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Gabrielle Cook
Professor Vaughn
ENGL2089-060
21 April 2017
Intermediate Composition Reflective Essay
During this past semester I have improved my skills as a reader and a writer. Through the

assignments given in honors Intermediate Composition and my other courses, I read and wrote

often. Years prior to taking these courses, in high school, I was a proficient writer. I had AP

English Composition my junior year and the following year I took English classes at my local

community college. By taking these courses, I was able to write well and read efficiently. The

summer following graduation I participated in a research project and the only writing I did for

that was a report at the end of the program. Then, for a year and a half, the only writings I did

were my lab reports for my science courses. As the adage goes, if you dont use it you lose it; my

ability to write creatively and analytically had diminished. When I started this semester in

January I had not written an essay in quite some time. My first essay in this course was not great

but my writing ability slowly improved the more I read and wrote. I went from not writing to

writing weekly between this class and others. This constant writing has enabled me to rejuvenate

my interest in writing and improve my writing skills tenfold.

The first essay we had this semester was a personal literacy narrative. In this assignment we

were to identity a literacy that we possessed and analyze its effect in our lives. The literacy I

chose was memorization. It was difficult choosing between several different literacies; even after

I wrote the first draft I was still considering others options. I decided to go with memorization

because I could provide the most vivid descriptions with it and during our preparation for the

assignment we had emphasized the practice of showing instead of telling. Looking back on
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this essay, that is something I did very well. I did a great job at painting a picture and describing

different scenes instead of just saying what happened. However, as far as content goes I think

there could have been some improvements. For instance, I told a story of myself going to band

class in high school but I switched from third person during the story and first person afterward;

instead of adding interest this change in perspective only served to confuse the reader.

Additionally, the band story did not really add much to the overall thesis. This may have been

because the thesis was not very strong; it was essentially trying to argue that the ability to

memorize enabled me to achieve academic success. The essay needed to have a stronger

explicitly stated connection with literacy and speak to a broader significance about what literacy

is and what it means to me. While the content of my essay may have needed improvements, there

were few grammar mistakes other than one misspelling of Malcom X. Technically it was a

good paper, but the content missed the mark.

Going into the next essay, my focus was to answer the prompt fully. The second assignment

was a comparative genre analysis in which we were to analyze the impact of differences and/or

similarities in genre, the use of specific rhetorical features, and differences in the rhetorical

situation. In preparation for this piece we read Art Spiegelmans Maus: A Survivors Tale, a

graphic novel that depicted the Holocaust with Jewish people as mice and Nazi German soldiers

as cats. This reading was particularly impactful for me; even though we only read three pages of

the graphic novel I often think back to the piece and the strategies implemented by Spiegelman.

His use of animals instead of humans enabled him to be more honest about what happened

during the Holocaust in his graphic depictions and the metaphor of cats and mice is almost too

perfect. On one hand, cats are the predators and mice are the prey which is representative of the

way Nazis treated Jews during that time. More than that though, mice are seen as rodents, pests,
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something gross and unwanted that needs to be exterminated and thats exactly how Nazis

viewed the Jewish people: a race and class that was infesting their society. All of this can be said

just by portraying people as animals. If Spiegelman had elected to write a poem or a different

genre instead of a graphic novel his work may not have been as effective or would have at least

implemented different strategies.

That take away is what I tried to bring to the second essay: rhetorical strategies and their

effectiveness vary based on genre. I tried to demonstrate that audience impacts genre and ergo

rhetorical strategies as well. I chose to look at three different genres discussing abortion; I had

one scholarly article, one blog post, and one documentary. Each piece implemented its own

strategies based on what is effective within their respective genres. For instance, the scholarly

article was formal and used more jargon in its analysis of abortion whereas the documentary

used emotional, personal stories told by women who have had abortions. Over the course of

seven pages, I had fully answered the prompt but my conclusion lacked a connection to the

bigger picture of genres and rhetorical strategies. Compared the previous paper, I had done a

much better job at fulfilling the assignment. However, throughout the essay I made numerous

grammar mistakes. Granted, I didnt know what a comma splice was before Professor Vaughn

pointed them out; they ran rampant throughout my paper. While content was improved in this

essay, technically it needed some work.

For the final paper I tried to keep in mind both grammar and content throughout the process;

after receiving a B and then a B+ on my previous essays I was determined to get an A. During

the writing process for the first two essays, I was fairly lax about the drafts and the amount of

thought I put in before the final product. However, the third essay required a research proposal

along with multiple drafts so the additional assignment ensured that I put plenty of thought into
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the project. Despite having good content, I made a few grammar and structure mistakes and

received an A- on both the research proposal and the essay. While not the A I was looking for, I

learned about researching, interviewing, and writing. This was my second time interviewing for a

paper; the first time was my high school history teacher who I considered to be my friend so it

was more casual. In contrast, the interview I conducted for this project was more formal because

it was in my workplace with people I dont interact with very often. In planning my interview

questions, I tried to be strategic in the order I asked them. Instead of jumping out of the gate with

How does literacy affect authority within this discourse community? I decided to ease into

progressively more difficult questions. I started out with questions that would establish the

station as discourse community without using the phrase for instance, what is the main goal of

the department? and how do members of the department communicate with each other? The

next set of questions focused on authority which is when the questions got more challenging, but

after warming up with easy questions the participants were more willing to think critically and

answer honestly. Questions like what is authority at the department? and how does the

established authority impact relationships between members? arent easy to answer, but through

implementing these interview tactics I was able to get insightful answers from the people I talked

with.

In addition to interviewing skills, I also learned that I write best by planning out what Im

going to write first, outlining key points within headings and subheadings, and then expanding

on each point with my input or examples from texts. In writing this third essay, I outlined each

section (introduction, methodology, results, and conclusion) and used the essay prompt to outline

where I was going to fulfill each requirement and what sources I was going to use to support it

(interviews, student blogs, in class texts). These outlines updated with information were my
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drafts and my final essay was essentially the outline put into coherent sentences. Taking more

time and planning the paper before writing it helped me to ultimately write a more effective

piece.

Over the course of this semester, my ability to write analytically and effectively has

improved tremendously. In this class specifically, I have gone from not answering the prompt to

making grammatical errors to only making a few answers and contributing insightful responses

to the assignment. Through class material, Ive learned about what it means to be literate, the

effects of genre and rhetorical situations, and discourse communities. Through the process of

writing, Ive learned how I write best, how to write effectively, what strategies to use and when,

how to weave in quotations and citations, how to construct and support an argument, and how to

enjoy writing again. In my future, I plan to go to graduate school to obtain a Masters in Public

Health. Throughout my graduate coursework and career, I will be writing many papers focused

on public health. In the masters program I will be required to write a thesis paper and following

graduation from the program my current plan is to go into research. Both of these steps requires a

proficiency in writing long essays and digesting difficult academic articles. The more I write, the

better I get; just through reading and writing more frequently I am able to improve my abilities

which will enable me to be successful in my future in public health.