MiLisha Shackleford Gail Richard Composition I Cover Letter December 11, 2013

Expanding the Horizons

At the beginning of this course, my professor asked us to write down what we expected out of the class and all I wanted to do was expand the horizons in my writing. The horizons was everything I needed to know and the expansion happened as I learned through rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking, reading, and writing, processes, knowledge of conventions, and composing in electric environments. These arenas did not only help me succeed in the classroom but, in my everyday life. These arenas help further understand things in life that I didnt understand before I started this semester.

Rhetorical Knowledge
As the semester progressed, I slowly began to gain knowledge of how to respond to the assignments that were needed to pass the class such as focusing on purpose, responding appropriately to the assignments and finding, focusing, and responding to the audiences of these assignments. I focused on the purpose by reading the assignment thoroughly and responding appropriately. As an example, the memoir was to tell how someone changed your life today and I wrote about a close cousin that died and how it made me feel and think differently about my life.

I did this with the other to papers as well. The audiences were really different but, were accomplished in the same way which, was by telling them what they needed to know. For example, the rhetorical analysis was written for my boss and I told my boss why the letter received no responses. Along with knowing how to respond to assignments, I also had to know how to format the papers, find the correct tone of voice and how to define the genre of the paper as well. This is what really brings the diversity out in the papers because the memoir was more like a narrative and the proposal is a persuasive paper. A narrative could be told to anybody in a regular tone of voice and is formatted in a story form. The proposal was the most formal paper we had all semester. It was very organized into sections of which, it told you what to look for. The tone of the proposal was very formal as if you were talking to President Obama. The genres were easy to establish and were easy to accomplish.

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

All three pieces required questioning of what the instructor really wants in the piece, learning to write in different styles, thinking outside of the box and communicating to the audience in the right tone of voice and level of formality. Questioning can also include you questioning yourself about what to write and/or how to write it. Learning can be learning from your mistakes in your drafts. When trying to understand the assignment given, finding out what to include and to exclude is a major thing students have trouble with. Other things you must consider is rating the importance of the information included, examining whats in the writing, and combining the information that is provided by the professor/assignment sheet and what you know about the subject.

Language is a method of communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way. Knowledge is facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience and/or education. Power is the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. Language is used to communicate knowledge. Knowledge is used to create power and power is nothing without the basics of language. These things can be increased when working with others. Everybody sees things a little bit differently. In turn, everybody will establish different types of languages and different levels of knowledge and power.

Processes
Making multiple drafts is how most writers create and complete a successful text. Those multiple drafts shows progression as a writer. Ways I develop my different strategies was by taking in consideration of the peer reviews, emailing my parents my work and getting their opinions, going through the paper myself and finding minor errors and mistakes, and going to the writing center for more advice. You can learn a lot from others because everybody thinks a little bit differently. For example, when we did the collaborative exercise for the proposal, we talked about our subject as a group and everybody pointed out something different about the subject. We divided the paper by who took the most interest in that section of the paper and we combined our ideas to get a conclusion.

Knowledge of Conventions
At the end of first-year composition, I am able to format different types of papers. The memoir and rhetorical analysis had to be written in a basic five paragraph essay format. The memoir was basically a story so, the paragraphs where structured in what happened first and it

end with how Im feeling now. In the rhetorical analysis, I formatted in by which appeal it was and how it was showed in the letter along with the introduction and conclusion. The proposal was formatted a little different. It had sections that were labeled and each section told what was needed in each labeled portion. A long the way Ive also learned to get the errors, such as grammar and punctuation, by reading through my work, having the person that did my peer review look for any minor mistakes, and as well as the person doing my peer review. I always practiced documenting my own work. I did this by using the sources given by the book and from my professor. If I needed help, I took advice from the peer reviews and going to the writing center. Knowing your resources can help you in a major way.

Composing in Electric Environments

During the course of this class, we were assigned blogs that included a short reading and we had to respond using 200-250 words to explain what we got from the reading or it answered the questions at the end of the reading. When we got assigned the proposal, we had to have at least one source. The school provides many databases on the library section on the schools website. They can be accessed by anybody. All of my drafting, reviewing, revising, and editing was done by computer. It was required that our papers be typed. Writing an essay on paper is more difficult than just typing it because when you edit it, you have to rewrite the whole thing versus on the computer you can copy and paste what you want to go where and cut out the rest. The computer has spell check and you probably would catch some of the mistakes the computer catches if you write on paper. It also is more time consuming when writing an essay on paper.

This learning experience has been amazing this semester and next semester shall be a greater experience. I have set the horizons for next semester and I plan to have those expanded as well through rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking, reading, and writing, processes, knowledge of conventions, and composing in electric environments. I look forward to the next semester to further my expansion of the horizons.