (for once!) was very clear and direct. The parts where I talked pathos were strong because it was very easy to pinpoint the emotional appeal in the video. So, it was very easy to write about. The weakest points of this paper were the paragraphs about ethos and logos. Even though I knew what the ethos and logos of the video were, I had trouble trying to explain them in the paper. I could improve them by asking for advice about how to write ethos and logos.

 

6.      What will you do differently on the next essay assignment?

For the next essay, I will definitely ask more questions and take more advice. I always get embarrassed asking for advice, but it really does help improve my writing.