Some of the most important concepts of FIQWS 10108 were the concepts of rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, genre, stance, and media. In class, we explored their usage in many forms of media such as paintings and readings, as well as how we could use them in our writing in order to become better writers. Through writing my literary narrative essay, critical research paper, as well as my exploratory essay, I have a full understanding of the above concepts.

While reading, we explored many genres and rhetorical situations. As a matter of fact, the first two genres we encountered were historical- in the form of Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With”- and satiric- in a political cartoon made by Glenn McCoy- and both, had vastly different rhetorical situations. These were the subjects of our literacy narrative essay. My exploration of the genre is shown when I stated that” The genre for the painting is historical. It’s meant to show the struggle Ruby Bridges faced, like it was the day Ruby Bridges had to go to school, the hatred she had to deal with, and how she dealt with it… Glenn McCoy’s drawing of Betsy DeVos was meant to be satirical and meant to exaggerate the idea that people would keep others out just because they believed something different than they did”.  I also explain the rhetorical situation of Rockwell’s painting when I stated that “Because the idea of a black girl going to an all-white school was a threat to people’s way of life, there was backlash against Ruby Bridges. This backlash is depicted in the painting ‘The Problem We All Live With’ by Norman Rockwell”. This quote explains both the stance, audience and media of the painting.

We also developed strategies for reading, drafting, revising and editing, as well as engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of writing in general by peer-reviewing. My partner gave me feedback on what mistakes I had on, my essays, many relating to punctuation. There were some minor grammar mistakes here and there and by peer-reviewing, I was able to fix these mistakes and prevent them from distracting from my main points. Outlining our essays was also another way to help our drafting process since it gave us a good guideline on how our final essay would look like.

We explored rhetorical terms and strategies when we went over how to analyze text. This showed us when authors use certain rhetorical strategies, such as pathos to elicit an emotional response from the reader. I showed the use of this when I wrote, in my literacy narrative essay when I stated that “Although ‘all men are created equal’, the south still felt that blacks should be treated as anything less than humans since this was what they were accustomed to. Then, came a desegregation wave. No longer were African Americans going to be separated from whites due the melanin in their skin and a girl, named Ruby Bridges spearheaded this movement”. By stating this in my essay, I wanted to evoke the feeling of hope from the reader by at first describing a very grim situation which plagued society but then describing the way things changed for the better due to Ruby Bridges.

In order to reach a wider audience, we used CUNY commons, a website maker in which we could make a website in order to make a “digital portfolio” of our progress as writers. There, we posted all our essays for all to read and experience. Also, we did discussion boards on CUNY Blackboard in which we posted our thesis statements for multiple of our essays and through there, we gave each other feedback. This not only helped us reach a wider audience- in this case, our other classmates- but also helped us with learning the social aspects of writing, as well.

We had to distinguish between sources, as well as their bias and how credible and relevant they were when we did our critical research paper. Some of the sources I used for my critical research were Patricia Welch’s article Haruki Murakami’s Storytelling World. It was relevant due to it’s publishing date of 2005, as well as it being part of World Literature Today, which is a well-known journal dedicated to presenting essays and works of fiction to a wider audience. I also used Matthew Strecher’s Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki published in 1999. This was relevant to my writing because it was a scholarly article on the author I was writing about and gave much insight into how and why Murakami wrote about identity in many of his stories.

I practiced the use of citations in my exploratory essay, as well as I my critical research paper. This was shown when I wrote “As a matter of fact, Connie states that her mother was a “shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.” (Oates) and that’s why she nags Connie so much, she doesn’t want Connie to be a shallow person, but to Connie, looks are everything”. Here, I cited Joyce Carol Oates, author of Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been. I also used citations when I wrote, in my exploratory essay “According to Freud, the Id is a dark place in our mind and it’s inaccessible to our personality (Freud, 72)”. Here, I paraphrased Freud in his Dissection of the Psychical Personality and I put his thoughts in my own words.

Overall, this semester I grew as a writer. By learning the concepts of rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, genre, stance, and media, I was able to better my writing. The course learning outcomes also helped guide me in the right direction, as well as feedback from my teacher and peers.

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