Kormanek 1

Andrew Kormanek

Professor Ingram

UWRT 1102-033

28 February 2017

Key Concepts Midterm Reflection

The Key Concepts are a very important part to our class. If we are able to exercise all ten

of them, it will help us be great writers. At this point in the semester, the two Key Concepts that I

am truly engaging with are stretching my comfort zone and making connections. Stretching out

of someones own comfort zone is not easy, at least in my opinion. I have been asked many times

to stretch out of my comfort zone in which I feel that I have avoided. However, I feel the

opposite is the case for his class. A great example of me stretching out of my comfort zone is

with peer reviewing. In my Blog Post two, I stated, I think for me; peer reviewing is sometimes

not my thing and that I am not always the best at it. Peer reviewing was always something I

either avoided or purposely did a bad job at because I was always afraid of hurting a writers

feelings. This class really helped me stretch out of my comfort zone and be a great peer reviewer.

Now with this experience, stretching out of my comfort zone in this class will be a lot more easy

and natural to me. Making connections is something that comes very straightforward to me. I

really can engage in making connections well in this class. For example, my Reader Response

Letter number one, I feel that I can relate to what was said in this reading. Since the beginning of

high school and on through my first semester of college, there have always been those few kids in

some of my classes who have never paid attention or were just on their phone while the teacher

was teaching. Whenever I am reading, watching, or listening to something, I am always looking

 Kormanek 2

for a way on how it connects to me. That is why I can be glad to say that making connections is a

Key Concept that I am really engaging with.

The Key Concept that I am still having a struggle with is rhetorical knowledge. My main

problem with the concept is that it is really vague. I do not understand the true definition of

rhetorical knowledge. All that I really know is that rhetorical knowledge is the analyzing of

different aspects of reading and writing texts. I genuinely have no idea on how any of the aspects

of the text such as audience and purpose really relate. Ways that I can better engage with

rhetorical knowledge could be analyzing different texts and seeing if I can find certain ways on

how great writers use their purposes for writing and their contexts to interact more with a reader.

A way that I can do this would be by finding an author who writes in different genres, then

analyzing two readings that the author wrote in different genres and comparing them. This would

give me a better understanding of rhetorical knowledge by exemplifying to me how the author is

successful in conforming to the audiences wants by using different contexts and purposes. Key

Concepts are very important throughout not only this class, but throughout our whole writing

career. The more I can engage in than the better writer I can be. I am definitely going to try hard

and put my mind to mastering as many of the ten Key Concepts that I can.