Soliz 1

Adely Soliz Diaz

Dr. Teresa Scott

ENGL 1301

24 April 2022

Final Portfolio

As this semester comes to an end, I’d like to say that it was worth every second. This

semester felt incredibly short, and I despised how fast everything came to be. I can still picture

myself sitting in the middle of the class on the first day of school, anxiously waiting to get the

semester over with, and within a blink, I find myself looking back at what was now a hard-

working semester.

Revising the essays wasn't an easy task; I often found myself in doubt about my work.

For example, when I read Essay 1, I thought about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. My first essay was

about how convenient the Disneyland app can be; it has valuable and easy-to-access navigation

to get you from point A to point B. In my paper, I mentioned that this app is a helpful tool to

have downloaded on smartphones when taking a vacation to Disneyland resorts. Now since my

audience had changed from my classmates to the general public, I thought it'd be a lot simpler to

make a few changes here and there, so there is Pathos—relating to my audience, making them

see that this app is the most helpful tool there is to navigate across the park with just a click of a

button, how it eases your stay to go from stressful to stress-free. I also tried to broaden my

research so that the Ethos would stand out to the reader, for them to see that I wasn't just making

these things up and was backing them up with the cited sources. Logos played a crucial role in

the first essay because I had to talk about the information given and how it presented itself to the

reader. Suppose this helps the person by giving them a detailed summary of my essay's central
 Soliz 2

message. Overall, the usage of rhetorical devices used in Essay 1 to explain how convenient the

Disneyland app is to use will persuade Disney Park guests to navigate this app with a breeze.

The rhetorical devices for Essay 2 were a lot easier to piece together. For example, in my essay, I

mentioned three important Propaganda posters that were used to persuade and inform people to

be aware of what was going on and motivate them to help however they could. This encouraged

Pathos in the viewer because it motivated them to be part of an important time in history. Most

of these posters contained messages that would easily attract viewers' attention and resonate with

them, like the infamous "I want you" poster by Uncle Sam; he is only saying three words and

pointing at the viewer and not to forget look at them straight in the eye as to convey intimidation.

This was a powerful technique to use back then, as this would be their only source of persae

entertainment since tv and radio were barely making a move. For Ethos, their credible source

would state that if a man were interested in joining the war, he would have to go to his nearest

recruiting site because the sign was usually meant for recruits to go to for more information. As

for Logos, it was more of the attention to detail that one as a viewer would have to make when

looking at a propaganda poster because these weren't just newsletters; these were comic drawn

illustrations meant to grasp the audience's attention and the most brilliant way they would do that

was to write as minimal but essential information to get the viewer going. I believe that

propaganda posters are a great example of rhetorical devices because one can quickly figure out,

A) Who's it for? And B) What is this for? That's why many people like to look back and

investigate these posters because they have a lot of meaning than what meets the eye.

Essay 3 was a challenging essay, but a very fun one to uncover. For this essay we actually had to

argue why the author used the intended rhetorical devices for their journal article and dictate why

it worked to persuade the reader to open and read. The article that I had chosen was a quite
 Soliz 3

interesting one since it has to do with how the behavior of serial killers differ from that of

society. The rhetorical devices play a significant role in this article because just the word crime

and serial killer give that chill in ones’ body because it associates with a negative emotion.

Which is Pathos. Nonetheless, I really liked how its basically psychology, rhetorical devices are

like playing the key words to studying a person’s behavior. When reading the journal article, I

often found myself interested in how it was that the authors knew what exactly they were

booking for and what they use to study those people. To back up their research and their

credentials, the authors were professors at a university instituted in Florida where they teach

criminology-based classes for students interested in becoming FBI or Investigators. To access

their information, they used their libraries' extensive library searches and cited them all

throughout and at the end of their article. When it came to Logos, I believe they did a great job in

including data and charts to go with the information that the authors used throughout their article

to tell the audience that there were tests made and a percentage given to support the author’s

claim. Overall, this essay's usage of rhetorical devices was a lot easier to manipulate since this is

what the third essay was mainly about.

When it came to designing my website, I wanted it to look a little bit creative with a

splash of professionalism. I feel like this describes me as a person because I consider myself to

be a perfectionist but not to the T because I still like to make things creative and not just boring.

It has to be interesting that the reader can say something like, “I like how she used this” or “Yup,

this is something that just speaks her language.” I like my work to include more Pathos than

Logos or Ethos but since this is a portfolio, I feel like this has to do more with Logos than it has

to do with the other two rhetorical devices, so I included the four drafts for each essay, three

Homeworks we did in class, and just to throw in a little extra the Academic Center of Excellence
 Soliz 4

(ACE) visits. For the images I used in my website and for most of my essays, they include work

cited and for the images I used, I just included the Copyrights weren’t mine because now it

would be a problem and I’d probably have the FBI chasing after me.

