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Itzel Jimenez

Dr. Christopher Wielgos

College Writing II

16 May 2019

Reflection Letter (Presentation of Argumentative Synthesis)

In the beginning, I was slightly confused when Dr. Wielgos introduced the assignment to

the class. The reason is that since it was multi-modal, I believed that I could do some video with

animation in it based on information from the research paper I wrote. However, Dr. Wielgos

wanted us to present our essay in a PowerPoint format and use his template. Even though he

elaborated it thoroughly, I did not understand––even though I also read the orange textbook on

doing presentations. Luckily since the Celebration of Scholarship was occurring last week before

the due date, I ventured around the Arts and Sciences buildings and looked at certain poster

boards where their posters look identical to the template the professor gave us. I observed their

format and how they arrange data and claims onto their boards. From my observations, I finally

comprehended the assignment entirely. From there, I was slowly typing out some significant

claims and counterarguments from my argumentative synthesis. There were times where I had to

reword the citations in order to have more space for my graph as visual evidence. Also, I thought

of a good counterargument that could have improved my paper like how there are adolescents

who cannot identify themselves on what profession they would like to be in. It was effective

since I was speaking for the students more than the educational developers. During class, I

remember listening to Erik that he wants the presentation slide to look very neat and organized

because it would look like trash if I was not careful about the arrangement and the design. For

instance, for my claims and counterargument, I bolded them to clearly indicate that those phrases
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are my topic sentences. For the speaking portion of the presentation, I wrote phrases and a few

keywords as reminders on concepts I would talk about. For instance, I elaborated that Duckworth

would applaud for Mr. Andrew’s hard work on gathering attention from his students by

comparing lyrics from pop cultural music with Old English Poems which portrays grit or

perseverance from the English teacher. From there, I practiced multiple times on presenting my

research that I worked on for the past couple of weeks. Sometimes, I had to erase or change

certain phrases from my flashcards since my timing was a few seconds over the five minutes

given. I also practiced on not having a monotonous voice as I thought about my priest from St.

Dominic. The assertion of me claiming that is that whenever I listen to his sermons, his voice

changes when he talks about a certain verse from the Gospel or he raises his volume when there

is a significant detail mentioned in from the readings. Yet, I don’t have the same confidence as

he does. I was shaking during my presentation. Auspiciously, from the orange textbook, I just

looked at the wall behind the crowd to prevent myself from getting any panic attacks.