I Am An Efficient Editor

From writing thoughtful poems to research papers, I have experienced composing a diverse portfolio of literary analysis and criticisms throughout the school year. I started out the year writing minimally. By the end of the year, I noticed I was able to express my ideas and thoughts in a more clear and concise way on paper. Ultimately, each composition allowed me to widen my horizons as a writer and see how I could improve as a writer.

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by

When reading a text, there are many ways to gain a deeper understanding of the text. One of the methods a reader can use to increase their understanding is rhetorical reading. Rhetorical reading “involves more than ‘agreeing’ or ‘disagreeing’ with the text. Instead, readers must read thoroughly and think critically to understand how an argument is working.” (Heasley et al. 89). Rhetorical reading requires the reader to focus on the text and pay close attention to the rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation consists of the writer, reader, text/purpose, and context. “When you think about these elements and pose questions about the options available to you as a writer, you are analyzing your rhetorical situation” (Ede 51). Gaining an understanding of each will enable students to recognize if a text is or is not responsive to its rhetorical situation.

Our teacher, Mrs. Hetrick, provided the answer to our question: “These essays could have easily been generated by a computer program. They tell me nothing about yourselves; why in the world you are telling me all of this? You need to make me care about the message you are conveying, otherwise, your writing is useless.” She then told us that while we were all communicating in the proper format, we had failed to take into consideration whom our audience was. In order to truly persuade and influence our audience, we had to do more than place complicated ideas into a grammatically immaculate sentences; we need to show the audience why they should care about our writing; otherwise, they will just lose interest. I realize now that this experience provided a stable foundation for what I consider to be an example of passionate rhetorical ability, which helps me reflect on what authors Wallace deems as “good” through their rhetorical strategies.

Throughout English 1010 thus far, I can certainly say that my writing skills have been tested and tried. Writing for fun and composing rhetorical essays for a college-level English class are vastly different styles and require contrasting attitudes, voices, and points of view for each. Before writing essays of the former diction, I must admit that I did not understand the rhetorical strategies and had no idea there even was a rhetorical triangle. The assignments included in this portfolio show the advancements I have made in my writing with an academic tone.

It’s hard to imagine that just ten short months ago I was sitting in a classroom building a spaghetti tower with no idea what a rhetorical analysis essay was or what the word anaphora meant. Now, just a couple of months later, I have read and analyzed six different novels, learned to write an argument, synthesis, and rhetorical analysis essay, expanded my lexicon of literary terms, and sat through a three hour AP exam. This class has not only given me the skills to master the AP exam, but it has also given me knowledge to succeed in future English courses and in life. Through this course, I have experienced unparalleled growth in my reading comprehension and writing abilities.

While the authors of these essays execute remarkable examples of rhetorical analyses, I myself could definitely improve on my own essays. For instance, my writing can be vague, especially when explaining how the rhetorical

The world of writing is a vast and thoroughly confusing place, so vast in fact that it could not be navigated without an in-depth navigational chart. This chart is composed of and organized by terms that help us get a clearer picture of what we want to see. These terms are genre, audience, and most importantly rhetorical situation. These terms are all interrelated in which you can’t fully explore without having each one identified. One of the motives why writers delve into themselves, to put pen to paper so to speak is to express their views on a topic.

Rhetoric Review is an academic interdisciplinary journal of rhetoric. The journal issues in all areas of rhetoric and writing, and delivers a professional debate for its readers to reflect and discuss the topics and issues. The journal issues texts that investigate the extent and complexity of the discipline. We can conclude from the information that Porter’s main audience were college students mainly in writing classes. Porter’s motive could be helping college students by claiming that once the author knows how to write for a particular audience, they will be more likely to become a successful writer. Porter talks about how students should learn to write for a discourse community instead of writing to

I thought to myself, “Isn’t that the point of a rhetorical essay?” Soon after, I came to the realization that a rhetorical analysis requires the writer to assess both the good and the bad aspects of an

Christina Haas and Linda Flower both make contributions to writing in their studies about the writing process. They have collaborated on one work, Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning, to comment on a growing notion in the writing field about the reading process. They discuss findings on how rhetorical reading strategies work and why teachers should begin to influence their students with them. The main audience are other teachers. Haas and Flower’s primarily argue that the process of shaping students into literal and receptive readers should switch to shaping students into rhetorical readers, using strategies like trying to account four author’s purpose and context, for more in depth construction of meaning. Haas and

Upon discovering the indictment of Zeitoun, students, like I have, begin to develop caution in reading text that only shows one point of view. Instead of aimlessly reading bodies of text, students learn to question the integrity of the piece and keep an open-mind by having to consider another point of view or other factors that may affect the writing. Additionally, Eggers employs many rhetorical strategies to accomplish his purpose, thus allowing students to further practice analyzing and understanding the use rhetorical strategies in achieving a purpose. These skills can then be put into use through rhetorical analysis or argumentative essays, such as in the AP English Language and Composition test or the SAT

In this entry for chapter three of, Writing about Writing by Wardle and Downs, the main goal is to introduce ideas of using rhetoric as a research device. Overall, rhetoric is a very broad topic, so to make the topic easier for people to digest, it has been broken down into many different sub terms and criteria’s. One of the first ideas brought up concerning rhetoric is rhetorical theory. Rhetorical Theory help’s people understand different aspects of writing, “how writers, texts, readers, and contexts interacts; how writers come up with what to say; how texts construct knowledge; and how people make up their minds, and change them.” (318) These four concepts are essentially the building blocks of creating “accurate conceptions of writing as

On order to effectively analyze “The Writer,” one might look to the Advanced Placement format, for instance, to best understand the meaning of Wilbur’s poem.