English 103 Final

As this semester comes to a close, I have learned to incorporate many new persuasive and multimodal elements into my writings. Allow me to show you through a couple of the course goals:

Course Goal 1: Understand that persuasion—both visual and verbal—is integral to reading and composing.

This goal is probably one of the most important out of all of them. Without persuasion, how would we make up our minds? How would we get more people to believe what we have to say? When I would write papers for this class, I would compose them in a way that made sure I was saying it exactly how I wanted to say it. When I would read a paper for peer or intensive review, I would try to find his or her own voice in the paper. What would be the point in reading it if I didn't know their personal opinion on it? Sure, facts are good to back up your opinion, but when you are trying to persuade someone to do or believe something, you have to pour your heart out. Before this class, I had a little bit of trouble with that. With the help of this class, I feel that I do much better in that aspect now. When I compose my texts, I now make sure I state my own opinion, facts to back it up, my opinion towards those facts, and how I feel those facts are helping out what I want to persuade.

Course Goal 3: Develop effective strategies of invention, drafting, and revision for different rhetorical situations and individual composing styles.

Writing papers and thinking of good topics to write about can be difficult. For example, when it was time to do our multimodal assignment, I had a very hard time thinking of a good topic for it. During the first conference, Professor McArdle told me to brainstorm things I like to do and topics that interest me. It was then that I decided I could do my topic on No Child Left Behind. Once I had figured out what I wanted to do, I then had to figure out just how I wanted to put it on the webpage. I made several drafts by trying out different page layouts and topics to cover until I finally decided on my current layout and points.


Course Goal 4: Compose texts in various media using solid logic, claims, evidence, creativity, and audience awareness.

The multimodal project is a perfect example of this goal. Not only was it a very persuasive piece, but the general public was able to see it. It allowed us to use logic, claims, and evidence through our words. We were able to let the creative juices flow when we were able to make our own video or website.
More importantly, I feel like my blog website did a better job of this. Through this blog, I was able to let my thoughts come out on any topic I wanted. It could be something personal or something I had heard about earlier. I was also able to put pictures and youtube videos on this site to enhance what I wanted to say. I still feel that there were many more topics I wanted to cover in my blog that I never got the chance to do. I wanted to write about some of my favorite websites, such as MLIA. But I need to remember that just because this class is coming to an end, it doesn't mean that I have to stop writing on this website.
It's amazing what the power of the internet can do. I learned that through the power of our Thanksgiving post about listening to a conversation then analyzing it. I never would have guessed in a million years that someone not from this class would even read this site...well, my boyfriend reads it as well, but he doesn't count. It made me more aware of who was reading my site, and that Professor McArdle was right about these really being out there for the whole world to see. This person, Shane Dawson, also knows what it feels like to have the power of the internet change his life. He just hit one million subscribers on youtube, one of those subscribers being myself. Here is his thank you video:




Well, my fellow ENG 103-23 classmates, I will miss you. This was definitely one of my favorite classes this semester and I could not have asked for a better introduction to writing course. :] I hope to see all of you around.
-Emily