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Elaine Briones

Professor William Nolen

ENGL 1301 123

30 November 2021

As a freshman in college, my writing has gone from poorly written essays to detailed, to

strong supported evidence that changed me drastically as a writer throughout my English 1301

class by going over genre analysis and rhetorical devices. By covering over these discussions, it

has helped me as a writer be more aware on how to provide evidence to support my claims and

as well as make me question the little details that are in topic.

The rhetorical choices I made when revising each essay was using detail explaining each

of my categories for why the topics were important in discussion. For the first essay, I provided

the history behind Kanye West in order to get the understanding on how his past influenced the

type of music he was making. Although I didn’t follow the correct instructions, which was to

pick a genre and depict as to why the structure was formed that way and the form, etc. I was able

to fix my mistakes in the second essay to assure I followed the right instructions this time. For

the second essay, I made sure that I was able to give into detail on the different elements from

three of the different commercial websites (Shein, Wish, Amazon). While I explained the

differences between the sites ranging from the categories they displayed, the products they were

marketing, the audience they targeted their products to, types of sales or offers that were being

announced, etc. I also explained my thesis statement which was why Shein and Wish had

cheaper prices compared to Amazon and gave a brief but sufficient amount of information as to

why that was the case. As for the last essay, I provided a summary on the article about radiology

nursing ethics and the moral distress the nurses obtain when put in a tough situation. After
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summarizing, I was able to conclude that the author was conveying that ethos was being used

because of the moral value that was being seen in the research (arete). Not only that but I was

able to go back to essay 3 to make sure I explained why the author thought it was necessary to

include certain information such as why moral distress took a part in radiology nurses, why the

tool to measure out moral distress was important to the research, and why the history was

involved in the beginning of the article.

The rhetorical choices I’ve made when creating my website was by organizing by

category for each essay. For each essay that was set up in the website, it had their own category

and was consisting everything such as: activities/map bubbles, draft 1 with comments, draft 2

with peermarks, draft 3 with grademark by professor, new draft with final revision, and

reflection paper. Each of those assignments were assigned for all three essays and helped me

organize the website in a neat way to display the progress that was made over the English 1301

course.

` The activities that influenced my revisions and rhetorical choices when creating my

portfolio were the map bubbles we created in our class for our essays. The map bubbles that were

created for the essays were to help organize the ideas that can be put together and how they can

be structured, as well as what type of questions to ask myself whenever I put together my ideas.

What I learned in English 1301 that can be applied to other courses is organizing my

ideas in a clear and direct matter in order to help my peers or readers understand what I’m

conveying as a student/writer. For instance, making map bubbles for other courses can help to

put my ideas together and structure out what can be necessary to write about or what is

unnecessary. Another applicable that can be used for other courses is being able to provide

sufficient information about the main idea for topics, such as nursing. If I am writing a paper for
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a nursing program, I would have to provide sufficient information and talk in detail to help the

reader understand what I am explaining as well as understand what I am trying to do. I believe

that the genre analysis of the same genre from different types of communities will help me

improve my writing by being able to be distinctive with the similarities as well as the differences

from those different communities .By being able to be aware of the other details with certain

topics, it can help with other courses to come up with better questions along with better thesis’s.

On the other hand, what cannot be applied from English 1301 to other courses is the amount of

detail that is put into essays. Compared to other courses, English 1301 consists of depicting a

certain detail and why that small detail from a “bigger topic” is important to the reader and to

persuade the reader to understand from a different perspective why that is. For example, in my

second essay, I had to provide an incredible amount of information about each commercial

website to help the reader get a visual on how the content was formed and structured and why

they were formed/structured the way that they were. After explaining the details of the websites,

