project 2 reflection for Portfolio

Michelle Chiodi
UN 2001
Shampa
10/29/10
Rhetorical Analysis Reflection
When this project was introduced I was excited to begin because I really liked the rhetorical analyses I had read. I thought that this would be a pretty easy project because I had many resources and I planned to use the Everything’s an Argument book extensively. However, once I began I quickly realized it would not be as easy as I initially predicted. I struggled to find an article that was argumentative rather than simply informative like many I read. Eventually I was able to find an article in the New York Times that allowed me to adequately analyze the content and the argument.
Overall I thought the process used for this project was very effective. I began by creating a design plan which made me think through the content of my paper before I began writing it. Laying out my purpose, argument, and rhetorical techniques to analyze proved to be effective. After creating the design plan I commenced writing the paper and again I found myself thinking this process was more difficult than I had expected. I was so stuck in a descriptive mode that I struggled to analyze the content effectively. After submitting the first draft for peer review, the main critique that I got was that I needed to perform more analysis on the content of the article rather than just describe it.
For the second draft we were given question to think about for each of the sections of our essay. This helped my greatly in making the analysis more prevalent. I really enjoyed that our second peer review was done using out class blogs. Since everyone posted their second drafts to their blogs, I took some time to read classmate’s work and see what they had done with their essays. This was very helpful for me to see how others analyzed their articles and this gave me a better idea of how to analyze my article. In the previous draft I had elaborated about the ethos, pathos, and logos the author used and for my second draft I tried to include a better analysis of these aspects. I discussed how these rhetorical techniques add to the overall argument of the author. Because we were given questions to be answered within our essay I was sure to include the answers to those questions in my second draft.
In the end, I think my essay did a good job of analyzing the article I read while still being descriptive enough for the reader to get a sense of the author’s points. The process used for this project was helpful for me. The design plan gave me a foundation on which to build my essay followed by the first draft which gave me an initial sense of what I needed to improve. Next came the second draft where I worked hard to add more analysis to my essay. The feedback I got on my second draft was helpful to let me know that I had enough analysis, but I was lacking context. Because of this I added more background and context to make my final paper well rounded and a good analysis of the article I read for this project.
Without the revision and pre-writing process we used, my paper would not have been as successful as it was. This process allowed me to think though my essay logically and gave me enough time to make the required revisions to my work. While this project was not as easy as I expected, I found it to be enjoyable. It certainly taught me the value of peer reviewing since I got some great advice from my peer reviewers that allowed me to improve my essay greatly. In the end, the process was very effective and it allowed me to create what I think is a great paper.