Niko Nemceff
Maj. Garriot
ERH 101-03: Writing and Rhetoric
28 July 2016
Help Received:
Joshua Austin NN
Cameron Nagle NN
Jack Neenan NN
Word count: 1453
Self-Reflection
I am an athlete. I swam in a competitive year round swim team called SEVA. This is where my journey starts. I started swimming my sophomore year in high school which is when I was struggling in my English class. I never really had the greatest teachers and never spent enough time on reading and writing. I was always swimming right after school and weight lifting and then when I would get home I would be too tired to do school work. I would just eat a lot for dinner and then watch TV or play Xbox and relax before bed. Reading and writing never really clicked for me. I never wanted to do it and if you saw me doing it then the only reason why would be because it was due and was a grade. That was how my sophomore and junior year went, but then it all changed when senior year rolled around. I personally knew my English teacher (Mrs. Cooke) and her daughter swam on the same swim team as me so I always saw her around and I could always go to her for help. She was the one that I actually learned a thing or two about writing and reading. She taught me how to properly use MLA and APA format, how to conduct a research paper, and most importantly time management. From then on I improved on my papers and reading quizzes and mainly earning A’s or high B’s on these assignments and then finished strong with an A in the class. Which was my first ever A in an English class. ERH 101 has completely challenged my knowledge about writing by teaching me how to write rhetorically. Which was a knew start because I never had to write this way in the past. I didn’t have to use ethos, pathos, or logos, or about Swales’ characteristics and Gee’s theories about a discourse community. I still learned the material and have applied it in three essays so far. Which take me forever to write because my thought process takes a while to click. But I am still not the greatest writer. Now I still struggle with writing just because it is just not in my nature. I still struggle with grammar, how to make a thesis, introductions and conclusions, and distinguishing from a summary to an analysis. While I still need more development in writing and reading, my high school to college experience has changed by learning how to write an intro and conclusion, constructing a thesis, and being able to know the difference between an analysis and a summery.
My junior year was not the greatest for actually learning English. I came in their not really doing well and always getting a C in the class. It didn’t really help that I had a teacher that just graduated and started teaching. One would think that would be a great thing because she is fresh with knowledge but not her. She couldn’t teach well and for an honors class she made it feel like it was even easier than a regular class. “Past experiences with learning literacy…play a role in…people’s future attitudes toward reading and writing” (Petersen 197).
I am using this quote because I had an experience in my English class that affected the way I thought about writing and reading. I remember the first paper that she gave us. It was on something that we kind of learned in class but very briefly. And I thought I completely bombed the essay but it turned out that I got an A. Don’t ask me how it happened but somehow it did. I struggled with doing the intros and conclusions on the essays but still received good grades. Her unhelpful teaching didn’t help me develop anything more that I didn’t already know about writing and reading. But since I was only a junior and seventeen I didn’t really care I just was thrilled to be getting good grades for once and accepted the A. And it made my parents happy because it boosted my GPA so it made me happy too. Which looking back, it didn’t help me at all in the future but this all changed come my senior year.
My senior year English class was great, helpful, and so much more useful than my previous years. I personally knew the teacher through my swim team as well as through my summer pool. Being able to know the teacher helped tremendously by enabling me to get in touch with her whenever I needed it. Another writing technique I needed a lot of help with was constructing a thesis. I could never grasp the concept of how to make one. Mrs. Cooke (my English teacher) worked her magic on me and showed me the ways of how to construct one. “Past experiences with learning literacy…play a role in…people’s future attitudes toward reading and writing” (Petersen 197). This quote is significant because I had a change in the way I felt towards writing essays. It was around December when we had our first paper that was a proper college research paper. I was freaking out like I did on the first ERH 101-03 paper that we did. We spent weeks on researching and drafting this essay. It took most of my fellow classmates and I to figure out what we were even supposed to do. Question after question I became better at developing my thesis and eventually had my paper finished. It turned out that I got an A on it! (93). After that huge paper I felt more confident doing the rest of the papers in the class and got great grades one after the other. My senior English class helped me immensely with writing and reading and I still use the same skills for the papers that I have done for ERH 101-03, and am sure that it will help me in my career field that I decide to do when I am older.
Next thing I know I am already taking my first college English class (ERH 101-03).
