Reflection on RA Paper

The rhetorical analysis paper assignment did not really pose that much of a problem to me in the first place. I just thought I was going to take a closer look at an essay or short story and analyze the way the author uses words. However, there is a significant difference between scratching on the surface and going deep into the material to be analyzed. What helped me a lot were the various orally done rhetorical analyses in class and especially our blog assignments on this topic helped me considerably. At first, I thought it to be a little odd to analyze a movie, but after I had watched “Roger&Me” and after our discussions in class about this, I had a really good grasp on what my task was in writing a rhetorical analyses. Additionally, I believe that the way our class writing process is organized is very helpful to me. The rough draft provided my with the opportunity to write down my initial thoughts and ideas of how I wanted to structure my assignment. The one-on-one meetings following the rough draft were considerably helpful to me in order to get a better grasp on my ideas and I got additional input and support about where and how to improve. Taking a closer look at my graded rhetorical analysis, there is definitely room for improvement. One area of improvement to be identified on the RA rubric is the “Organization" of my thoughts and ideas. A way to improve in this category would be to focus on better and more explicit transition sentences in between differing ideas and thoughts as well as structuring my text using more paragraphs separating ideas from one another. Besides the above-mentioned category, I should work on developing a better sense of language use and the mechanics that come with it. The use of language, i.e. using the right words in the appropriate setting and context can be enhanced by reading various English essays and short stories by different authors. On the one hand, this would increase my vocabulary of the English language and on the other hand, it would make me aware of certain word choices in different contexts making me sound more professional. With regards to the mechanics of writing, such as spelling and punctuation, I should have just printed out the FD to proof-read it and since I did not do that, some “slips of the pen” creped in. An example of where and how I could have avoided some of my spelling mistakes takes place on the first page in the very first line:
“It is common in Western societies for the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn BY Muslim females….” – I did not notice that the “by” was missing, which I could have, if I would have printed out my FD to proof-read it.
In conclusion, I really liked writing the rhetorical analysis paper and it was really interesting to look for specific meaning of words and paragraphs the authors had put in there.