Sebastian Becerra

ENGL 2010

Course Reflection

Throughout this course I feel like I have been able to really polish my English writing

skills. I enjoyed being exposed to different writing styles, like the ones that we’ve been using in

this class. That being said, it was kind of a challenge for me, since these writing styles had never

been really taught or reference in earlier English or writing classes.

Originally, I had chosen to write on the positive effects of public transportation, like less

carbon output, less traffic, better air conditions for our city, etc. But I was struggling finding

enough resources that were even interesting to read or think about, so instead of giving up I

decide to change, or expand my topic to: environmental sustainability – specifically how WE can

live more sustainable lives to care for our planet and reduce our impact on the environment.

This was a lot more interesting to me, as I was able to find all sorts of peer reviewed journals,

newspaper articles, and testimony from just about any and everyone. So by expanding my topic

it allowed my writing to become so much easier, as it allowed me to focus on more general

information rather then going into specifics on a single things, like riding the bus, in an effort to

be more environmentally conscientious. After doing research, writing, and revising I think that I

am that much more passionate about being environmentally friendly. I decided I wanted input

form more people around me, so after a quick google search, I learned how to make a quick,

easy, and most importantly free survey. I sent the survey out to all of my friends and all of my

coworkers and got pretty good response, just under 20 people responded, and just like that I

had real world data to apply to my paper to make it that much stronger. I think that my opinion
didn’t change on this at all, unless you want to consider becoming more eco-friendly as change,

then yes, I sure did.

Now let’s talk about the different writing styles we used this semester, the flash memoir,

the profile, and the argumentative essay (persuasion effect draft) and how I incorporated one of

these into a blog. Again getting lots of experience in unexplored territory for me, which is great,

frustrating at first, but ultimately a good experience once I got the hang of it. I also really

struggled with the profile (bad draft) assignment. I was writing it more of as a research paper

rather than a profile – I didn’t even know ‘profile’ was a writing technique, that went right over

my head. After getting some eye-opening feedback from the writing center, I had to rephrase

the majority of my paper to turn it into what it was intended to be: a profile. Once I did the

revisions and reread through it, I was actually really happy and impressed with my work. I had

reviewed a few articles on line to get the feel of what a profile was meant to establish, so that’s

what I went with, kind of like a newspaper article type paper. So then I had to reach out to my

friends to get some more comments that I could use in my paper to really give it the ‘profile’

feel to it, more than just reading statistics and facts, but kind of like we’re engaging with the

reading while learning, but also not make it sound ‘text book-y’. Once I was happy with a good

profile (look at me), I was able to quickly to adapt that into a blog, since I used some blogs to

get more an in depth feel what a profile was supposed to be. Since I already pictures in mind

since I used some in my profile, it was easy to transfer those over, and concise some of the

writing to the blog. The flash memoir was too personal, focused on me, and I didn’t want to

make a blog about me so that was out of the picture. On the other hand, the argumentative
essay (final draft) I did was on the other end of the spectrum and was too much like a research

paper, and I found the profile to be a happy medium.

Even though I was late on a couple of them so I was unable to get another students’

peer review completed on my assignments, I did utilize the peer review resource online through

our reading and writing center. Oh boy, am I grateful for them, I’m actually super happy you

recommended them to me, the reviews I got were super useful and they were so quick to

respond. I used a lot of the information in the reviews I got, like that the original draft of my

profile was not a profile at all. Overall I really, truly enjoyed this class, I do enjoy writing and am

kind of sad that I am done my required English classes. Can you recommend me an English class

to take next? Do you teach any other upper level English/writing classes? I feel like I have grown

as a student and as a writer this semester. I was actually in a communications class at the same

time as this one, and we had to write a lot for that class, so this semester was full of writing for

me in all sorts of new writing medias, in my com. class we had to write a journal and it was fun

to explore that writing medium, like I enjoyed exploring these.

I agree that language and writing are resources used by people to do things, be things,

and make things in the world. For example, you can be a singer or musician and the words you

write can mean something to someone out there on a deeper level than you’d ever know.

Similarly with writing novels you can create whole worlds and universes out of the letters you’re

putting on paper, or consider directors, their words transition into movies that we watch on the

big screen, it’s kind of poetic. Not saying my blog is anywhere to compare, and will most likely

not keep up with it after this class, but online blogs and websites are really great resources for

organizations to use, like the World Wild Life which allows people to help endangered species
with a click of a few buttons. But if I were someone interested in starting a grass roots

campaign, a website like the one I made today is definitely something I would utilize, it was

honestly not as complicated as I thought it was going to be, for someone as technologically

challenged as I am. Now that it’s published, it looks so official and legit, it’s unbelievably easy to

make a website. But I added a page on my site with a data tab where you can see results from

the data I collected. That’s the idea that I was going with on this project, I wanted to copycat

and incorporate things that successful individuals were already doing with their website design

and clean sleek look.

I do think that rhetoric gives us resources we need to study dissect works of writing.

Earlier today and most of last night I was working on my final paper for my communications

class project, and it involved watching the movie 12 Angry Men and breaking it down and

writing an analysis of the group dynamics of the movie, and identify the ‘group roles’ within the

movie, so each character had a role to play essentially; the ‘joker’, the leader, the follower, etc.

Aside from that, we had to identify which juror used which rhetorical appeal, several types of

rhetoric, including logos, and ethos effectively to convince the rest of the jury that the

defendant was not guilty. I think that through my little experience writing my own work, and of

other students when doing peer reviews, identifying which appeal someone is using has gotten

so much easier for me, now that I know by memory which appeal means what, since I’ve been

using them so frequently in so many different classes. Other strategies that I used to accomplish

getting my point across through the website was, like I said earlier using and studying lots of

sources to see what a nice, flowing, and easy to navigate website, which I feel like I did. It’s not

too hard on the eyes, visually, there’s minimal writing and vivid images, giving the website life.