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Hannah Tran
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 37
5 December 2015
Final Reflection Essay
Going into Writing 37, I knew my writing contained more weaknesses than strengths.
Ive always had a hard time being able to support my thoughts and ideas with concrete evidence,
and an even harder time analyzing other works. Although I was dreading facing the struggles I
have as a writer, I was also looking forward for a chance to finally improve. The focus of this
particular class was fairy tales and the rhetorical situations they were written in. Not only did an
in-depth study reveal to me the writing process, it allowed me to utilize these techniques for my
own writing as well. By doing this, I was given a glimpse into the minds of these classic fairy
tale writers and their motivations. As Zipes said in his introduction to the translation of the
Grimm Brothers Children and Household Tales, To grasp the historical significance of these
first-edition tales, it is important to know something about the background of the informants and
sources as well as the sociocultural context in which they were gathered (xxxiv). Not only did I
understand these writers and their texts on a scholarly level, I myself was able to use my own
rhetorical situation to base my writings off of. It was through this class that I was able to gain a
deeper appreciation for writing and understanding for the historical and cultural impact it has had
on society and vice versa.
The course of the class spanned a total of 10 weeks, and over these weeks, we covered
many topics, ranging from grammar to cultural fairy tales. We were given projects and
assignments on these topics and presented them to the class, using digital media. From these, I

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was able to understand and learn the different course objectives. The main projects we worked
on in this course were the Rhetorical Analysis (RA) essay, the cultural fairy tale video, and the
Rhetoric In Practice (RIP) project and essay. In the following paragraphs, I will write in detail
what I did in the weeks following up to these projects and what objectives they taught me.
The majority of Week 1 was introductory work. Everyone in class created a presentation
through GoogleSlides or Prezi and introduced themselves to the class. By the end of the week,
we also had to create an ePortfolio and blog that was going to be used to chronicle our time in
the class as well complete a quiz on grammar and punctuation on Connect. With this, I was able
to improve my digital literacy communication skills across several media. For me personally, I
was already at least proficient in these areas, as these were tools commonly taught and used at
my previous school, but I still had room for improvement, especially regarding the blog. I have
utilized a blog to showcase my work for a class before, but it wasnt as detailed and extensive as
the one we used for this class, and although my blog is not very aesthetic, it is more pleasing to
the eye than ones I have created in the past. As for the assignments on Connect, I was able to
improve my writing through grammar and punctuation, and I was able to test my knowledge and
learn from my mistakes.
Following Week 1, I continued to do the assignments on Connect and updated my
ePortfolio until the end of the course. Continuing with Week 2, we started to conduct research on
fairy tales by learning about the Grimm Brothers, Madame dAulnoy, and the fairy tale genre in
general. This then led into us reading our first fairy tales as scholars. We read different versions
of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Rapunzel, and I applied my new
knowledge of rhetoric to my analysis of these stories. Before this class, I would have been able
to recognize the the differences in different editions of a fairy tale, but I would not have thought

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much about them. When reading these stories, I was able to not only recognize these differences,
I was able to understand why these changes occurred. For example, in the Grimm Brothers 1812
edition of Children and Household Tales, it is explicitly stated that Rapunzel becomes pregnant
with the Princes baby, implying that they had premarital sex. However, in the 1857 edition, this
is taken out. This was done because of the change in the cultural surroundings, with the German
society around the Grimms following a more Christian faith, and premarital sex was not
condoned in the church. This would be the start to learning some of the main objectives of the
class which are to understand the concept of rhetoric and the rhetorical situation, to read texts
closely and understand them within their rhetorical situation, and to understand how every text
grows out of and reflects its rhetorical situation.
In the next couple of weeks after Week 2, from Week 3 to Week 6, I continued to discuss
fairy tales and their rhetorical situations. I read fairy tales featuring male heroes, as well as more
fairy tales featuring female leads. With these, I learned about the difference between female and
male driven fairy tales, and what part of the authors culture this reflected. I also read modern
fairy tales and and watched modern movies and was able to see how the fairy tale conventions
grew out their older contexts to fit the ones we have today. The greatest evolution was probably
seen between Sun, Moon, and Talia and Maleficent, with Sun, Moon, and Talia being the
base text and Maleficent being the most modern adaptation. The removal of a clear distinction
between good and evil and the change in gender roles reflects our current society, and my
knowledge of this is a further understanding of the objective: to understand how every text grows
out of and reflects its rhetorical situation.
After analyzing all these individual stories, it was time to write the RA essay. We were
tasked with writing a draft first, and from this I understood the importance of the process of

