TOW Post #1: Reflection

      Every Sunday since September, time has been taken out of my day to construct yet another TOW of the week. Although not my favorite part of the day, I cannot deny the fact that these TOWs have aided in the improvement of my writing as the year has progressed. Looking through my previous TOWs, I can certainly see the improvement manifested.  Although the degree of improvement from post 1 to 28 is large, I think my greatest improvement can be seen in one aspect: my analysis of rhetorical devices. Back in September, the act of rhetorically analyzing was completely foreign to me. Looking back at my first couple posts, it is hard to find a TOW that does not consist of the sentence, “The two rhetorical elements used most frequently in this article are logos and pathos,” or the infamous, “There are several rhetorical elements used in this article.” However, has the year progressed I have stepped away from the general rhetorical devices that can work with just about any piece of writing and moved towards devices that were text-specific. For example, although still not perfect, I wrote, “In order to convince parents of the negative effects of even harmless TV, Seth Mullins had to use rhetorical devices that would show his audience both the “evidence” supporting his argument as well emotions to display the horrors of television. So, throughout his article, Mullins used forms of both quantitative and qualitative exemplification to support his argument.” Again, although not perfect, it was definitely an improvement from the cookie-cutter logos and pathos that became habitual. Additionally, earlier in the year, my rhetorical analysis consisted of solely a statement of the devices and what they looked like in the text. However, as the year progressed, I began to pay more attention to why the author chose to use the device he used not just how. This looked something like, “The description that accompanies this heart-breaking story of a struggling family creates a sense of sadness that makes readers not only feel bad for this family, but realize how fortunate they are to be in their situation.” Overall, out of all the various pieces of a TOW, I feel I improved the most in the rhetorical devices portion of the assignment. However, like anything, there are still pieces I have yet to perfect.

            At the conclusion of every TOW, we are supposed to consider whether or not we think the author accomplished his or her purpose. Almost every one of my TOWS since September follows the standard format of: Through the use of (rhetorical device #1) and (rhetorical device #2) the author was able to accomplish his purpose of… I could definitely find a way to improve upon this. On the reverse, I can confidently say that I have mastered what I would call “the basics”. I am now able to pinpoint the author’s purpose without merely stating the obvious as well as determining the target audience without simply saying the “general public” or the “youth of America”. I try to be as specific as possible when it comes to both the audience and the author's purpose. And lastly, considering a TOW is supposed to be a rhetorical analysis of the text at hand, I think I have definitely mastered my summarizing abilities. Meaning, rather than summarizing an article in five or more sentences, I have managed to get the main idea across in a sentence or two in order to make room for the important piece: the rhetorical analysis.

            Although tedious at times and seemingly never ending, I cannot deny the fact that I have improved as a writer with these weekly TOWs. The purpose of the TOW assignments, in my opinion, was two fold. On the obvious note, considering practice makes perfect, the TOW assignments were meant to make us better rhetorical analyzers by practicing every week. Through the continuous look at both visual and written text, we were able to delve into various texts and look at the way they were written. Additionally, the TOW assignments were meant to make us educated and informed members of society. By reading news articles weekly I know I was able to remain in the loop despite my busy schedule. After reflecting on my TOW writing, I would definitely say that I benefitted from writing TOWs in the same ways as mentioned above. I improved my rhetorical analyzing skills while enriching my mind with articles that kept me up to date on news around the world. Most importantly, TOWs made rhetorically analyzing less intimidating and distant which helped me to conquer the crazy ride of AP English.