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Nick Hughes

Prof. Miss

UWRIT 1104

February 2, 2017

Rhetorical Analysis

In past years, I have had many influences that effected my writing style. A recent paper

that I wrote about Cultural Awareness revealed how difficult writing without a particular style

can be for me. The biggest advocate to my writing style, my first writing teacher, gave my class a

fast, simple way to write good papers. In seventh grade, she taught this style that I have been

using ever since I had that class. This style produced good essays by using a simple form with a

few different steps. The first step, to brainstorm, consists of coming up with what I want to write

about, along with a thesis and other supporting points that would go a long with it. The second

step would consist of splitting a page into five boxes and labeling them as introduction, first

body, second body, third body and conclusion. Each of the body paragraphs would be supporting

evidence that backs up what I stated in my thesis. Also, for each of these body paragraph the first

sentence contains a topic sentence which gives the main idea for the paragraph. An example is

this topic sentence, Cultural awareness is a persons understanding of the different people from

different countries and different backgrounds (Hughes 1). This sentence is a start of a paragraph

and the rest of the paragraph is backing up that sentence. I would then rewrite my essay in proper

format and turn it in. I have used this same simple sequence ever since seventh grade in every

paper that I write and I do it almost unconsciously. Although in my Cultural Awareness paper the

given format made it impossible to use this writing style, making it difficult for me to write. This
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is only the first of many factors that affected my discourse when writing. Although this paper

brought out some of my weaknesses it also brought up some strengths.

A strength in my paper comes from my ability to back up my reasoning. I personally

believe myself to be a very persuasive person and this comes from two things, having three

siblings and being hard headed. Why these two things come into play is because my trait of

being hard headed makes it so I do not lose arguments and having siblings gave me a lot of time

to practice my arguing. Right or wrong does not matter, it was my mission to make sure that I

came out right so I would not get in trouble. A place where I use good reasoning in my writing is

when I talk about The next situation that made me against feminism is that my family contains

three men and three women, and when there was a dispute the men always backed the men and

the females always backed the females, once again creating a rivalry (Hughes 2) Here I give a

pretty good reason for why I had a negative view of feminism even though I did not really know

much about feminism.

Another reoccurring event that I am finding in my paper is that I tend to give examples to

assure my points are clear. I am unsure where I picked this up from but I do it a lot and believe

that it might be because I dont always believe my wording is the strongest and that an example

assures it to be almost impossible to misunderstand. An example of this in my paper is when I

say What this means is that something that is all right by one culture may not be all right with

another culture (Hughes 1). In this I am unsure if the sentence before it was clear enough so I

repeat the same thing I just said using different words. There are many similar examples where I

paraphrase my own sentence to assure that my sentence is understood. What I recommend is for

me to take my time and assure that I write one clear sentence, which brings me to my next point.
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A real problem in my writing comes when I tend to rush and try and get it done fast. I

usually try and get all my work done as soon as possible and although it can work for other

classes it is much harder to get away with when writing. This habit comes from my parents who

always taught me to work as hard and as fast as possible. They inspired this work ethic by telling

me I must finish my homework before I got any privileges such as hanging out with friends or

even watching television. This meant that all my essays were just speed writings of me trying to

get it done as soon as I could and not caring too much about the quality. An example of this from

my writing is when I wrote The feminists are hoping to march in peace for their rights and for

what they believe in (Hughes 1). This sentence makes sense but it could have been worded a lot

better to make a stronger statement. A better wording had I taken time and revised it would have

been The feminists march in peace for more than themselves, they march for their belief that

women deserve to be treated as equals (Hughes 2). This rush has its ups and downs meaning

that classes like math where it does not matter how fast I go are more my strengths and classes

like English where it takes time to double check your writings are more my weaknesses.

The final thing that I notice and that ties in with my last point is how short and to the

point I am. This may not seem like a bad thing and it most certainly is not always bad but it can

cause me to not finish my idea before moving on in my paper. What I mean by this is that I might

give supporting evidence towards my idea but it would just be the first idea that I thought of, not

the idea that would best support my thesis. An example is when I said, My view of feminists

was very bad and I have always disliked them (Hughes 1) Just this sentence in general does not

sound good and can be a lot stronger. I would then conclude that I supported my statement and

move on to the next paragraph not caring that much if I thoroughly explained my idea well

enough to the reader. This habit ties back into the getting things done as fast as I can but also
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forced me to make a mental note from now on of have I truly fully gotten my point across or is

there more that I need to say to prove my point?

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Works Cited

Hughes, Nicholas. "Cultural Awareness." Document. University of North Carolina Charlotte.

Charlotte. December 6, 2016. Print.