Kaylon Rushing Prof.

Altman Eng115 12/5/13 Dear Reader, These two essays I present are results of a journey that has taken place recently in my writing. I began this journey lacking many of the skills that are vital in writing an essay. These include brainstorming, supporting arguments and using wording that is weaved together skillfully. For my first essay The Shape of Identity, I covered different aspects of how life can affect our identity in many ways. With this being the first essay progression that we worked on in the semester, I was faced with many challenges that I havent encountered as directly in the past. One of the obstacles that I had to overcome was my vague use of quotes. Through my instructors side notes a review pointers, he often pointed out that I didnt tie a quote back into my argument with enough detail. I used a lot of quotes all throughout the paper, however, I was using them to substitute my words rather than actually use them as anchoring points for my arguments. This resulted in lots of words, but little argument to be easily understood. Also, even though my thesis was clear, and my paragraphs all had clear topic sentences for my arguments, at first I did not attach enough analysis to my arguments. It was almost as if each paragraph was only an introduction to a supporting argument rather than an in-depth explanation of my stance in the matter. The second of my two essays called Rhetoric Analysis analyzes the use of visual rhetoric that is used by authors, writers, or directors to represent certain elements of their story. This essay also posed some similar challenges as my first. For example, my early drafts often

contained arguments topics as well as examples that supported my thesis, however, I only vaguely tied them back to my main argument which caused my point to be unclear in some instances. There were also a number of wording issues that were within the text which could be a little confusing at times. However, after some re-working of my essay, it pulled together much more clearly by the time of our final revisions. I faced a number of interesting challenges with these essays that I havent been pointed out to me very much by previous teachers. I learned more about myself as a writer and how I work with ideas. I discovered ways to critically analyze material and different perspectives to look at a piece of work from to support my approach to the argument. I hope you enjoy what is in store, as this journey has produced an increased standard by which I now hold myself to when writing.