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writing (drafting, review, revision) and to participate effectively in that process. Before this
class, I usually waited until the last minute to write an essay, and my editing process was more
about making sure I didnt make any grammatical mistakes. The same was done with my RA
essay. However, with Week 7, I was able to review my draft and have others critique it. With the
chance to be able to actually review my essay, I saw my essay with a new perspective, and could
effectively edit it. What I thought was a good first draft was actually just a good start, and I was
able to turn this into a professional, scholarly essay.
While all this was happening, I was introduced to my group for the cultural fairy tale
project, and as a group, we began researching and working on this project. We, as developing
scholars, studied Greek fables and focused on Aesops Fables and more specifically, The Boy
Who Cried Wolf. Besides learning about the rhetorical situation in Ancient Greece, the
objective I learned here was to be able to practice collaboration and learn how to be an effective
collaborator. That was the largest challenge of this project; working with a group. I had prior
group experience, and my successful groups were usually found outside an academic
environment, with the majority of my groups being in an academic environment. Going in, I tried
to abandon my previous notions about group projects and tried to learn from my past mistakes in
order to have a successful group. At the beginning, my group didnt collaborate very well, in
fact, we barely spoke to one another. It was only when we started to work on the cultural fairy
tale project and meeting outside class that we were able to collaborate successfully. From this, I
learned that communication was key, and that the reason we had failed in the beginning was
because of our lack of communication.
The assignment of the RA essay was to pick two fairy tale conventions and reflect on
how they grew out of their conventions. I focused my essay on female gender roles and the idea

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of happily ever after. By writing an essay and going in-depth on these two conventions, I was
able to improve my understanding of the conventions of scholarly writing and to illustrate my
understanding through the drafting of a formal scholarly essay. I actually enjoyed writing this
essay, and I chose my conventions because they were on topics I held an interest in. This
presented a different challenge; I found writing outside the page limit, and I had to cut out details
I thought were necessary. The same had happened when my group crated and edited our cultural
fairy tale video. Our video was slightly longer than allowed, and we had to edit it to make it fit
within the time limit. Through this process, I learned that a project should have information that
is relevant and supports the main idea of your topic, but its also important to be aware of your
audience. An audience doesnt want to read an essay or watch a video that is longer than what is
necessary, and by doing this, their attention starts to wane.
Finally, for the last couple of weeks, I worked on my RIP project. My groups cultural
fairy tale video had been voted as one of the best video in the class, so that was also the focus of
our RIP project. During these weeks, we focused on how to make our video better and on why
we made the decisions we had made. It was interesting to be able to reflect, and I hadnt realized
that we used rhetoric as much as we had. From pop culture references to how we organized our
video, it was a reflection of what an audience today looks for in entertainment. I never realized
just how much we used rhetoric in general, and this taught me further just how essential
rhetorical analysis is.
Throughout these projects, I utilized the eight Habits of Mind. From being creative by
trying to figure out how to create our cultural fairy tale video to being able to demonstrate
metacognitive awareness by reflecting on my decisions through the RIP project. Because of this

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class, I have become a better writer, and I can appreciate writing on a level I hadnt before. I
hope to take what Ive learned to not just other scholarly settings, but also in my daily life.

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Works Cited
Aesop, and Ann McGovern. Aesop's Fables. New York: Scholastic, 1963. Print.
Basile, Giovanni Battista. Il Pentamerone. Napoli: Porcelli, 1788. Print.
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Children and Household Tales. 2nd ed. N.p.: n.p., 1857.
Print.
Maleficent. Dir. Robert Stromberg. Perf. Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning. Walt Disney Pictures,
2014. Film.
Zipes, Jack. "Introduction: Rediscovering the Original Tales of the Brothers Grimm." The
Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Trans. Jack Zipes. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 2014. Print.