During this first semester of college, I have obtained various skills and strategies that have not only allowed me to familiarize myself with different forms of writing, but have also helped me become a better writer as a whole. Although there are many factors that I have yet to perfect such as maintaining a consistent attitude to getting work in on time, and maintaining motivation throughout the year. Strategies such as the color coding strategy, drafting, peer review, and even in class assignments, have been a tremendous aid for familiarizing myself with concepts such as revising, rhetorical analysis, and technological skills such as creating a website. 

At the start of the class, I wasn’t exactly sure what the composition of the class materials would look like. However, the organization of all the assignments that we had was done very well, and I felt like it was relatively interesting and simple to understand. Assignments such as the discussion posts and the reading assignments helped me to get a grasp of different reading strategies that I was able to use in my later assignments. Furthermore, the readings from the packet that we were assigned mentioned many important pieces of information that were vital for getting through the rest of the class easily. For example, one of the articles that we were assigned during the discussion posts was on rhetoric, and rhetorical strategies. The packet was very helpful in explaining what Ethos logos and pathos meant, and it also came in handy later on when we were given a group assignment to try and recognize those pieces of rhetoric in different commercial ads. Overall, all of our in class assignments were very helpful for me, and definitely set the mood for what the rest of class would be like.

In addition to the assignments that we had in class, we eventually had to apply some of the skills we learned during our lessons, into our essays. One of the essays that we wrote in class was the rhetorical analysis essay. In this essay we had to identify different rhetorical situations such as Ethos, Logos,and Pathos. This essay allowed me to gain perspective into what different rhetorics mean, and how they could be applied into my writing. I also think that drafting in general, as well as using drafting strategies to complete this essay allowed me to gain some feedback from my peers, who may have understood certain parts of the essay more than me. I feel like I was writing there where a lot of things that I was missing such as personal experiences and anecdotes in other essays such as my personal narrative. As Well as, information from texts and how it pertained to the things I was saying in my writing. However, peer review made it simpler to correct these mistakes and change them before I had to get my final draft.

During this  course we also learned how to create our own digital database for our portfolio assignment. I honestly had no idea how I was supposed to create one of these but after the lesson that we had in class, I found it relatively simple to navigate the website and create my own site for the class. For example, we had to create our pages for the website, and navigate the different tools and tabs that we needed to get the assignment done. On the other hand we also had to be familiarized with the website at a certain point in order to properly edit the pages, and make them creative and pretty.

While we were researching for our research essays, we learned about how to navigate the digital database and the necessary skills we needed to find the sources that would most relate to our text. For instance, while I was listening to the lesson I learned that I could take certain words and focus on searching those up in order to find articles that would fit my essay. Additionally, I learned how to look for strictly reliable scholarly sources and how to gain access to them through some of the different tabs. For example, if I couldn’t find a source on JStore, there was a high chance that I could find the linked tab on google scholar if I didn’t see it on another website. Not only that but I wasn’t sure at first how I was supposed to cite some of the sources, so I was able to ask the teacher how I could plug them in from one site to the other.

For my research essay I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do to make it seem reliable and find sources that backed it up properly. However, after finding out how to properly use the sources through the digital database it wasnt difficult to incorporate them into my essay. I think that another important part about doing this essay was writing it in a way where the sources match with the message that I was trying to convey in the final piece. However, I also had trouble with understanding the in text citations of my essay. While I was researching I was able to incorporate the citations by researching this website called Purdue owl which helped me to understand how I could incorporate them into the final piece.