Drawing Connections

During the fall semester in English 1301, I constructed two genres of text that helped me improve as a writer. From writing summaries to rhetorical analysis essays, I realized that there are key connections between the writings that I had shaped over the semester. The summary and the first rhetorical analysis that I have included were both related to a piece of text that was written by John Pekins. They both shared the theme of writing and education as a whole. The summary demonstrated how first-year composition was mistreated and the education within the class was slowly decreasing. In Similarity, the rhetorical essay was to show how John Pekins uses many strategies to support his argument about writing and the education for first-year composition has not been affected. Moreover, the discourse community analysis and the John Pekins analysis had key connections when building a strong argument. The discourse community conventions that characterize a given community had reflected my own understanding of education and writing by discovering how experiences in a discourse community can teach you writing developments. When I joined the softball discourse community, I had to learn how to establish my creditability to my coaches and teammates. In addition, when learning about the discourse community that I will join in the future (nursing), I discovered that I have to also establish my creditability so that nurses and patients believe that I have skills when it comes to heath care. Establishing creditability is important when writing a rhetorical essay. Because my discourse community analysis helped guide me through that path of foundation, I learned many strategies on how to write an effective essay paper. A component that connected all three of my writings together is organization. I used a specific structure to each of my essays to build my argument and support my own ideas. For example all of my writing followed a thesis, I would construct my thesis to consist of the topics that I will be discussing throughout the essay, and then I would talk about the topics in the order that I listed them in the thesis. This type of foundation of organization can help the readers easily flow through a text and understand the main idea that is showing. My organization is very simple and accurate so that the readers can absorb the information without having to fish for the main points resulting in a greater impact.