Casso 1

Richard Casso

Dr. Sharity Nelson

English 1301 -109

1 December 2021

Final Reflection Essay

In my first two essays when revising I attempted to strengthen the rhetorical appeal of

pathos. The essay’s focused on discourse community’s and how genre is used for the community

to communicate with each other to accomplish their goals. Pathos is an effective rhetorical

strategy to use in the genre analysis because the community members are all empathetic with

each other in their love for their team such as Westham or the league of their favorite sport such

as the NFL, NBA, and La Liga. In essay 1 I made sure to add commentary to one of the

comments I added from the actual post which was “feels like a dream,” to add to the emotional

appeal of the match Westham was about to participate in. Essay 2 is very similar containing lots

of appeal to Pathos, but also contains the rhetorical strategy of Ethos. I was sure when revising to

reassure that the posts were coming from the official account of each league. The accounts are

verified, thus giving it the credibility that they are the official accounts of their leagues and

assures that the information I am putting in my essay is reliable. In essay 3 when revising I had

to use all three rhetorical strategies of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos depending on the section of the

essay that I was revising. In the paragraph containing Pathos I strengthened it by providing more

detail to how the article appeals to the readers emotions because they are fellow psychologists

who are empathetic and curious to learn new psychological strategies to add to their careers. I

slightly adjust the appeal to Logos in the essay and corrected the phrasing to make the appeal

stronger. I described what the chart was showing that proved the argument that psychology does
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enhance sports performance. I reworded the Ethos section to give more clarity to why displaying

the three authors in the article’s universities was greatly important. It provides credibility to the

scholars that the information being spread is in fact reliable.

The strongest rhetorical strategy I used in my digital portfolio was the appeal to Logos. I

provided actual documentation of my essays, rough drafts, reflection essays, homework,

feedback, and my revised essays which proved that I have had a significantly drastic

improvement in my writing. It shows that I have correctly learned how to title my essays in

proper MLA format. I have learned how to add a header, put line spacing at 0, cite social media

websites. It also demonstrates the improvement I have had in paragraph flow, paragraph,

structure, and proper wording to give clarity to the information I intend on being spread to my

readers. Logos is the clear rhetorical choice that I added into my portfolio because I want those

who view it to see the proof that my writing has genuinely improved and see the effort that I put

into enhancing my skill in writing. My effort to improving is what I felt was most important to

show and I can accomplish this by the viewer witnessing for themselves the difference each

essay has going from 1 to 3, and that I listened to the feedback given so that I could enhance my

essays.

The feedback I gained from my professor Dr. Sharity Nelson in the second rough draft

homework’s provided me the most substantial amount of help that I required to revise my essays

as effectively as possible. I used the comments my professor made and fixed what I had already

fixed, but I made slight improvements to them. For example, if the comment said I needed to

expand my idea, I reread what I had already thought I fixed, but in most cases still needing

improvement. I would then edit the section that I was supposed to expand on and rephrase it to

make it more effective. The peer review activities slightly helped me in some cases because
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typically the information given was vague and gave no real insight to how to correct my errors. It

helped when someone noticed a grammatical error I made and let me know that I needed to

correct it. The homework that helped me with my portfolio was watching the video about how to

use the Weebly website. It showed me how to use all the tools I need to design my website to my

satisfaction. The most help I got in designing my website was from one-on-one help from

professor who took her time to explain to me how I should structure my portfolio to enhance the

viewers experience. She showed me how to reduce the amount of information overload and

make it as simple as possible for the viewer to review the information I provided.

In English 1301 I gained a lot of knowledge in how to correctly write an essay. The very

first thing I learned from this course is how to improve my time management. Writing essays

requires dedication of time to complete the essay, especially when they require a large minimum

word count. I adjusted to my schedule and blocked off activities such as gaming with my friends

to dedicate as little as an hour to my writing, so that I could do as best as possible. Having time

management skill is important for every course and is necessary for everything in my daily and

future life. I still need lots of practice, but I do feel like I really learned little skills that I

previously were not aware of or that I did not care for. I learned to improve sentence and

paragraph flow in my essays to keep the reader interested and prevent confusion throughout the

essay. I learned how to analyze for rhetorical strategy which. I previously had no skill in doing

so before. Analyzing a scholarly article in detail and reviewing what rhetorical appeal is being

