Kerri Dudley 
English 1010 
April 29, 2013
M. Harding Burgoyne

Reminiscing

This class has helped me to become a better writer. Writing the Summary and Summary Response paper made it a lot easier for me to be able to write the Position Synthesis because it was summarizing what they said but also putting my input in. The summaries helped me develop the idea of how to summarize without writing everything down. I was able to seek out the main points and summaries them well so you were able to know what I was writing about. When writing the Conversational Issue paper I was able to put my opinion in basically the whole paper. This later helped me when I was writing my Position Synthesis because I figured out how to agree and disagree but still give credit to the authors. When you agree or disagree with someone you can share your thoughts but you have to do it in a way that is not insulting the author and I learned how to do that. 
          The Rhetorical Analysis was a bit tough for me to write. I was having trouble figuring how to analyze someone without just summaries what they said. The "Framing your Rhetorical Analysis" handout helped me a lot because it showed what I should be looking for in the text and how I should interrupt what the author is saying by the tone of his writing and etc. I learned that when you are writing a Rhetorical Analysis you have summarizing but you are also analyzing that author. For example you want to know why they are writing, who is the authors audience, do they have in fallacies in their argument, and etc. I did not know what pathos, logos, ethos, or kairos was before I wrote my Rhetorical Analysis but now I do. An example of one of these is in Brandon Kings article, "The American Dream: Dead, Alive, or on Hold?' he writes in a very pathos way. Communicating to his audience that the American dream is a very emotion topic and we shouldn't give up hope on not reaching our dreams. He writes with passion about his topic. 
         When I wrote the Annotated Bibliography it was very helpful in writing the Position Synthesis. Having already done the research and knowing so much about the topic and already formed my opinion made it much easier when writing the Synthesis because half of the work was already done. Even though all of the work was already done on the Position Synthesis I was struggling with taking the information I had and combining it together. It was difficult for me to take all of the writing techniques and put them into one paper. I learned how to do each of those very well on their own but putting them together was a challenge. I learned that having other sources to back up your arguments was a very good thing. It helped you to make a stronger argument. Being able to reflect on those sources helped me to configure my position. 
           Having feedback on my papers was very useful. You did it in a way that was giving me positive feedback and negative feedback, which is a good balance. Giving positive feedback gives hope that the paper wasn't a complete disaster, and giving the negative feedback showed me what I could improve on in my next paper, and the willingness to want to do better. Checklists were also very useful because it helped you see what exactly should be in your papers. If there was something missing on the checklist you could easily add it. The exams also helped me learn a lot better. We went over the text in class but we didn't always get to read through the whole chapters. Having the tests and having something to follow along and answer questions in the text was the best way to comprehend what we were going over. It helped me to understand all of the chapters and apply it in my papers. I think I have improved on analyzing reading passages better now because I had a lot of practice on the exams. 
            The book helped me to understand how to write clearer, better flowing, papers. It helped me learn how to plant naysayers, make transitions from one paragraph to another while still making them relate to each other, how to quote people in my paragraphs, and so on. Most of all i learned how to put what "they say" and "I say" correctly into my text. Being able to analysis articles and things in the book helped me learn the correct way to write. The book was very helpful in the class to give examples and instructions of how things should be or look. My writing has changed in many ways, for the better, because of the "They say, I say", book. 
             I have learned so much in college just through the few courses I have taken. It has helped me grow as a student and as a person. I have become a better person than I was. I have more knowledge and understand about who I am and how I function. College is a lot of work but it is worth it because you stimulate you mind, gain knowledge, meet new people, and grow as an individual, Taking this English class has already helped me in so many other classes to better understand how to write papers and share information correctly. College can be a long process for some people but it’s all about how you look at it. Your attitudes toward a situation are your outcomes of that situation.