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Justin Mangaroo

Professor

ENC1101

October 12, 2017

My Writing Transformation

Sponsorship plays a major role in literacy. In Sponsors of Literacy, author, Deborah

Brandt defines sponsors, They help to organize and administer stratified systems of opportunity

and access, and they raise the literacy stakes in struggles for competitive advantage. Sponsors

enable and hinder literacy activity, often forcing the formation of new literacy requirements

while decertifying older ones. My major sponsors for how I write currently come from my

AICE English class in high school.

When I was a sophomore in high school I decided to go into the AICE program for

English. I was never that good at writing but I wanted to give myself a challenge. The first day of

class we got our syllabus and saw we had to write three lengthy papers before our AICE exam

which included two papers. I was starting to have second thoughts about taking the class. That

first week of school my teacher, I will give the name Mrs. V for privacy reasons, made us write

an essay. The class had to write a 300-500 word essay about how a Trader Joes food

advertisement conveyed a use of ethos, logos, and pathos. I never had to write an essay involving

ethos, logos, and pathos. It was a timed essay and I only got 50 minutes allotted to me. The essay

was graded on a scale of 1-6 with one being the best score and six being the worst score. I got a 5

on the essay and I only wrote 150 words. I just didnt understand how you could find the use of

ethos, logos, and pathos out of a 120 word food advertisement. As we were going over the essay,
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Mrs. V was listing points that I would have never even thought about writing. Mrs. V explained

this one point saying how The use of alliteration in one sentence would grab the readers

attention. I was amazed how Mrs. V and even some of the students were coming up with these

points. It hit me then that I would have to do some studying on my own and seek other help if I

wanted to be on same level and understanding as everyone else in the class. I started to do

research on ethos, logos, and pathos to get a better understanding of them. I looked in the

hundred-paged packet Mrs. V gave to the class at the beginning of the year giving an overview

of what I would learn in the class. Luckily, I found the definitions to Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.

Ethos is the characteristic spirit of a culture era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and

aspirations. Logos is the Word of God identified in the Gospel of John with the second person of

the Trinity incarnate in Jesus Christ. Pathos is a quality of an experience in life or a work of art

that stirs up emotions of pity, sympathy and sorrow. I also went to my Mrs. Vs class during

some lunches to get extra help on writing these types of essays. As I kept studying more and

doing more practice essays, I was starting to learn more than ethos, logos, and pathos; I was

starting to realize that I was becoming a better reader and writer. It was becoming easier for me

to analyze the pieces of writing, even the pieces that were boring and hard to read like William

Shakespeare, and locate where ethos, logos, and pathos were being used. My writing speed was

also getting faster and faster each time we wrote an essay. Instead of only being able to only get

about 150 words written down in the 50 minutes time allotted, I was beginning to be able to

write around 350 words in 50 minutes.

I used to despise the fact that Mrs. V would make us read and analyze old pieces of

writing from people like William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe. I always used to struggle

reading their stories because I had a hard time understanding their old English grammar and
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vocabulary they used. As we were forced to keep reading old literature, I was starting to

understand what the authors were saying which made it easier for me to analyze those stories and

pick out the usage of ethos, logos, and pathos. I would now thank her for making us read old

literature because that expanded my vocabulary and made reading and analyzing more current

literature much less difficult.

When it was time to take the actual AICE exam I felt more than prepared for it. I had

ninety minutes to write 300-500 words on how the excerpt conveyed a use of ethos, logos, or

pathos. I had forty more minutes than usual to write the same amount of words. Since I was so

used to only having fifty minutes, I wrote about 450 words in 60 minutes. The exam center was

in my schools gymnasium which was always freezing in there. I had to sit in an uncomfortable

metal chair sharing a desk with one other person. I started to lose feeling in my fingers before I

even started the exam because it was so cold. When I got my exam, I had to analyze a Martin

Luther King Jr. speech and show how the speech conveyed Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Once my I

started reading I started picking out points left and right and was finished in no time. I ended up

getting a C on the exam which was the equivalent to getting a three. I feel that that my AICE

English teacher, Mrs. V and the class curriculum were definitely a sponsor for my writing

because it improved how fast write and read, taught me how ethos, logos, and pathos are used in

literature, and raised skills in analyzing old and new literature.

Seeing my progression in writing and reading, I decided to continue with the AICE

program and take AICE English language my junior year of high school. The curriculum for

AICE English Language was almost nothing like the curriculum for AICE English. Although I

still had to analyze essays for AICE English language, I was no longer looking for ethos, logos,

and pathos, but I was analyzing features of texts, relating them to the function and context of
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writing, commenting on writing styles and structure, then writing for a specific audience using

the same writing style as writer I analyzed. I knew for a fact that AICE English language was

going to be a bigger challenge than AICE English.

In the class I didnt write nearly as many essays as I did in AICE English. Instead we

spent more time reading interviews and conversations and commenting on their expressions and

what and how the said things. Any little detail that the person did when they talked such as a

simple hand gesture was something to take account for because that simple gesture could change

the whole mood of the conversation. These little details are things I would have never noticed or

ever thought would be important to mention when I analyze a text. We even studied different

theories and linguists in class. I wouldve never believed that there are hundreds of theories

pertaining to language. One of the theories I studied about was a theory about the structure of

language. Theorist and linguist, David Crystal constructed this theory and talked about it in his

book called the structure of language. In the book David Crystal says, For speech, which is in

the primary medium of normal human language, three main components, or levels of structure

are recognized: pronunciation, grammar, and meaning. Studying and learning these theories and

linguists gave me a whole new perspective on writing. I started analyzing every single little

detail when I was reading transcripts of interviews and conversations. I learned how to make

almost any detail from the conversation and connect it to a theory. An example being if a male

were to interrupt someone in a conversation, I can connect that to Deborah Tannens Genderlect

Theory on how men are more likely to interrupt someone in a conversation more than women

because men want to be dominant in the conversation and because men are competitive.

My teacher, who I will name Mrs. B, would also give us a vocabulary quiz once a week. I

learned a lot of new words that I was able to incorporate into my essays. At first, I was clueless
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when I had to write an essay through the perspective and style of the person I was analyzing. But

continuing to analyze the little details in a conversation made it less challenging to write in the

same writing style as someone else. Having to write in someone elses shoes really taught me

how to expand my perspective in writing and improved my creativity while writing. When it

came time to take the AICE English language exam I felt that I was ready. I had to write the two

papers, the first paper I had to write an essay replicating the writing style used in an excerpt, the

second paper I had to discuss two theories about language. I ended up not passing the exam.

Although I did not pass I still learned a big load of information from that class.

I feel that AICE English and AICE English language were two major sponsors in my life.

Those two classes shaped the way of how I write today. I would not feel as educated or confident

as a writer if I did not take these classes. Taking those classes widened my perspective and

creativeness as a writer, helped speed up my writing and reading pace, and improved my

analyzing and literacy skills as a whole. I agree with Deborah Brandt definition of sponsors,

They help to organize and administer stratified systems of opportunity and access, and they

raise the literacy stakes in struggles for competitive advantage. Sponsors enable and hinder

literacy activity, often forcing the formation of new literacy requirements while decertifying

older ones. My sponsors have paved the path to my level of understanding in literacy.