Throughout the year, I have encountered challenges when writing scene analyses. At the beginning of the year, I frequently overlooked details or I failed to thoroughly analyze a passage. In my analysis of Scott Russell Sanders’s essay “Under the Influence,” I did not closely analyze the text and I repeatedly cited long quotes without any in-depth analysis. In my paragraphs analyzing this text, I mostly summarized the meaning of the text and I failed to demonstrate the importance of the lines that I cited. As the year progressed, I met with KP several times so that I would understand how I could improve my analyses. I faced similar issues in the drafts of my Beloved paper, yet I was determined to fix my past mistakes and I continued to meet
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In the beginning of the year, I was confused as to how writers could use tactics in order to underscore their arguments. However, by the end of the year, I have started to feel more confident in writing rhetorical analyses, and my writing style has matured to reflect this greater understanding. In my Huckleberry Finn paper, from the beginning of the year, I wrote, “Twain emphasizes [Jim’s affection for Huck] by having Jim prioritize finding Huck over securing the raft.” In this paper, I attempted to analyze the purpose of Huck and Jim’s friendship, yet I never truly tied it back to the significance of Mark Twain’s argument within the novel. My analysis summarized the content of the scene and I attempted to provide a brief explanation of some events, yet I should have focused on the significance of Twain’s language and his use of rhetorical devices (because it’s a rhetorical analysis!). By making these mistakes early in the year, I learned to fix and correct them before writing my research paper. In my essay analyzing a 1920’s soap advertisement, I focused on how the language within the advertisement emphasized how the company wished to keep women confined to the home. In my paper, I asserted, “Ivory Soap’s repetition of the word ‘you’ personalizes their message and directly addresses the target audience: middle class white women and mothers.” By analyzing the tactics Ivory Soap used, I was able to successfully analyze the company’s purpose, and later I demonstrated how those tactics made the advertisement more appealing to women in the 1920s. With a greater focus on the exact language in the text, my writing became more successful and more mature because it was based on more textual evidence as the year
In the beginning of the year, I was confused as to how writers could use tactics in order to underscore their arguments. However, by the end of the year, I have started to feel more confident in writing rhetorical analyses, and my writing style has matured to reflect this greater understanding. In my Huckleberry Finn paper, from the beginning of the year, I wrote, “Twain emphasizes [Jim’s affection for Huck] by having Jim prioritize finding Huck over securing the raft.” In this paper, I attempted to analyze the purpose of Huck and Jim’s friendship, yet I never truly tied it back to the significance of Mark Twain’s argument within the novel. My analysis summarized the content of the scene and I attempted to provide a brief explanation of some events, yet I should have focused on the significance of Twain’s language and his use of rhetorical devices (because it’s a rhetorical analysis!). By making these mistakes early in the year, I learned to fix and correct them before writing my research paper. In my essay analyzing a 1920’s soap advertisement, I focused on how the language within the advertisement emphasized how the company wished to keep women confined to the home. In my paper, I asserted, “Ivory Soap’s repetition of the word ‘you’ personalizes their message and directly addresses the target audience: middle class white women and mothers.” By analyzing the tactics Ivory Soap used, I was able to successfully analyze the company’s purpose, and later I demonstrated how those tactics made the advertisement more appealing to women in the 1920s. With a greater focus on the exact language in the text, my writing became more successful and more mature because it was based on more textual evidence as the year