used to support the argument is a concept I can possibly apply in future assignments in other

courses. I learned how to use proper MLA format such as font size 12, Times New Roman,

double line spacing, 0 point spacing, hanging indentation in citations. This is information that I

should already know, but it was not something enforced to me in high school, so I never really
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maintained that information. I can use this information for other classes that require an essay to

be written and in MLA format. I can also use the skills I developed of having good or decent

flow in my future essay assignments. Analyzing articles or ideas at the college level will be

important for the success of future writing assignments. One of the most important things I

learned in English 1301 was how to create a portfolio that can be used in other courses and can

be used past my college life. I can create one that can help me benefit my career or jump start my

career.

There really is not anything specific that I learned in English 1301 that can not be applied

in other courses. Everything I learned can be applied to any writing assignment in the future. The

information regarding rhetorical appeal, analyzation of scholarly articles, sentence structure, time

management, and MLA Format are not specifically entitled to only being used in English 1301.

The things I learned are genuinely important to me and I plan on applying every skill I learned in

my future courses, and in life beyond university.

I have come to realize that my writing contains many little weaknesses that are not major

but are more common than my strengths. My strength is that I can write a lot about ideas and

expand on them with no real difficulty even if I am not knowledgeable about that certain topic.

My biggest weakness is in hidden inside of my strength is that at times I can provide dead

sentences that provide no meaning to them, and their only real purpose is to add to the word

count. I have worked hard since essay 1 to understand that what I am writing fits its place in the

idea. A weakness that I have slowly began to transform into a strength are my introductions. At

the beginning of the semester, I would write rather lengthy introductions that threw the reader off

and would probably cause him or her to lose interest in the essay. There was one specific class

where the professor described how to properly write an introduction. She stated that it was
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important to short, specific, and straight to the point so that the reader maintains interest in the

essay and wants to read the rest of it to yield the information that they desire. My introductions

previously contained error marks in my rough drafts stating that my style of writing my

introduction must change. I drilled the information that I learned from that specific class meeting

and since then have began to gradually improve the strength of my introductions.

For the most part the portfolio has proved to very challenging and for the sole reason that

it requires extremely tedious work. My original layout of the portfolio was explained to me to be

an information overload to the viewer because all the information for one essay was on page.

After my professor explained to me how it could look better organized and be easier for the

viewer to calmly go through the portfolio and gather all the information they desire. It took quite

long to remove the links I had and change them into a “Scribd document” for the essay to be

shown directly in the portfolio. I had to reorganize everything and that was challenging but got

easier as I caught rhythm as to knowing what I was supposed to do. The absolute most

challenging aspect of adding to the website was revising my final draft essay. It was difficult foe

me to find what I needed to correct in the essay because at some points I genuinely had no idea

what was incorrect and needed fixing. Meeting the revision percentage of 25% was extremely

difficult to accomplish because for an 800-word essay it meant the minimum revision word count

that had to be done was 200 words. The least challenging aspect of the website was creating the

home page. For obvious reasons its very simple to write a brief bibliography about myself.

Choosing them for the background was simple because it is blue, and it is my favorite color.

Another easy task to do was creating blurbs of information to describe what information was

provided in each page. Overall, the entire project is fairly difficult and has required countless
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hours of recovering past documents and putting them in the portfolio in the right place that they

must be.

My identity as a writer has changed with this essay because it has helped me realize

certain things that I never really think about when I am just going about my day. I thought of a

way that having the skill to create a portfolio can benefit me not only in school but in the real

world as well. Writing this essay has given me full clarity that my attitude has been changed

since the start of the semester. I used never really have any interest in writing or think it would

have any significance in my future career. Right away to start the semester I realized through

mentor meetings and feedback from my professors that my essays constantly contain oceans of

mistakes that need to be fixed. For instance, in essay 1 I had to rewrite an entire paragraph

because it was weak and did not support my thesis statement. My identity has changed as writer

while writing this essay because I know now that I have naturally set higher standards for myself

when writing essays. I want to keep improving and as I stated before my writing contains many

more weaknesses than actual strengths. I plan to maintain this part of my upgraded writing

identity to further my writing experience, and drastically improve my overall grades throughout

my education, so that I have the best chance of completing my four-year plan, and to then pursue

my career goal of becoming a physical therapist.