Reflection

So the Rhetorical Analysis was an interesting paper to write. I was expecting something horribly dry, which it is more boring than the opinion editorial was, which is understandable because they are completely different genres with completely different purposes. The purpose of the opinion editorial was mainly to persuade, and in order to do that effectively I had to entertain my audience, and I also had a lot more freedom of form than I felt like I had in the Rhetorical Analysis. The purpose of the opinion editorial has an element of persuasion, but mostly it is analysis: what did the author do in his attempt to persuade his audience, was it effective, and why? I was not necessarily trying to entertain my audience, but rather give them an accurate analysis of this piece of rhetoric. Besides a difference if goals, these two genres have very different audiences. The difference between the two styles really highlights how important the audience is to writing. The audience wants different things depending on what they are reading. If you try to simply inform a reader during an opinion editorial, they will stop reading it, but if you try too hard to entertain a reader reading a rhetorical analysis, the reader will stop reading because you are aren’t giving them the information they asked for. It was somewhat of a challenge to write these two papers back to back, but I also learned a lot from it.

                Some challenges that I had with the rhetorical analysis and some things I learned from it was that I needed to use the article a lot more than I thought I did. In beginning writing, “summary” is almost like a dirty word. You turn in a book report and get a “C” because it was just “summary.” So, going into this, I assumed that I wasn’t really allowed to summarize at all, which wasn’t true. It’s a hard balance to achieve between summary and analysis. Another way that I could have more effectively used to article to support my analysis of it was using quotations more extensively. Again I was nervous to use quotations, because, like summary, they can just be used as space filler; however, I learned that having quotations really strengthens and contextualizes your argument, making your analysis more effective. Another tool that makes your analysis more effective and allows you to analyze effectively is asking yourself “why” about everything the author does. “Why does he use a question here?” “Why is he drawing this comparison?” Thinking about why the author was doing what he was doing, and why it affects the audience in the way that it does is really at the heart of analysis.

                This was a challenging paper to write, but I also learned a lot about how to analyze and how to support an analysis using the article, and the importance of genres and writing to the correct audience.