INTRODUCTION

Although horror movies have taught me never to look back, it is a crucial part of writing.
Being able to analyze and evaluate someone’s former compositions is a very helpful tool when it
comes to improving one’s writing skills. Before this class I thought I had excelled as much as I
could in English. Much to my surprise, I was not even close to my potential. It was simply
bittersweet to find out how much I had to improve on! Throughout the semester I have learned
many valuable things, such as how to find and utilize the three components of the rhetorical
triangle, expand my vocabulary, and connecting works to personal components.
The lesson that I believe helped improve my writing the most was the rhetorical triangle.
Despite having previous knowledge of this from eighth grade, I was surprised that I had
forgotten a majority of the pieces involved in it! After years of deterioration, the information
begins to fade. I was left with just three words that I could not recollect the meaning of; ethos,
pathos, and logos. Refreshing upon the definitions of ethos (credibility), logos (logic), and
pathos (emotion), truly helped me dissect each reading from class. This helped me recognize
whether an article or essay was biased, what the author wants to persuade me to feel, and if it
is trustworthy. I was also able to apply these factors to my own writing throughout the rest of the
year, making it more compelling and credible to the audience.
Another lesson that helped aid my writing skills was connecting works to personal
components. In the past I have only written to describe how I could relate little pieces and
themes of novels to myself, but during this unit I was challenged to connect personal
components to visuals like commercials. I had no previous experience with this, but I was
surprisingly overwhelmed with emotion as I wrote due to the personal connection I felt with the
work. Doing this not only helped me further my passion in writing, but taught me that having a
connection to what you are writing feels absolutely euphoric.
I was also challenged to expand my vocabulary during the semester. After reading a
multitude of academic essays and articles from the book Everyone’s an Author, I was exposed
to an expansive and limitless world of vocabulary. It was truly inspiring to push myself harder
every time we had an assignment to build upon the language I already know.
It takes a considerable amount of time to build upon one’s writing skills but the results
become evident quickly. I am very happy with how far I have come in the semester and I am so
excited to continue to better my writing even further.