Eng 101 Blog

There are several ways I can translate my writing process to other work outside of the class. One way in particular is certain jobs may require you to make presentations for your peers and coworkers, and knowing how to keep a reader interested in your work is one way tips learned here could translate into my professional life. Additionally, I can brainstorm ideas with coworkers and friends whether it be for projects, or other agenda items. 

The most challenging project for me was probably the rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis’ were never really my strong suit because it was never really covered in high school, so for me it was a completely new topic for me. Now it was very well taught here, but something I had never done in the past so this was my first real shot at it. I do feel like my writing as improved significantly. I have learned several different pneumonics to help remember how to keep my reader’s interested in my works. It’s definitely something I want to use throughout my academic and professional life. 

the infographic mainly used logos and ethos to draw attention to the situation of doctors and stress within the medical field. 

This knowledge will change the way I read and use an article because as I said before, articles could be fact based or opinion based, and the information in the article could be extremely inaccurate. When looking on the web, I will now make sure to research the source of the article to make sure the information is unbiased and accurate as opposed to maybe blog articles or websites.

The article attached, “The Danger of Vaccine Nationalism”, written by Rebecca Weintraub , Asaf Bitton and Mark L. Rosenberg of Harvard Business Review, further explain how vaccine nationalism is an extremely dangerous practice. It’s directed towards readers of all ages because everyone is in one way or another affected by vaccine nationalism. It further educates readers on the dangers of vaccine nationalism and past examples. Logos and ethos are primary rhetorical strategies.

Proximity, in my eyes, wasn’t a big factor in this infographic

The tip I chose to write about is “A good lesson for any writer: make each sentence worth reading, and something in it will lead the reader into the next one”. This particular piece of advice stuck out to me because I personally have an issue occasionally adding “fluff” into my writing and I think that utilizing this tip when writing could really work to my advantage. Additionally, it helps me maintain my focus on the topic at hand and not run off on irrelevant subjects. The piece said “If a writer’s sentences have enough life and interest in them – with “every step an arrival”, as Rainer Maria Rilke put it – they will hold the reader and move the writing along.” which proves that you’d need to keep your writer interested in the piece. This was definitely an interesting read 

Unfortunately I’ve never had a peer reviewed piece that I’ve written. It was never really a focused subject or procedure back home though I wish it was. In other classes it was but noone ever took it seriously. I’m really excited to try peer reviewing work just to get an opinion from fellow students and to see how other students are writing their pieces. I feel like suggestions without specific examples on how I could fix a piece would be the most helpful, and quite honestly I’m not sure what wouldn’t be helpful. 

The article “How ‘vaccine nationalism’ could block vulnerable populations’ access to COVID-19 vaccines” stood out the most to me because I found it to be one of the most persuasive. It explains that vaccine nationalism could backfire against America and it’s own people. By using statistics and examples from past histories of vaccine nationalism, the argument was successful. I believe both logos and ethos were prominent throughout the piece. The intended audience was anyone who could be affected by both the virus and vaccine nationalism.

I learned a lot from this particular article and found a lot of the tips extremely interesting. I found that I could use some of these tips for my writing pieces. I learned that leaving the reader wanting more will actually keep interest high and typically work to your advantage. I can incorporate that into my writing by maybe writing a series of pieces that will all lead to an eventual conclusion. Another way I could use it is if I split my writing into paragraphs so each paragraph solves what the previous paragraph left off on. This will hopefully keep interest high. This technique is important to keep readers interested in your work but it also promotes good writing habits for you as a writer. 

My pre-writing process from project 1 honestly went way more smooth than I actually expected. I started early on by making a bulleted list of what I wanted to speak about and points and experiences I wanted to bring up. There was also definitely a lot of brainstorming. How did I want this to turn out? How did I want to keep my reader(s) interested? A lot of thinking went into this. As I move onto project 2, I’d just like to focus on keeping myself on topic and making sure I cover all of the points within the project. If I can do that I feel I can be pretty successful.

Throughout my school career there have been many people who have impacted my writing in both positive and negative ways. The person that impacted me the most was probably my junior year English teacher in high school. She impacted me positively in the ways she was able to help me structure my writing, but she also provided criticism for me to work off of. While this all helped me, I wish she also helped me learn more about how to keep a reader interested in the piece and help keep the main focus structured. 

I have always loved writing both creatively and in a more “educational” sense. By educational, I mean writing about books I’ve read and analyzing other works. From a young age I noticed I enjoyed writing books about really anything I could come up with. To this day I still have old books of mine on planes and stories on events I experienced. My previous english classes really focused on the anatomy of an essay/writing and not much more and I really wish they did. One thing I did learn that was beneficial was utilizing drafts and working off of criticism received on my draft(s). Because of this, writing a piece of work that follows the subject material comes both easily and naturally now, but on the contrary staying on point sometimes is difficult. This is because I get in a zone where I’m focused on one specific part of an essay, and not the entire assignment so I find myself getting sidetracked.