Gabby Sanchez

ENG 101-24

Matey

29 April 2019

Critical Reflection

Writing is a skill and like any skill, the way one writes can always be improved and

continued to work on. Throughout the course of this semester I have greatly improved in my

skills as a writer and my overall understanding of rhetoric and how to properly incorporate

rhetoric into my writing. It is evident that I have improved as a writer due to apparent

understanding of rhetoric, the ability to logically incorporate evidence into a piece of writing to

strengthen and solidify an argument and then explain how it correlates, and by using peer review

as a method of tightening up potentially sloppy work and creating more concise arguments.

The way that I perform in writing has improved as before, I had not taken much time in

writing and often times out waste a lot of time before the due date not working on the paper

Before this class, I had not ever been one to plan out the writing of an essay and follow

the steps through writing it. Now, in this class, I have worked before and taken time to go over

my work even before the peer review, which is then also put the piece through the peer review

process in order taken and utilized to strengthen weak points of argument. Peer review is useful

as it gives the opportunity to have your work looked at from an outside perspective where the

person looking over it may not understand the point I am trying to make, as I do, which then tells

me that there are areas that need improvement in creating in order to create a more clearly stated

point or more clearly presenting evidence as well as articulating how the evidence correlates to

the point and what about it makes it significant. In the Week 7 Post, the informal response to
Oprah Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globes, Crystal Matey stated in her grading that I should

graded my response and advised that I “Avoid the phrase that someone ‘used pathos’ Instead

name what she’s specifically doing and what exact emotions she may want the audience to feel”

(Matey). Because of this With this as another contributing factor, I understood rhetoric more

fully and that within itself aids in creating better writing by being able to more effectively

analyze rhetoric and make my own appeals which is an important facet of writing..

Rhetorics can play a large part in an argument and are very widely seen in writing as a

whole from speeches, essays, to poetry even. Because of this, it is very obvious that

understanding how they work can go a long way in amplifying creating a strong an essay. Until

this class, I was not completely aware of how they work and thus within the semester alone I

have significantly improved my writing by now understanding creating rhetorical appeals and

being able to employ them in my work as well. I am able to show it in my writing by choosing

the diction more carefully in order to evoke certain emotions or establishing my warrant on a

position through providing evidence and showing the way it correlates. evidence. Although I do

not consider myself a writer, strengthening my writing skills, being able to see growth and the

ability to write more easily has shown me that anyone can be a writer with the proper time

investment and interest in it. Being a writer, to me, is not simply writing. Whether it is because it

is required or because one wants to. has to but because it is something that one is passionate

about and has something to say on a topic. Which is also why I do not believe that one can just

be a writer from things such as social media, it takes more in my eyes. Despite this though, the

ability to write online and general digital literacy are important facets to adapting to the future of

writing and communication.

 Although many of my writing skills have improved throughout the duration of this

semester, I do not believe my digital literacy is one. Most of my life I have been around

technology and have learned how to correctly use it and because of this I believe it would take

more to make noticeable improvement but nonetheless it is very apparent that digital literacy is

becoming increasingly more important as the future is digital and technology is ever innovating.

Now, writing can be displayed in online infographics, discussion boards, and even tweets. Social

media has changed the mediums that writers can interact with and that must be adapted with.

This can be seen with large news companies posting snippets of articles on their accounts on

various social media pages, such as Twitter, because it is a new method of quickly reaching the

public. The many different news station’s from varying political parties reporting on the same

story make for a perfect analysis of rhetoric and in the RAEssay assignment I showed that I am

able to take evidence from a source and use that to make the point more concise and concrete.

This can be seen in my essay in many places, such as, when I state that ABC News is left-leaning

and thus uses “negative diction such as ‘violates” and “crisis” to describe President Donald

Trump’s national emergency. By stating this, I effectively analyzed rhetorics and used evidence

to display clearly that ABC News is left-leaning and appealing to ethos. Also, by showing how

my use of good use of evidence in the RAEssay created a stronger point in that essay also proves

my current claim that my ability to establish evidence and use it to create a stronger point has

improved as I was able to prove that.

As for where I can improve my writing, I have issues with grammar occasionally and

tend to have many run on sentences or sometimes lack correct punctuation. It is also difficult for

me to begin a paragraph with an engaging introduction or to end one with a sufficient lead into

the next topic or point of a paragraph. I sometimes rely on using certain words too much within
an essay as filler words or cushions and would like to be able to create points more concisely

without having to use fluff in order to meet certain page length criteria. I want to improve on

repetition in my writing by expanding my vocabulary and by reviewing my work to elevate the

dictionbe able to see what can potentially be worded better. I see this as an important part of

improving one’s writing overall as it aids in creating more clean-cut essays and improving in the

small things as they add up into the big and help the writing appear to flow better and the general

work to be less sloppy.

I have found this assignment, as one more introspective and self-analysis oriented, to be

quite difficult in comparison to the other assignments throughout the course of the semester. It

makes more sense to me, with my writing experience as a writer, to be able to respond to a topic

that can be further developed and investigated with evidence from more public or scholarly

sources rather than from my own writing. Strangely enough, it is more difficult to assess the way

I work myself and argue how I have improved this semester than it is to normally argue in a

topic essay. Where I felt like I performed the most effectively would be the RAEssay where I

was able to clearly state the point that was being made and then follow it with the evidence

proving the point and finally explaining how the evidence correlated to the point, this process is

very logical and easy to follow to me and that allowed me to feel as if I performed with ease.

Practice is always necessary in improving skills and bettering the way one performs. This

semester, I was given numerous opportunities to practice my writing and improve the way I

deliver a message and construe points. Throughout many assignments I practiced working with

rhetoric and what it means as well as how to show understanding of it within my own writing to

argue more effectively. Through the use of peer review and feedback from the instructor I was

able to tighten places where my writing was lacking and see my flaws in order to fix them. Due
to peer review and instructor feedback, legitimate understanding of how to appeal to rhetoric and

what it does for an argument, and how to properly insert evidence where it is needed in order to

prove a point and overall make that point of the argument much stronger. Despite only listing a

few, there are many things this semester that have contributed to making me a better writer.