Thursday, December 3, 2009

Reflection Essay

My experiences in English 111 have been very interesting. I have learned a lot about Bruce Springsteen and rhetorical analysis. In Mr. Gasparo’s class I learned a lot about YouTube and how informational it can be instead of stupid videos. Also the rhetorical analysis topic has taught me how to write better papers. However, the assignment that I did not like was critiquing past student’s works cited pages.
To future students who will take Mr. Gasparo’s class it will be a great learning experience. I am glad Mr. Gasparo is not like ordinary professors who stand up in front of the class and just talk. The class is very interactive, so people who just want a boring lecture this is not the right class for you. However, if you love Bruce Springsteen this is the perfect class for you. Another great part about the class is the Springsteen movie because it takes up almost three class periods. Mr. Gasparo has a very different teaching style than all of the other professors I have had. He likes to teach his students through different things such as movies, songs, and YouTube. The homework in the class is not too much; it is mainly just watching YouTube and reading papers. Basically, if the type of student who would love this class would be the student who has an open mind to different styles of teaching and wants something different than an ordinary English class.
The assignment that helped me out the most was the Rhetorical appeals triangle. This triangle showed me exactly what should be in a paper when needing to convince the audience. I had no clue what this triangle was but through the different assignments we did in class the triangle was very easy to learn. By learning this triangle and what the different terms mean I am now able to pick his information out of papers and see how an author tries to connect with his audience. Also, I feel that I have learned how to connect with the people who will read my papers in the future. The reason being is I never really thought about logos, pathos, and ethos when I wrote a paper, but since that lesson and seeing how important they really are to a paper will help me improve in writing by thinking about the analysis before I write a paper.
The assignment that I did not like nor enjoy doing was critiquing past students work. To me I did not get too much out of critiquing. Also, some of the works we had to correct were extremely messed to the point to where we could not critique the work because too many vital pieces were missing. On the other hand, by critiquing the papers it gave me an example of what the papers should resemble and what the papers should not resemble.
Another assignment that was very useful was the résumé and cover letter. Before this class I had a vague idea about how my résumé should look and what type of information should be in one. Mr. Gasparo did an excellent job teaching the class how to make a résumé, and because of that assignment I now have a professional looking résumé.
In collusion this was a very interesting and useful course. I would suggest this class to anyone who is looking for a non-traditional more modernized teaching experience. With that said if you are thinking about taking this class but do not know how to use a computer you might want to find another class. Thank you Mr. Gasparo your class was very helpful.

1 comment:

  1. I hope your resume skills help you get the job you're looking for in law enforcement. It already sounds like your current position is going to be useful for that.

    You'll also learn more about rhetoric in English 112, so think how much more you'll learn how to influence people.

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