Coming into the class I was a little skeptical on how this class was going to go. Even though I had what I learned from Mrs. Cooke under my belt, it is still a college class so I already knew it was going to be a challenge. “Past experiences with learning literacy…play a role in…people’s future attitudes toward reading and writing” (Petersen 197). This quote is useful to me because my first college class will always have a lasting impact on me and the way I write and read throughout college and my future career. When the professor said everything we learned in high school won’t help us in ERH 101 absolutely got my heart pumping. As well as getting an essay prompt on the first day didn’t help my case either. Which turned out that all four papers over the course are analysis papers that are not my strong suit at all. “You stop your paper at summary. You summarize the policies and then tack a sentence…” (Maj. Garriott feedback). I always had a difficulty identifying a summary from an analysis ever since high school. On my first paper I clearly kept making it a summary and not actually stopping at the summary itself. Doing this and not knowing the difference between the two definitely showed how I need more help on this situation by getting a D on the paper. From then though I took the initiative to better myself and get the help I needed to get better grades on the next three. Over all I have improved on all of these issues and have kept improving on each essay every time. I know ERH 101 will have taught me all of the parts that I had difficulty on and develop me into a more knowledgeable and successful writer and reader.
Throughout my years as a high schooler I have struggled through multiple different structures in writing. Whether its figuring how to figure out my intro and conclusion, constructing the thesis, etc… Over these past few years I have slowly progressed through writing and reading and becoming more knowledgeable of them so I can perform better each time. Throughout the knowledgeable that I have acquired I feel more confident that I can benefit these skills for when I commission and have to communicate to fellow officers or enlisted men and women.
Works Cited
Wardle, Elizabeth and Doug Downs. Writing About Writing. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014. Print
The paper does give a good look at your journey in reading and writing, however, I think that the first paragraph should be split into two separate paragraphs because it seems towards at the end of the paragraph you start to analyze which should be saved for a body paragraph to come later in the paper.
Good essay, good intro and use of secondary source.
I think that you should do a little less summary of your senior year in the first paragraph but otherwise it seems good.
Use an online thesaurus and change your sentence structure as well as grammar. Good ideas and topics though.
you have a strong introduction but i think you could go into more analysis and detail in your body paragraphs.
The following body paragraphs are good tho they give good insight to how you are developing as a writer.
This essay includes a lot of analysis. It is very in-depth although there are certain grammar issues such as the correct “there” and “their.” In addition, I would try to draw out your points with more detail.
I believe that the essay is well thought out and worked out and everything is put in the right place. There are obviously grammar errors but those are canceled out by the fluidity of the paper. You analyze a quote and talk about how it is significant and relate to it in most of your paragraphs.
Niko,
You do a good job of providing compelling personal stories about your past experiences with literacy. The biggest problem I see with your paper is that it lacks a clearly identifiable thesis. Since you already have most of your body done, it should be fairly easy to come up with one that fits the situation. I would also suggest referencing more secondary sources, and explaining to us why you chose to use particular quotes. You might consider providing a framing paragraph early in the paper to outline what sources you will be using and how they apply to your chosen topic.
J. D. Austin
Overall, your introduction effectively gives the audience the context of the paper. However, I think it goes a little back and forth towards the end when you start to talk about your weaknesses. Recognizing where you need to improve is a good thing to do in this paper, but I would save it for later, rather than cloud your thesis with it.
You got the ideas down good and used your sources well but you need to work on some sentence and paragraph structure to get the flow.
Your paper is interesting but you may want to reread over it and the way your guide the reader by saying where you are going feels choppy.
You do a good job of establishing your background and where you came from in your high school experience. Your paper needs to be proofread for spelling and grammar but that can be done as your last step. You should try to incorporate your quote better, it seems you just put the quote in the paper randomly. Overall you have a good essay here you just need to smooth it out.
You do a good job of conjuring up your past experiences with your English teachers and how those (negative) experiences impacted your feelings toward writing. That said, I think the opening of your paper would benefit from deleting the first three sentences, and going right into the paper with “I never really had the greatest teachers and never spent enough time on reading and writing.” I would then advise making a more explicit connection between the above quote and the experiences that led to you feeling this way (analogous to a cause-effect relationship). You do a good job of using Peterson as a secondary source to bring in the notion of a “defining moment”. I would suggest that in lieu of re-quoting his statement repeatedly in subsequent body paragraphs, instead use the term “defining moment” (e.g. this experience was another defining moment for me, as I realized…).
I really liked your use of professor feedback as a quote to further your argument. I was not able to identify a clear thesis, but I did read fairly quickly, so I may have missed it. Your essay seems to be more of a summary than an analysis (sorry, I know you’ve heard that a lot). Try to answer the second part of the assignment prompt “…what is the relationship of [how your academic literacy has developed] to your academic and professional goals? What do you want to do once you graduate? How do you hope to perform in your academics? Do you have a better understanding of your role in constructing knowledge? How might this understanding help you to perform better in academics as well as whatever profession you choose? Overall, make your paper more about what you THINK about what you have learned, rather than a strict summary of what you have learned. Also there is some poor grammar and word choice in your essay, you should probably proof read and correct that.