Essay Reflection Weebly

The assignment was to write a 5 paragraph essay that analyzed how rhetoric was used to advance the purpose in several texts/speeches and to determine which text or speech used rhetoric the best to advance the purpose. I analyzed 2 texts, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King and “A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez. I also analyzed the U.N. Assembly Speech by Malala Yousafzai. I got a meets as the overall grade on the essay which means I met the expectations of the rubric but I did not exceed them. I was mostly prepared for this assignment because I completed all of the quickwrites leading up to this essay except for the Genetics of Justice one, I was absent the day we were supposed to complete it. I had the organizer for the essay done which made it easy for me to write out my ideas because I already gathered the evidence. The discussions were helpful in completing the assignment because I was able to hear the ideas of others and that helped shape some of my opinions/arguments. What I would do differently next time in terms of pre-work is complete all of the quickwrites and participate more during discussions. This essay was not very difficult for me but it wasn’t an easy task either. This is because I had already gathered most of the evidence and analysis of rhetoric from previous quickwrites so I didn’t have to do much for that. It was a bit difficult having too explain why a text used rhetoric better than another one. I came up with my thesis by examining my previous quickwrites and trying to find which one had the best use of rhetoric to advance the purpose. I chose my thesis to state that King had the best use of rhetoric to advance his purpose because I noticed I had an easier time explaining why he was successful due to the fact that his arguments were strong and well supported. Now that we have already held the paideia, I would not change my thesis. If anything, the paideia helped to reaffirm my thesis because other people agreed that King had the best use of rhetoric and they used strong pieces of evidence and analysis to support that argument.