Traditional Revision Reflection

For sequence one in my English 120 course 60 class with Ms. Taylor Diaz we
were given the rhetorical situation that we needed to analyze another universities
educational program in a career that we are pursuing, to evaluate how they are recruiting
students and staff. We would do our analysis and convert our findings into a rhetorical
analysis of the ad.
I am currently pursuing a biology major with the intentions of attending medical
school. Thus I chose to find a university who was promoting their medical school and
make my analysis on that. In our analysis we needed to describe the campaign and
discover their messages and arguments in the ad. This is when I incorporated studentlearning outcome (SLO) A of the core English writing department of using technology to
assist me in composing my analysis. I used a Google search that brought up a variety of
ads that were posted by the schools on YouTube. I was having a very difficult time
finding a good video to analyze. I fist chose an ad by the University of Michigan that
followed students and asked their opinions of the medical program. I began the writing
process following SLO C by planning how I was going to begin my paper.
Nothing seemed to flow at this point. I was not pleased first off with how my
writing was coming and secondly with the video I had chosen. This forced me to start my
search over again. Lucky for me I was able to find a very useful informational ad by
Harvard Medical school. This ad showed students and faculty perspectives as well as
stressed their goal of making the world a healthier place. It was perfect for what I needed
it for! While analyzing the video we also needed to analyze the videos use of ethos,
pathos and logos. With all the information I needed I began my writing and submitted my

first draft. My peers read my draft and I was given a variety of feedback to help make my
analysis better, this goes in accordance with SLO C as well. When I turned in my final
draft I received a 96% along with more comments than I had expected.
A lot of the comments I received were about the misplacement of some of my
explanations and paragraphs and that I lacked explanations of the ethos, pathos and logos.
These were all very helpful for my traditional revision that has major changes as follows.
To start, my title was bolded in my original draft, which does not follow MLA
format. Next I had written the second paragraph that talked about the rhetorical concepts.
This was a very unclear paragraph that was out of place mostly because in the next
paragraph I began to talk about the ad. I moved this paragraph to be between the sixth
and seventh paragraphs. I did this because at this point in my paper I had begun to talk
about the rhetorical concepts in depth. It did more justice in this location because it keeps
the paper flowing better as opposed to breaking it up oddly and leaving portions not
discussed until later in the paper. As well as moving the entire paragraph I also added
some information my instructor and I felt was needed to tone down the vagueness in the
paragraph. As opposed to just mentioning that pathos, ethos and logos are rhetorical
concepts that are used in advertisement to build credibility, activate emotions and appeal
to the audiences beliefs, I mentioned which one of the concepts do what. This also helped
to minimize the confusion.
In the fifth sentence of the original document I mention that I am a biology major
pursuing a career in medicine and why I was so drawn to the ad. After I reread my
document during my revision I realized how unnecessary the whole sentence was and
decided just to remove it entirely. In the sixth paragraph I begin my explanation of ethos.

This explanation was very short and did not explain the topic well enough. In my revision
I made sure to expand on what I mentioned in the original document. An example of my
expansion was in the fifth line of the paragraph I mention Harvards constant credibility
throughout the world, to expand on this I stated that no matter what country you travel
to a majority of individuals would be able to recognize Harvard for its academic
excellence.
These are the most drastic changes I made in my paper. Of course there were
several smaller grammatical errors throughout the paper that I was able to find with
multiple pass overs when I was making my revisions. I am very pleased with my revised
rhetorical analysis from sequence one. It is a on a topic that I found appealing and on a
university that I would be honored in attending. Most importantly it was able to open my
eyes to Harvards quest for finding cures to many diseases I have been around my entire
life to make our world a healthier, happier place.