Aaron Patton

English 110c

Mr. Matheson

24 April 2016

In my Final Portfolio I demonstrated SLO 1 or the use of rhetorical knowledge through analyzing and composing my own specific genre or style of writing. While analyzing the book “Writing in Response” by Matthew Parfitt, I picked up on Parfitt’s own style and his strategies for successful scholarly writing. The newly acquired writing strategies that I morphed into my own writing greatly benefitted me in the creation of my Midterm exam. Through the IMRAD format, I was able to compose my own writing , because I was easily able to use my own comprehension or understanding of every assignment that I completed throughout the first half of the spring semester. After various attempts and outlines, I was successfully able to analyze my past assignments in the class. It made it much more clear how to write an essay in that format, how I could approach the topic correctly, and how I successfully demonstrated what knowledge I comprehended from each assignment. Rhetorical knowledge clarifies problems or helps effectively communicate situations that concern the nature and scope of rhetoric, including its relation to human knowledge, by viewing rhetorical methods as universal, rule-governed, and productive of knowledge having normative force. During the creation of my exploratory essay, I used rhetorical knowledge to get each point across, the benefits of a balanced workout schedule and exercise tree, which allowed a switch or jump to and from each section of content addressed within the essay.

Throughout the exploratory essay, many references were linked to SLO 2. In order to fully grasp what story was being portrayed throughout the dilemma, the reader had to have been prepared to read with an inquiry to learn or decipher what was truly happening in the context. Due to the usage of quotations and interpretations of reality written, through clear tone and diction, I composed an exceptional exploratory essay. However, I would not have been able to fully compose this type of essay without effectively communicating throughout the story with each significant character. It took extent amounts of critical thinking to successfully portray an understandable storyline of the process and the length of time I had to go through to find or create the most effective workout plan. To develop critical thinking, reading, and information literacy skills you must practice many forms of writing, read endless amounts of essays, novels, and other forms of literature; which in return will enhance my comprehension of the information addressed within the scholarly journal or novel. While reading the short stories from the novel “Writing in Response” by Matthew Parfitt, I was assigned a writing journal alongside each story; therefore while reading each story I would constantly be analyzing, comprehending, and saving important pieces of information addressed within the text. This allowed for a better understanding and a more developed ability of reading, comprehending, and critical thinking skills.

In English 110 there were various opportunities to reflect, revise, and edit multiple pieces of work. The steps I took to completely develop my Expository essay, I would occasionally have to stop, take a second, and read a few sentences to be able to edit what I wrote to make sure I was actually explaining the argument or debate to the best of my ability. As an example of revision processes, that I incorporated, was when I was creating my midterm outline. I would finish each section of the IMRAD format and then take a peek back at the entire section, see if every bullet point listed was fitting in the correct order, and make sure the knowledge addressed within that section was relevant to the situation.

In order to develop effective strategies for drafting, editing, and revising texts you must continuously write, read over the text as you draft it yourself, criticize your writing to make it better and quickly develop your information in a logical manner. Also engage in conversations with your peers to gather more information, opinions, and develop a better understanding of your own writing. In the grand scheme of collaboration work or “peer review”, they have always proved very beneficial help for my own handwritten texts. It provides and extra pair of eyes that will also thoroughly read through the paper alongside me, and will be able to help find any other errors that I may not have been able to find own my own. In writing and presenting my Expository Essay I had to work through the rough drafts, the revision, editing, and reflection stages to gather a better and more professionally composed style of writing. I gathered feedback from my fellow peers after my presentation of my essay and added quite a few of their ideas to enhance my final drafting process. To be critical of my own writing will only benefit the chances of positively editing and revising my essay the next time and increase my level of capability in the arts of writing and reading comprehension.

Writing the Exploratory essay allowed for practice with genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics. In writing an exploratory essay, I had to learn how and when to move to the next part of the story and move to each new and different scene of the plot. The essay produced a lot of opportunities for expansion of practice on my grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills. The different ways of introducing themes, expressing upcoming parts of the plot, and demonstrating the movement from one scene to another in the essay created various assets or opportunities to  write or “explain” to the reader, what is occurring within the scene or what is eventually upcoming in the next scene.

The Expository Essay, the annotated bibliography that accompanied said essay, and even a few of the Writing Journals had multiple occasions where MLA citations were required throughout the paper. Whether it was in-text citations, annotated bibliographies, or Works Cited pages each and every aspect of citation processes were incorporated into the document, and thoroughly expressed certain concepts of intellectual property that motivate documentation conventions. Which means, because of the great amount of chances of practice with these citations greatly improved my ability to include intellectual information, from scholarly journals for example, throughout my essays, journals, and the creation of my annotated bibliography effectively.