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I specifically revised my conclusion, introduction, and last two body paragraphs the most. The exercises in revising my conclusion and introduction helped me a lot, because I didn't realize how weak those paragraphs were until I saw examples of successful ones. The last two body paragraphs I could tell were weaker, because they were confusing and not as precise and strong as the first two body paragraphs of my essay.
In reconsidering global revisions, I changed the annotations that addressed my specific audience of incoming freshman most. I realized that I need to be more explicit and thorough than I was before. I needed to talk directly to my audience, not just allude advice. Based on this, I also had to explain in depth what a rhetorical analysis is, and what a rhetorical situation is. I added a section at the beginning that introduced what a rhetorical situation is, the purpose of this paper, and explicitly stated that immediately following was an example essay. I think that helped clear things up a lot.
Talking in class about what the purpose of our papers is helped me alter my paper a lot. I realized that while I was writing a rhetorical analysis fine, I wasn't totally answering the project instructions. I had to make these changes to satisfy what the project was actually asking for. In terms of the pure rhetorical analysis I wrote as an example, I knew from my first draft that not everything would be perfect, so I expected I would have to revise some body paragraphs.
Making my purpose clear at the beginning of the paper initially established my credibility in a way I was lacking before. With the section at the beginning that explains what the paper is about, I establish that I'm in environmental science, and that I'm qualified to talk about rhetorical analyses in that field. From there, I hope that it's clear from my annotations that my essay is strong, which will strengthen my credibility.
Having the beginning section and better annotations is definitely going to help guide my readers. They'll understand right away what they should be looking for in the example essay, and the annotations will help show them how each part of the essay supports the thesis and main argument of the example essay. My annotations have clearer instruction, which will help my readers focus on what's important, so once they've read my paper they will understand how to write a rhetorical analysis.
There weren't as many local revisions as there were global ones. I'd like to think this is because I'm a fairly strong writer, I write regularly (and not just for this class), so already my sentences were fairly varied and interesting. However, of course nothing was perfect from the first draft, and I had to take out a lot of wordy sentences, or sections that weren't as relevant to the essay as they should have been.
These local changes weren't as big of a deal as my global changes, but I think they will help establish my credibility as a strong writer. They will also set a good example of what a rhetorical analysis should look like (which was my goal), because of course in all writing proper syntax and style is key.
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have annotations, because that would make it clear what was the rhetorical analysis, and what was the instructional part directed at my readers. When we were talking in class about what needed to be included in the intro and conclusions, I had to disregard some of that, since my rhetorical analysis was a pure rhetorical example, and I wasn't addressing my audience in the essay itself, but rather the annotations. However, I still had to include all of the elements we were discussing in class, it's just they were added in annotations, and not the intro and conclusion themselves.
I definitely feel better about this project than Project 1. I think that I've become a stronger writer, and found that this project was easier for me than the previous one. Thinking about essays I've written in high school, I can see I've improved noticeably in my writing skills, which is good. Since my outline was detailed, drafting wasn't too hard, and revision wasn't as tough as I thought it might be. It's nice to see my improvements as a writer, and feel that writing academic essays has become much more natural to me.
REFLECTION
After reading Grace's and Olivia's posts, I found that a lot of us didn't quite understand the assignment, so much of the revision stemmed from that. I think that most of us were focused on writing a rhetorical analysis, and not the added part of the project, which was to address the incoming freshman in our field. It seemed many of us thought that was possible to do indirectly, but really being more explicit was most effective.
I found it interesting that Olivia got a lot of use from her peer editing comments she received. Personally, most of my changes came from the exercise in revising the intro and conclusion; the comments I received weren't super helpful. They did help with some local revisions, but in terms of global revisions, I don't think that at the time any of us were really confident enough to give large and global revision advice, because we didn't totally understand the project.
I actually had a similar Project 2 experience in many ways. I also did extensive revision on my introduction and conclusion after talking in class, and I feel like the examples in class and in the book were really helpful. In addition I had few local revisions, I think maybe because we've both sort of figured out the style we like and so we stick with it. But mostly what I can relate to is the explicit addressing of the audience. I found that this was actually my most revised aspect after I understood what I really had to do in the assignment.
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