I had to compare and contrast each website and come up with questions that will make readers

consider the question as well. With that much information provided, other course classes don’t

require as much detail or thought with the essays. Another thing I learned from the English

course is that its helped me work on figuring out which evidence should be discussed and why

those details help build a strong thesis, which helped me get a better understanding of my thesis

for the third essay as well as being able to give sufficient information to help the reader

comprehend why the article was important and its purpose for being spoken about. Although

what I had learned from the first essay that I couldn’t apply to the third essay was that for the

first essay, I didn’t follow the instructions by going off on a different topic that had nothing to do

with the essay. So for the third essay, I made sure to follow instructions carefully as well as
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asking myself the three questions to help determine if I was doing my essay correctly (Did I do

what I said I would do, why was this information important, and what did I want my audience to

with this information?). By following these questions, I was able to form my third essay in a

structure that was to help the reader understand the background but get right back on track to

what the point of the argument was. Not only that but by researching as much information as

possible to comprehend the topic better and as well get sufficient support for any evidence I may

use for future courses, it can help me in other courses to get a better understanding as well as

being able to use reliable sources.

My writing strengths has changed throughout the course by having a great introduction

and claiming a thesis that is clear and direct. Another writing strength of mine is being able to

provide information that the readers may not have known before reading my essay and not going

off track of the purpose. A writing weakness of mine that has been observed is that during my

conclusions, I don’t have a strong suit in coming back in a circle, meaning that I don’t turn back

to the point of thesis and usually give a summary of the whole essay instead of explaining the

three questions I was supposed to follow. These strengths were new as I had learned from my

mistakes in the first and second essay, but my weaknesses had stayed the same since my first and

second essay. My weaknesses stayed the same because I wasn’t able to explain in the first essay

the importance of why the discussion was taking place and as for the second essay, I didn’t ask

myself what the use of the information for the reader was. As for the writing strengths of mine, I

made an improvement by being able to be clear and thorough with my introduction and evidence

during my third essay compared to the first two. I think the comments I’ll receive from my

professor is definitely about making sure I have a strong thesis and having a strong ending with

my conclusion to make sure there are no loose ends that may leave the reader wondering about
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any information that was read. For my second essay, the comments I had received from my

professor explained that my conclusion wasn’t solid as it seemed it was put together the last

minute with no effort. From that comment, I think it helped me conclude a better conclusion that

wasn’t so simple. Examples for some weaknesses that were involved with my essays was the

first essay that my ideas were very clustered; there was no main idea on what the matter was

exactly as well as not following the right instructions. The same mistakes were made in my third

essay as I didn’t include the rhetorical devices that were being used in the article and just

summarized what the article was about but didn’t explain the reasonings as to why that was the

authors main concern as well as why the topic was issued in the first place. I learned to fix my

mistakes with this by including the rhetorical device that was being used (ethos) and as well as

explaining the type of ethos that was being used throughout the article (arete). Another weakness

that I had was that I needed to give background information in order to help the reader have a

better understanding about the topic, as well as to not leave details left unexplained. As I wrote

the first essay, I’ve learned as a writer that when I genuinely enjoy talking about a topic, my

ideas will overflow and at times forget the main objective of the assignment, which is something

I need to work on as a writer to help my essay be on the right track. This essay made me forget

the main idea of what the assignment was about, and I went too into depth about Kanye’s life in

my opinion. To fix this mistake, I have to go back and redo the whole content again to get on

track now that I have the right idea what needed to be fixed (which was what the genre was,

form, structure, statistics, etc.)

The most challenging aspect of the website was how I wanted to categorize my

assignments as well how much detail should be put into the website. An example would be like

the background color/pictures that are used, did it look to plain and simple or too much or too
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overwhelming. Another challenging aspect was uploading files because it was the first time

working on a portfolio especially with a lot of files and assignments that had to be uploaded to

the website. The least challenging aspect of the website was actually setting up the website itself

after figuring out what content I needed to include to the website.

My identity as a writer has changed by encouraging me to be more specific with topics

and to make sure I stay on topic with what I write about, as well as to put into consideration

about my readers and to the peers that read over my assignments. Along with becoming better at

finding strong evidence as well as being able to determine which information is necessary for the

reader to read, I improved with writing on topics that may not have gotten interest from me in the

first place by still managing to provide reliable evidence from reliable sources to make my essay

sturdy and trustworthy enough.