Freshman English Composition
Hugo Rodriguez
December 9,2019
It was a regular school day for me, or so I thought, there I was 10 year old me sitting amongst my peers to listen to people present their essays we had written. Suddenly my name was called, my heart started pounding inside my chest, I didn’t know I would have to present, I had always struggled with writing essays at the time. As I went up to the front of the classroom I remained nervous, I was not confident in my work yet I had still been chosen to present. As I presented I spoke with fear and nervousness, finally when it was all done I felt relief. Why did I feel relieved? I should’ve felt proud and confident while presenting.
Fast forward to when I began my first semester of college in Fall 2019. Before taking this class, I had lost a sense of joy and creativity in my writing, I didn’t feel so proud of my work, the past four years of high school had been essays with specific guidelines and topics to choose from. Quite honestly, I expected the same once I started the English Freshman course. The very first day we spoke about rhetoric, something I hadn’t heard of at all throughout my academic life. Immediately, I was intrigued as to what rhetoric was, not to mention how I hadn’t learned what it was in high school. I learned rhetoric was the language in which an author uses to persuade his/her audience. I caught on quickly that rhetoric is used by every author including me, the language I used to convey my message in my writing was rhetoric, I learned it was important to use specific language in order to express your thoughts to your audience and deliver your purpose in the best way you could. Audience was also a recurring term we discussed in class, this I had a good idea of what it was, it was the people or group you were trying to reach across through your writing. In addition, tone would come up in class as well, this I had a familiar sense with as well. From previous work I had written, I knew tone was important because it would impact the way in which the audience receives the message in my writing. I could use a more comical tone on a serious issue and the audience would think I’m making a mockery of the situation and not give it much thought, however, if I chose to use a more serious and informal tone on a serious issue, the audience would potentially take the information in my writing and think about how it affects them and give more thought to the issue being addressed.
Upon hearing these terms, I was assigned my first written assignment for the class, the Source Based Essay. When I first learned of the assignment, I was a bit confused, I hadn’t written an essay like this in my life. However, once I had learned that we could choose our sources, I felt a sense of curiosity and relief. For the first time, I could choose what I write about, I wouldn’t just be given specific sources to choose from in which my creativity would be limited. The objective behind the Source Based Essay was to research and choose four sources and analyze the rhetorical elements in each individual piece and compare and contrast the elements and the way each author respectively structured their writing. In this essay I noticed how authors have different styles in the way they write using elements such as medium, genre, and stance. I learned the way the author channeled his/her message to the reader. I learned this was an important aspect because you have to be able to choose an effective way to communicate your message depending on who your audience is, for instance a younger audience may appeal more to a cartoon while an older audience may appeal more to a research article. Therefore, upon completing this assignment, I had felt a sense of pride in my work after discovering just how extensive the writing process can be and how each author has their own approach in the way they write.
With that in mind, another impactful assignment in this class towards me was the Composition in Two Genres. This was a meaningful assignment because it would involve applying my knowledge of all rhetorical elements and all general knowledge gained throughout the course. In this assignment, the task was to create two types of writing pieces(different genres) and explain why you chose that particular genre to communicate your message to your audience. I enjoyed this task most of all because it gave me the freedom of choosing once again what I want to write about, but also on how I want to present that information. I ended up doing a political cartoon and a news article because with a political cartoon, in my case I wanted it to be intended more for a younger audience so I kept it short and simple. In addition, I chose to do a news article because I felt it would be a switch up from all the essays I have done and it would help target an older audience.
Furthermore, the knowledge I have acquired throughout this course has helped me in both my personal life outside of school life, as well as my academic life in terms of other classes. Its impacted my personal life because I now take more pride in my work and the process I go through when writing something. I am more appreciative towards feedback from not only teachers but peers as well, as compared to before I would receive feedback in a negative way as I felt it meant my work was not good. Compared to now, I receive feedback more frequently now as it’s a constructive way to improve my writing as well as seeing other people’s perspective. Continuingly, my academic life has also been impacted, classes such as music and world humanities have had readings in which i decipher the message the author is trying to convey through his use of rhetorical language. I am able to decipher more easily and frequently what an author’s purpose and message is towards his audience after learning the rhetorical elements used in writing.
In conclusion, this course has helped me feel more confident in the way I write. Since that experience I had when I was 10 years old, I have made progress towards feeling pride when presenting my work. I Have presented 4 times since I have begun taking classes at City College, I have presented twice in music on the different types of music and their cultures and twice in world humanity when deciphering what I thought a particular short poem was about. I have enjoyed taking this course as its not only shaped me into a better writer but it’s gotten me to regain a joy in writing again due to the little restrictions we had when choosing what we write about.
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