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Tausif Beg
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 37
5th November 2016
Mid-term Reflection Essay
It is hard to believe that six weeks of our fall quarter has passed by
with a blink of an eye. Throughout the course of this class, I have learned so
much about fairy tales that I have never learned before in my life. Honestly, I
was never interested in fairy tales so I thought that I might have hard time
with this class. However, when I started reading more and more fairy tales,
my interest in fairy tales kept on growing. I especially enjoyed analyzing the
tales using the rhetorical situations. I also liked doing research in finding the
historical context of the fairy tales. Reading different fairy tales from different
times and culture helped me understand the text even better as we started
noticing changes in conventions. Now that I was looking back at my blogs, I
noticed that I have learned and improved a lot in this short amount of time.
The journey of reading fairy tales began with taking annotations while
reading/watching one or more fairy tales per every week. A big part of
annotations is figuring out the conventions and rhetorical situations of each
tale. Annotating helped me organize my thoughts by using the folk/fairy
tales conventions. Additionally, it also helped me gain expertise on genre. I
found the annotations to be very useful to go back every time I saw the
similarities and differences of different versions of fairy tales such as The

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Little Red Riding Hood (1697) and Little Red Cap (1812). One example from
my notes is that, Grimms used wine rather than butter, this may be because
of where the Black Forest is located in Germany. The region of where the
Black Forest is located is a wine producing region. We had to write down all
the important fairy tale conventions we notice while reading a fairy tale. I
had a very hard time finding conventions while reading a fairy tale in the
beginning of this class. I would spend several hours trying to find out the
conventions and then the rhetorical situations. So I kept on going back and
forth to the folk/fairy tale reference page on google docs. I remember going
back and looking at every single convention listed on the reference page and
see which one matches the tale I read. However, as we kept on reading more
fairy tales each week, I started learning more about the conventions and
rhetorical situations of each tale. Now, sometimes I would know what was
happening to the society during the time when the fairy tale was written.
Recently we were working on our RIP storyboard for Cinderella. It was not as
difficult for me to figure out the conventions because by now I have a good
sense of most of the conventions listed on the reference page and some
knowledge about the historical context. These annotations became my
foundation for writing all the Mini-Rhetorical Analysis.
The discussion forums we did the past three weeks were a bit
challenging for me. However, the annotations came in handy for writing my
Rhetorical Analysis. Although, these RAs were not a full length essay but they
are a great start towards writing our full length RA which we will start doing

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next week. I feel that by doing the analysis we are going in depth about a
particular convention/theme we found interesting and writing about it in
details. I also have done several researches to get more information before
analyzing conventions in my writing. My first mini-RA which was on analyzing
the conventions of two version Snow White (Disney and Grimms). It almost
took me three hours to write three paragraphs for RA. I spent most of my
time on researching about the historical context that relates to each
convention I wrote about. Finally, I would complete my mini-RA and paste it
onto the discussion forum where one of our task was to read two or more RAs
of my colleagues and comment on theirs, and also receive comments from
them. This gave me a great opportunity to look at others works and see how
I can improve myself by looking at their fine works and their ways of writing
the RAs. I started understanding how I can improve my later mini-RAs. The
feedbacks I received from my colleagues and my professor helped me
understand what I am doing well and where I need to improve on. For
example, my professor commented Good introduction paragraph where you
provide some context for both texts, and good use of the Zipes quote, so
this helped know that I was doing good with using quotes. As I kept writing
mini-RAs each week, I realized that my writing skills were improving because
before I have never written such long paragraphs analyzing a story. So I
believe writing all the annotations and researching is helping me to write
more on the mini-RAs. In my second mini-RA I still took a lot of time in writing
but not as much as the first mini-RA. Some feedbacks I received from my

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professor was, Nice set up in first paragraph however, I had to take away
that crutch from [my] writing (the age of the audience) and think more on
what values and attitudes do the 2 tales reflect and/or teach. So keeping
that on mind, I focused more on the values and attitudes that the tales
teach/reflect on my later mini-RAs. I feel that I have improved on my writing
skills of analyzing convention with historical context because as I was writing
my mini-RA this week for Maleficent, I noticed that I knew a lot about the
historical context and the conventions. So writing mini-RAs each week is
definitely helping me to the point where I feel that I am almost ready to write
my first full length RA.
I have decided to write my Rhetorical Analysis on Maleficent. The
things that I have done so far that helped me get prepared for writing my RA
are taking annotations on conventions and historical background, as well as
my mini-RA (the links are attached below). In the annotations I have several
conventions that I found while watching the movie. So I will be analyzing
Disneys fairy tale film Maleficent (2014). I will also bring in Disneys The
Sleeping Beauty (1959) in my analysis because it is related to Maleficent.
The genre elements that I will focus on are True Loves Kiss and Big Bad.
I need to do several researches in order to be able to write about the
rhetorical situations. I will find some movie reviews/critics and some articles
in order to tie with my rhetorical situations and conventions. I will research
on the culture of 17th-19th classic fairy tales so that I can show the differences
in conventions of Maleficent. The thesis would be something like the one I

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wrote for the mini-RA which is: Maleficent uses several conventions (add the
two conventions) to make the audience understand that it is a folk/fairy tale,
but it re-imagines the conventions with a 21st century audience and its
values/attitudes in mind.
The first six weeks of this class has definitely helped me begin to fulfill
some of the course objectives. One course objective that I have been
improving on from the beginning of this class is to practice collaboration
and learn how to be an effective collaborator. All the group
works/presentations we did so far has helped me become a more open
person because in the beginning of the class, I was shy and didnt talk that
much with my group. However, as time passed and we began talking to each
other, I started collaborating within my groups to produce great works.
Another course objective that I have improved on is To understand how
every text grows out of and reflects its rhetorical situation. Before this class,
I didnt have any idea about rhetorical situations within texts. However, when
I started reading different tales and annotating and doing the mini-RAs, I
realized the how a time and culture can influence a text. So now when I read
a tale, I am always thinking about the rhetorical situations and how it
connects the tale. One course objective I still have to improve on is the
digital literacy and communication skills across several media. I have
never made a video before so I am trying to improve by editing the RIP video
project we are doing currently. Hopefully, by the end of this class I will
improve on this course objective.

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Finally, I believe that whatever we have done for this class so far has
helped me improve my skills on communication and understanding text
better by analyzing with rhetorical situations and conventions. This is my first
time learning so much in a short period of time. I know that it will get even
better by the end of this class. The knowledge that this class has given me
so far will help me with my full length RA. I hope to have a great four weeks
of this class and I wish to learn even more.

Link to Maleficent annotations:

https://www.scribd.com/document/330132900/Untitled
Link to Maleficent mini-RA:
https://www.scribd.com/document/330138717/Untitled