Reflective Essay One: A Rhetorical Analysis

Reflecting on my progress as an English student, as well as a writer I have come to understand that refining my skills in the English arts relies heavily on my previous written works and the lessons I have learned from them, as well from my professors whom strive to shape and mold me into a better author and academic writer. That is why when accepting critique and suggestions I respond with the sincerest of humility. Throughout high school I am first to admit writing essays and analyzing rhetoric often presented itself as a difficult task for me. As a high school student who participated heavily in the Nation speech and debate Association, I was trained to use data to present an argument that was already clear to the reader, throughout high …show more content…
Second I struggled with upholding the parameters of the assignment specific to the essay’s, without sounding dull and risking in depth rhetoric. Essay One; A Rhetorical Analysis I was anxious while also weary of writing my first essay for my first semester in college, although I had written a Rhetorical Analysis prior to attending UHD I understood there was a high expectation of me and my writing skills. While preparing to write the rhetorical analysis Dr. Smith’s lectures helped me understand the purpose of a rhetorical analysis and …show more content…
While writing this type of essay Dr. Smith explained the purpose of the essay was to explain how a cause can have various effects. The textbook “Everything is an Argument” further explains this as cause A leads to effects B, C, & D. while writing this type of essay I was face with two challenges, first was what type of argument to present and how to organize the essay so that it makes sense as a whole, second I wanted to incorporate an interview to further support my claim, however I feared the interview might affect the tone of the essay resulting in a weak argument. I addressed these issues by constantly forming and outline of the essay, many of my peers noticed the descriptive tone of the essay however they advised to limit my own argument and input and have a neutral tone (something Dr. Smith noticed as well) while writing the causal analysis I found it hard to maintain a neutral tone being that I had a close connection to the topic of refugee migration and discrimination to refugees in the US. While incorporating the interview into the essay I noticed that my own thoughts where being forced upon the reader (a struggle I had in the rhetorical analysis) and to maintain the integrity of a causal analysis I had to constantly revise with others my work. In some cases, I had to rewrite and reorganized how the essay would present a cause