Chipana 1

Aldo Chipana
Ms. Monica Rowe
English 1010, Period 2B
March 31, 2016

Writing Self-Reflection
Daily Writing Assignment
The first assignment in English 1010 that I enjoyed was the Bad Writing Experience
Story. This writing taught me how to write and keep a personal story in 1st person rather than
shifting back and forth from 3rd person to 1st. Another thing that the Bad Writing Experience
taught me to do was to keep a story in present tense. Personally, I struggle with keeping verbs in
one tense throughout all of one writing. This writing however was good practice and showed me
how much more sense a paper makes when it stays in one tense. Another assignment I enjoyed
was the Analyzing Advertisement Writing. This piece showed me how to analyze an
advertisement and break down the elements of good advertisement. It showed me that the ad for
baseball gloves focuses on the hands, transfer technique, and logos that a company will use to
persuade you that their product of baseball gloves are better than others. The last assignment I
enjoyed was the Photography narrative. This piece allowed me to be creative with my writing. I
had to get out of my comfort level and try to imagine what it would be like to talk from a
different perspective. In my case, this was speaking from a young child seeing his dad leave to
fight in a war. I struggle with being creative and seeing things from the perspectives of others

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but this piece allowed me to practice just that and become more capable of speaking from a
different perspective.
Response Paper
Process
In writing a response paper about Shelby Steeles On Being Black and Middle Class I
used such the Graphic Organizer assignment to organize my thought. I allowed me to see what
main ideas I agreed and disagreed with from the essay. I used the notes I took in class on
Informal vs. Formal essays to organize an outline on my response paper. I felt confident that
doing a complete outline that went to the 4th level helped prepare me write a response essay on
Steeles essay. On top of that I also made a PowerPoint presentation on a summary of what the
essay talked about. I remember reading On Being Black and Middle Class one night where I
pulled out a pencil and annotated almost every part of the paragraph. I also took the time to read
the essay 4-5 times for this assignment.
I think my biggest challenge for this response essay was figuring out how I would make it a real
response paper and not making it sound just like a summary of the essay. I realized that I would
have to come up with my own thesis on what I agreed and disagreed from Steeles essay. I knew
also that I would be needing to take a stand on the subject of class and race distinction and
generalization. I knew that I also had to incorporate a lot of rhetorical strategies into my essay. I
solved the problem mainly by focusing on how Steele used pathos, ethos, and logos, to connect
with the readers emotions and my own. I wrote in my response paper my own pathos phrases
and used logos to appeal logically to the reader.

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Subject
At first, reading Shelby Steeles essay I had a made statement in my mind that Steeles
writing was very confusing. As elaborate and well thought out as it seems it, I had a hard time
focusing on what Steeles perspective was on the issue he was talking about. Even in his essay,
Steele describes how he was influenced by his friend to believe in a racial and social class
distinction among blacks that there is no such thing as being black and middle class. As a reader,
when you finally see the change in opinion happen you still realize that Steele is jumping back
and forth from personal experience to another how he dealt living a life being black and middle
class. I disagree with the writing style that Steele used and I believe it would have been to focus
the fact that people arent bound by their race to live a certain lifestyle rather than describe
personal experiences in order to use pathos to connect to the reader. I do not agree with this
statement though that victimization is how a race can progress.
I did agree with Steele on a few things. At the end of his essay Steele states how there is no real
racial or social double bind. I agree with Steele when he states that for the advancement and
progression of a race it is for the individual to do that themselves through self-sacrifice, hard
work, time, and education. I also completely agree that once someone from a labeled race or
group makes it out that it is not their responsibility to reach back and gives those lower-class
member a free entrance to the middle class life. For them it was obtained through their struggle.
It was not given to them for free.
Rhetoric

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The obvious audience for this response paper were my teacher and peers. In addition, I
also targeted the audience that Shelby Steele focused on. I decided that because my paper is
simply a response of my own views of what Steeles ideas express. I found it fitting that the
audience should be the same targeting those of a minority group labeled from being the same as
the worst among them. In this case, those groups were lower-class and middle-upper-class
African Americans. They were the audience of my paper.
My best use of rhetoric strategies had to be the use of logos and pathos. I liked to counter
what Steele said to appeal to the feeling of his intended audience and point out that Steeles
writings were confusing and misleading. To appeal to emotion, I described my own personal
experience of being part of a minority group living among what seems to be a White America.
I described my childhood how I group up different from most kids and treated a bit differently
because of the color of my skin and the languages I spoke. I can say that I did agree with Steele
because hard work and sacrifice pay off and improving yourself and your own life is the only
way to become free of the double bind society labels on an individual.