Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
English 2010
Course reflection
Generally, when writing, the two things I tend to focus on most (as far as the
threshold concepts go) are rhetoric and deliberation. I enjoy writing in a more
argumentative style, and admittedly, I enjoy employing strong rhetoric (though, I think I
do a good job of backing it up with facts). One thing Ive come to realize this semester
is how closely deliberation and rhetoric, and pretty much every other threshold concept
for that matter are tied. Rhetoric, is essentially ones command over the language they
use, employing figures of speech, and otherwise simply presenting the words in such a
way that they clearly, and powerfully, deliver your intended meaning. This can be very
straightforward at times, but more often than not, a fair amount of deliberation does go
into the decision on how to best apply your rhetorical voice to a paper or argument. If
its made too emotional, or relies too heavily on inflammatory statements, its easily
One of the most challenging points of this semester for me was the deliberation
process over establishing my argument in the persuasive essay, but also attempting to
avoid what could easily be seen as condescension. This put simply, is due to my own
beliefs on the topic that I chose which was that of theism. My personal position falls
under the label atheist, though that itself can cause confusion. My position is Im not
convinced, basically, its not that I believe there are no gods, but that I am not
convinced there are any. Its a position that Ive held for a long time, and many of my
stances, on many arguments, both for and against belief in god, are well established.
Aware of that, I tried to focus most on making sure that I was properly analyzing the
issues I was discussing, and to ensure that I wasnt sounding like I was on the attack.
For example. In the second paper we wrote (the report) I focused on lesser known parts
of the Bible, that talk about things that are deplorable, things like advocating slavery. I
wont get into the nitty gritty here, but basically, its something that I have strong
emotions about, especially because its a book that so many people truly believe is
The Peer review process is something that I think generally does have great
value; Outside input is extremely valuable anytime youre writing. Personally however,
in a classroom setting, I think there are definitely some things that I felt a bit less than
helpful. Though this had to do more with the input (or lack thereof) than the actual
process itself. I found that most of the comments werent really helpful. Things like oh
you could have used a fallacy in this argument, it wouldve improved or simply just
good job nothing constructive. And I even noticed that one person, who always
comment, over any of the peer review, just stared at the paper and didnt even think to
write something. I appreciate the process, and I think in professional settings (or at
least ones where you can ensure engagement) it is a very useful tool, but simply for the
fact that its our only source of feedback without having to go out of our way to receive
it, it felt a little unfair to leave that up to other students, who you can never really know
whether theyre really going to care enough to actually put forth real effort to help their
fellow students.