Referring to my previous assignments, I learned about how to read resources and identify their meanings, purposes, and break down the persuasive techniques used to guide their audience into believing a particular opinion. I also learned how to decipher and translate said sources into my own words to prove my knowledge and understanding on the author’s topic. Along with continuous guidance from the Norton Field Guide and my professor, I was able to devise templates and outlines for my essay assignments. With repetitive exercises of these lessons, I expected to succeed at writing my Global Issues report. I had a foundation of resources and structure to write such an elaborate text. However, I didn’t consider that I lacked the experience of actually writing an elaborate text in school before. I’ve written essays in my high school and college career, yes. I did not, however, utilize such a great amount of resources and analysis and translate this information into an essay that flowed and transitioned into subtopics I wanted to discuss. This would serve as a challenge while writing my Global Issues report. This time, I had all the meat, but not the recipe for the burger. I visited the University Writing Center (UWC) to seek additional guidance for laying out the contents of my paper in a direction that would flow smoothly and come across to the audience efficiently. The exceptional challenge to my paper was that the general public was naive to the U.S. intelligence community and its operations. My first question to the UWC student was therefore, “How much should I include about the organization, structure, processes, procedures, and protocols of our Intelligence Community?” I presented my first draft to the student-it was LONG. I thought it was necessary to cover, in detail, what and why the Intelligence Community even exists. The general public doesn’t ask these questions, and it isn’t their fault. The UWC student that helped me review my outline was quick to point out information that I included that was “too much” for the reader. For example, I included subtopics on the Community’s leadership structure with names and responsibilities. “This would pose too much more research to explain to the audience” my peer told me. After that critique, I was actually relieved that I could narrow down the information I included in my paper. Coupled with my previous knowledge and practice, the rest of the paper was actually very exciting to write. I simply suffered again from not knowing what kind of outline I wanted to lay out with the information I had. Sometimes I research excessively, that will be the habit I work to improve on next semester, following RWS I.
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Along with my Rhetorical Analysis paper, this assignment also helped me seek out valuable resources to include in my Global Issues Report. Writing an annotated bibliography really pushed me to thoroughly explore a wide variety of articles and databases related to my topic on the U.S. intelligence community. This bibliography almost served as a double-check on the validity and credibility of my Global Issues Report resources. Elaborating on my specific sources and how they serve a significant purpose in my overall topic and report my audience, and more importantly, myself, that these sources were valuable to my essay. I also used the Norton Field guide chapters 15 and 49 to gather context on what exactly an Annotated Bibliography serves to provide. Although the NFG served as guidance and there was a sample provided by our professor, this writing process was time-consuming. However, generally this was an easy paper to write and the experience was helpful in gauging the amount of effort real research demands. That said, I learned that because these provide an overview of sources, perhaps I will create a full bibliography on all research that I do. Maybe not to the extent or formatting that follows writing a bibliography, but to continue providing myself overviews on all my sources. As I have mentioned in previous reflections, comprehension and analysis of sources is not my strong suit. Exercising my knowledge of a source through a bibliography review will ensure that I can explain a source on my own terms with confidence and knowledge of the purpose and content within the source.
It was refreshing to use a concept from middle school finally in college literature: ethos, pathos, and logos. I thought I would never see this idea again! I recall devising an entire presentation on a science project board defining each of these writing strategies and what their purpose is in texts. For this assignment I was able to use my prior knowledge and the refined concepts I learned about rhetorical writing strategies to my advantage-considering I am beginning an argumentative research paper. Working on this paper allowed me to thoroughly analyze two highly valuable resource articles for use in my Global Issues Report. These articles were strong because one was completely publicly influenced before its publication, as it is a newspaper article. The other was rather an in-depth analysis on the intelligence community, it almost seemed classified due to the amount of knowledge the writer held on the community’s structure. Contrary to this course’s introductory assignments, the Rhetorical Analysis paper indeed required me to prepare an outline. Using the NFG to analyze my resources effectively and identify ethos, pathos, and logos tactics in writing, the outline for my paper was easier to devise than expected. In brief, my outline included following the RWS handbook template and then separating the analysis of each article with an organized breakdown of each strategy used successfully in the source. This essay was the turning point of the RWS course for me, as it taught me that writing a good research paper mandates me to pick articles apart in detail to find the answers I’m looking for.
Similar to the Discourse Community assignment, defining and specifying my global issues topic for the semester was an exciting and insightful process. Learning about community functionality in my previous assignment helped me gain some foresight into how I would delve into researching the U.S. intelligence community and its distribution of information. I also more thoroughly considered the who, how, and why agencies and personnel share, or don’t share, information across the nation and how this specifications affect real-world issues. By conducting this research and drafting my topic statement, I initially decided on a subject concentrated on intelligence security systems and proactivity. In short, one of the feasible preventatives to tragic happenings boils down to maintaining and improving subtle national security measures in high-traffic public areas, such as metal detectors. Integrating these security units in populated areas could yield prevention by subtly detecting a shooter before he/she initiates action and likewise maintain a sense of safety for visitors of the prospective public area. However, while reviewing the NFG “Writing Proposals” chapter I realized that suggestive security systems are large in numbers and varied for their usage, therefore would be too complicated to explain as a “well-defined problem”. I decided it would be simpler for my audience to focus on only information disclosure, and not have to understand the complexity and usage of security systems in various locations and institutions. My new topic strikes my interest more: Mass shootings have become increasingly common in American society, with no obvious evidence of trend to follow their events. This unprecedented characteristic found in such a psychologically- and physically-impactful event makes domestic terrorism awareness a serious issue in American society. Normal lifestyles have become non-normalized due to the fear of being vulnerable to death or injury by mass terrorism in a common high-traffic area, such as a supermarket or concert. One of the necessary solutions to thwarting domestic threats falls down to realigning our national intelligence community to focus on domestic terrorism and the factors that contribute to these national happenings. Correspondingly, this information needs to disclosed uniformly across all the various organizations in our Intelligence Community.
Learning how to identify discourse communities as an introductory lesson in Rhetoric and Composition will serve to be very helpful in understanding communications, bias, and methods of information disclosure in our American society. This understanding will largely contribute to my research for my global issues report on the U.S. intelligence community. I clearly identified the functionalities, attributes, and purpose of discourse communities during this lesson, and exercised this knowledge on an easier concept: a running club that I am a member with. Writing about Up and Running in the perspective of it being a “discourse community” opened my eyes to the idea that even groups I treat as informal still have a system of communication and significant presence in their larger community. I found this essay exciting to work on because I was able to apply this concept to the real world and to my very own experience. This assignment was engaging and therefore easy to write without preparing multiple drafts of essays, as I usually would. The concept was easy for me to comprehend and apply to my running club, and allowed my essay to flow as I described Up and Running as a discourse community. That said, I did not get to practice outlining and building a template for this essay, a skill I decided I want to work on improving this semester. I am certain the assignments to come, which will require more research and content, will give me the opportunity to practice my writing organization and preparation. However, the Swales reading and Norton Field Guide were useful to my terminology usage and descriptive writing. Likewise, although I didn’t prepare an outline, using the Pre-Writing Process of the NFG I was able maintain the flow of the essay and stick to the subject of Up and Running as a “social” discourse community.
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