Rhetorical concerns—These are the concepts you need to address in your reflection essay:
Focus:
Is there a strong focus at the core of your personal essays? Look over your four essays, and offer a brief discussion that demonstrates your understanding of how the papers offer a clear focus for your reader.
Is this conceptual core of each paper effectively developed through clear examples? Explain and offer up some examples to illustrate your points.
Context:
Is the information provided throughout each essay given proper context? Do you help the reader see the connections between the content and the historical, cultural, societal, financial, political, etc. connections? Explain and offer up some examples to illustrate your points.
Voice:
What kind of voice have you shaped for each paper?
Do you tailor your voice (create a persona) to the material you are offering at any given moment? Explain. Offer some clear examples to illustrate your points.
What kind of presence does your voice offer?
Were there any moments during the creation of your essays when you believed your voice was inappropriate? Explain.
How has your voice changed and/or improved since beginning your journey through English 102?
How do you understand voice now compared to when your journey through English 102 began?
Audience:
While we didn’t address audience specifically, none of us write in a vacuum. There is a reader on the other side of the equation. Looking over your essays, who do you believe could be a potential audience (besides me) and why do you think this? Point to specific areas of your essays that help illustrate who your audience is.
Critical Thinking:
Critical thinking is the act of thinking about your thinking as you are thinking. Groovy, right?!? Good critical thinkers are always open to assessing and reassessing how they think about and view any given subject.
Discuss your own critical thinking. Has there been a moment during English 102 when you sat back and said, “Wait! Something just happened to my thinking. It’s changed. I’m not set on how I used to view [insert topic here]”?
If you don’t believe your thinking has changed in any way, what might account for this? Explain as fully as you can.
How will you continue to develop your critical thinking as you continue on your educational journey? Your life journey?
Working with Images
Part of the multimodal aspect of the course was working with incorporating an image that enhanced the text for each essay.
How did you decide on the images you used for each essay?
If you were to revise your essays one more time, would you change any of the images you chose? Why or why not? Explain fully.
What were some of the obstacles you encountered while working with the images?
What are your thoughts about how the text and image work together?
Use of Sources/Hyperlinking:
The research for the eight-week session included having to find a credible online source for each essay, depending on the subject matter you were writing about.
Discuss your approach to finding the credible, online source.
How did you determine the credibility of the sources you decided to use?
What are your thoughts about hyperlinking compared to the more traditional way of incorporating sources using MLA or APA documentation?