What really influenced my revisions and the rhetorical choices I made when creating this

portfolio was the feedback that I received from my professor, because generally as a college

class we have to set in stone our three essays, so the drafts and the reverse outlines played an

essential part in this portfolio since this is really what all the work is here for, to acknowledge

how far I’ve gone in the semester. I wanted to be able to put everything I had done throughout

the semester into one single place because, I don’t know about everyone, maybe it’s just me, but

when I look back at everything I did and all the good grades I got, it just feels like I’m counting

dollar bills. It just feels aesthetically pleasing and I feel overwhelmed with joy because I can say,

“I did that, and by myself…appreciate it and love it because I will not be doing that again.” (All

jokes, I find this very satisfying to do.) I’m a person who works on anxiety so when I get to look

back at all of these assignments, it allows me to feel sort of comfortness because now I can set

this to sleep and move on to the next project.

Like Math, numbers are all around us and that I can say is my Forte. The same goes for

Rhetoric, when it comes to just making a rhetorical question that just lightens up the mood to

noticing that rhetoric is all around us. It would be easy for me to apply rhetorical devices

everywhere I go; for example, pathos, relating to a new classmate about a certain homework that

we might not understand, ethos when a professor talks about his background and how he became

to be Dr. [Last Name]. When it comes to Logos, the material that will be presented in the class

and the book that we will have to use to get our information from. Rhetoric wil always be part of

our lives. I too can say that I will be seeing a lot of genres and communities, because I will be
 Soliz 5

able to piece myself to a community and we would use a specific type of written genre. For

example, I use to be in the University's Mariachi program and that right there would be the

community, the members of the Mariachi. Our written form of genre would be the BAND app–

sort of like Facebook Groups– where we can communicate about future events that we would

attend to and the music that we would have to play, as well as notify us of anything that may

happen. I wasn't big on English, but the way this class influenced my thinking to make a full 360

to how it's all around us it’s just beyond crazy.

What I wouldn’t apply to my other classes would be the material we covered in this class,

now that I’m going to English 1302, I wonder what new stuff we’ll have to look at now. And this

is an English class, I will apply to read and write if necessary but the material I learned from this

class would have to stay in this class, I wouldn’t apply the knowledge I gained from this class to

come out in a biology exam (although I would like to see this cross over in the making soon, it

would be really fun to see.) But as I mentioned everything, I learned here for English 1301

would have to stick here, it’s only the first portion to what English 1302 might be.

I believe my writing strengths have stayed rather the same while what used to be my

weaknesses have flourished and I could really tell by the grade that I received in my last essay.

My strengths have been mentioned throughout my essay’s feedback as when I would get my

essay reviewed, I would be told what I did great in. One of my strengths is being able to write

sentences with a clear thesis statement that I maybe I would have doubts on but would feel really

relieved upon hearing this, because I strive to make my essays make sense and for them to just

be crystal clear. I have my classmate's feedback to back it up and I sometimes would look at it

for motivation when I felt at my lowest. I think one of my greatest writing strengths too is being

able to ask someone for help, whether it be going to the ACE center for an assuring answer or
 Soliz 6

going to my professor for a little extra help, I would always want to make sure everything is set

ins tone to make sense, and to not change it in the future. One of my weaknesses that I can see

had improved throughout the semester is being able to add analysis to my evidence now, it was

really tough to do this because this was just out of pure laziness and wanting to get the essay

over with, I feel like this is what really got me when I turned in an essay that wasn’t to my fullest

potential. Luckily, I noticed a huge improvement in Essay 3 compared to my previous essays that

has motivated me to continue to revise my essays for them to be spotless and with a crystal-clear

analysis with their evidence.

Creating this website wasn’t as hard as I thought, or so I had thought. I did have to re-do

the whole theme, template, and organization of my website once I had decided what to do with

my website. I had started off with Google sites but quickly realized it was not for me, so I tried

Weebly, and this helped me 100%. Everything was just easier to manipulate, and I had access to

the things that I wanted to add and change to my website. What really took forever to add was

the correct files to the button links and it honestly took me six hours to set everything exactly

like I wanted. For every page, the reader will be introduced with the title of the page, then read a

small abstract followed by a “Learn more” button that contains the prompt of the given essay,

then there would be links to each essay draft, reflection, then a copy of the feedback I received

from my classmates and Instructor and finally down below would be the three required

homework assignments that we did for the class in total. I had a lot of fun creating this website

because it allowed me as a creative person to throw in a dash of who I am, and I hope that one

day this helps other students as an outline.

My identity as a writer has matured from the beginning of the semester to now, I have

had a lot of help from my classmates, my tutors and my professor to guide me to the right
 Soliz 7

direction when writing an essay. I found myself working better with an outline because there I

could see what I was missing, what I needed to add and would make a great fit to the essay. This

will help me as I improve in writing essays for future classes because this class taught me very

useful skills that I will carry with me wherever I go. With the help of my amazing professor, I

have learned to find my identity as a writer, learned what my greatest strengths and weaknesses

are and most importantly the perseverance to keep going.