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Alexa Vazquez

Professor Oscar Martinez

ENGL 1301-108

5 December 2023

Reflection Essay 3

I’ve learned in the peer-reviewed journal articles and the rhetorical situation

involves analyzing the context, audience, purpose, and genre. Understanding what rhetorical

situation for this peer-review journal can be very successful communication for the reader when

reading what I’ve analyzed in the peer-review journal. The concept of rhetorical analysis of an

academic rhetorical situation can help me in my business courses and writing courses by having

research skills, critical thinking, and adaptability. It can be effective for research skills since I

had to find a peer-review journal that had a valid argument. Critical thinking is helpful by

analyzing the rhetorical strategies in different texts and adaptability is very helpful since I would

transfer my knowledge into a different course that can help me find different rhetorical

situations.

I build up my knowledge of the drafting process by looking for three different

peer-review journals and leave with the one I think would be the most valid argument. The

revising process for this writing assignment was very easy since I just had to make sure my essay

stayed on topic and had information about why the audience should be pursued into the

peer-review journal. The concept of brainstorming, prewriting, drafting, and the revision process

can help me in my other courses and writing situations by having creativity while brainstorming,

organizing information while prewriting, exploring textual evidence while doing my draft, and
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the ability to revise and edit my own essay can be effect for my business classes since I can

revise emails and reports.

Conferencing with my professor was very helpful and effective to my essay since

sometimes I can miss parts of what needs to be fixed and he leads me to the right direction of

what I’m supposed to be writing about. He brought out how my topic sentences needed some

work and needed to have more explanation of what I’m going to be talking about in my

paragraphs. Another thing he brought up was what type of appeals the author was showing to the

audience and why did the author do that. When I started to revise my essay the first thing I did

was correct what my professor told me and it brought my essay to have more of a controlling

argument and stuck with the topic of why to use the cheating principle the peer-review journal

describes.

When doing the peer review with my classmate, it helped me improve my rhetorical

analysis essay because it was a one on one review so we would ask questions and ask for

opinions on what I need to work on. One element my classmate brought up was my thesis

statement, how to make it sound better. She insisted I wrote “In the article “Time to cheat” , the

author Mike Mintzer, successfully argues for the use of the cheating principle to gain more

muscle mass , by the use of personal experience from the famous bodybuilder, Joe Weider, the

six points on when to start using this method, and how other very famous bodybuilders used this

method to get stronger. I made these changes because I needed a thesis statement to introduce the

three topics of what I’m going to be writing about in my paragraphs.

Editing and proofreading my rhetorical analysis essay helped me recognize missing

connections between ideas, irrelevant information, and confusing expressions in my draft. The

way I recognize this is by reading my essay out loud and seeing it made sense while reading.
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When I would get stuck on a word and couldn’t say the full sentence correctly without sounding

off I would change the sentence around to make it sound better. For “example on my draft, I

wrote ““used by champs like Arnold in the late ‘60s and ‘70s and Rich Gaspari in the ‘90s.”, this

is also an ethos appeal since the author is describing the people that have won in bodybuilding

while using this method.”, when proofreading this sentence it didn’t make sense to me because it

sounded like the quote didn’t get introduced properly. To fix this, on my final I decided to write

more details before adding the quote, and it looked like this “This method had become very

popular in the 1950’s when champion bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rich

Gaspari, “used by champs like Arnold in the late ‘60s and ‘70s and Rich Gaspari in the ‘90s.”.”

The most challenging part of this essay was to figure out what to even write about.

There were so many of my classmates looking up peer-review journals on people’s opinion on

real world situations. It did seem like a good idea to write about that since the peer-reviewed

journal will have a very valid argument but I knew I wouldn’t have a great time writing about

these topics. The way I overcame this challenge was by talking to my professor and he relieved

me to write about something I like to do and either agree or disagree if the argument is valid in

the peer-review journal. The resources I used to address this challenge was to list what I enjoy

doing in my freetime and since it’s mostly lifting, I chose to look for a peer-reviewed journal

talking about a method created by a famous bodybuilder on how to gain more muscle mass.

Recognizing this problem where I can’t decide what to write about and fixing it by just thinking

about what I would enjoy writing about will help me with future writing assignments by not

making it so hard on myself when barely starting to write an assignment.

The least challenging part of this writing assignment was checking what type of

appeals the author was using in the peer-review journal. Most of the appeals the author used were
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ethos and pathos. It was mostly these two appeals since the author would use Joe Weider’s

personal experience in using this method making the audience trust him since a very famous

body builder used this type of method when wanting to grow more muscle mass. In the

peer-review journal the author also talks about how other famous bodybuilders used this method

when competing and this appeal can be looked at both ethos and pathos since the audience can

trust the other famous bodybuilders using this method and not just Joe Weider or the readers can

view this as an emotional appeal and follow what their favorite bodybuilder does since they are

inspired by them and would want to be in their level one day.