Viera 1!

Denisse Viera
Professor Lynda Haas
WR37
15 March 2015
My journey through WR37
Writing 37 with Dr. Haas has been a very interesting class and an amazing learning
experience. I must admit that I was a bit skeptical when I learned that our theme was animals and
the connection we have with them. I did not expect to be as willingly engaged in learning about
animals as I actually was while also learning and improving my reading, writing, and
communication skills. However, I can confidently say that through the various presentations,
assignments, and essays I did in this class, I have developed many skills that have overall helped
me become a better communicator and will help in future classes and working environments.
Before I took WR37, I had only been briefly introduced to the three Aristotelian appeals
and to the use of rhetoric. Through this class, I have learned that rhetoric is how a message gets
across to a specific audience and what impact it has on the audience. Rhetoric is used
everywhere: in essays, novels, movies, posters, and any medium where a message or a call to
action is being made. In WR37, I learned to detect rhetorical appeals and devices in different
mediums, and now, I notice them in my every day life, especially while watching T.V.
commercials. However, I also learned that rhetorical appeals and devices are used differently for
different kinds of text. For example, I had to think rhetorically about a graphic novel: We3, a
documentary: Blackfish, a novel: The Jungle Book, and a scholarly text: the first two chapter
from If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection With Animals. When I first opened up

Viera 2!
We3, I had no idea what I was looking at; its the first comic book I have ever read. In fact, I had
to read the first few pages of the first issue several times before I fully understood what I was
looking at. Ironically, by the end of the final issue, I can say that I grew attached to the animals
and definitely felt sympathy for them. When I began to analyze the graphic novel, I came to the
realization that the sympathy I felt for them is precisely what the author, Grant Morrison, and
illustrator, Frank Quitely wanted me to feel through appealing to logos (emotions). I was then
able to notice how Morrison and Quitely focus on the appeal to pathos and logos through the
graphics and by telling the story through the animals point of view to show the targeted
audience (young men who own animals) that animals are not human property to experiment on.
Similarly, I leaned that Blackfish uses all three Aristotelian appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos) to
show their audience that orcas are not meant to be kept in captivity and used for entertainment.
However, I noticed that Blackfish has a stronger appeal to ethos and logos because it gives more
credibility to the purpose of the documentary and helps the audience understand the controversial
issue that the film is presenting. Comparing the use of rhetorical appeals from We3 and Blackfish
taught me that different appeals help convey a message in different mediums depending on who
the message is targeting. In contrast to We3 and Blackfish (which are not academic texts), If You
Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection With Animals, written by sociologist Leslie Irvine,
targets a scholarly audience and thus has a strong appeal to ethos and logos in the first two
chapters where she talks about the history of animal domestication (specifically cats and dog)
and the connection we have grown with them. I had to be open to reading and analyzing
different texts which made me understand how certain rhetorical appeals help give a message
and promote a call to action in different ways depending on who the targeted audience is.

Viera 3!
Thinking rhetorically about different texts and genres also made me learn how to be a
critical reader. I have to say that this is one of the things that was most new to me because in high
school, my teachers would always tell me what every reading was about and the purpose of
them, but in this class, I had to really think about every text I read or watched in order to find the
meaning and purpose of them. I learned how to be flexible with my critical reading skills and
adapt them to different kinds of texts. I definitely had to change my approach to the different
texts I read because some were more difficult than others to understand. For example, when I
was reading and annotating Irvines chapters, I always had to have a dictionary next to me
because the text had many words that I did not understand. The most useful thing I learned from
annotating the chapters is that the beginning sentence of each paragraph from a scholarly text is
usually the topic sentence which informs the reader what the paragraph will be about; I learned
that is a convention of a scholarly text. Like Irvines book, I also had to adapt my reading skills
for We3, the graphic novel. Because We3 was a new kind of genre for me, it took me a while to
get use to reading it and understanding it. Although the comic book is extremely graphic, I had to
read it several times and pay close attention to details so that I could fully understand what was
going on. What made it difficult to keep up with the action is that Quitely, the illustrator, leaves a
lot of room for interpretation in the gutter (space) between each panel (image) because that ;eft
me to imagine for myself what was happening between the panels. Because this class required
me to read very different kinds of genres and mediums, I learned to adapt my readings skills to
the kind of text I am reading in order to enhance my comprehension of it.
In WR37, I also learned about the different conventions of academic writing. I wrote a
Literature Review essay on We3 and a Rhetorical Analysis essay on Jack Londons short story,

Viera 4!
To Build A Fire. The Literature Review essay was the first essay I wrote for an actual writing
class in college and therefore it was a very stressful assignment. I also had difficulty writing the
essay because I had never written an essay where my opinions are irrelevant since the purpose of
a Lit Review is to analyze what other scholars and experts have said about a certain topic and put
them into conversation. I can say that I tried my best in the first draft of the Lit Review and to
my surprise, I receive more positive feedback than I did negative. The feedback that I received
was mostly positive because I was told that I followed the conventions of academic writing:
using proper MLA formatting and documentation, having a concrete structure, using credible
sources and integrating them in a coherent way, and lastly having consistent control of
mechanics to make the essay flow and easy to understand. The feedback that I received also
helped me learn that by following the conventions of academic writing, I am directly appealing
to a scholarly audience which is the intended audience for both the Lit Review and the Rhetorical
Analysis essay. I also found the Rhetorical Analysis essay to be difficult because I found myself
summarizing scenes from To Build A Fire more than I was analyzing them and describing how
London uses rhetorical appeals to convey his theme. Something that I noticed from both essays is
that I had trouble signaling Literature Review and Rhetorical Analysis. For example, in the
Rhetorical Analysis, I felt the need to restrain myself from using the words rhetorical devices
and rhetorical appeals because in high school, I was taught never to do that since my audience
already knew what I am writing about. I feel that writing the Lit Review and the Rhetorical
Analysis were great ways to learn how to follow the conventions of academic writing. I do in
fact have to admit that I must continue to work on remembering to always signal what kind of
essay I am writing in future papers because I feel that I did not get enough practice in just two

Viera 5!
essays. Coming to such realization however, could not have been done if it wasnt for the
feedback I received from peer reviews and the feedback I gave to some of my peers.
Having to do peer reviews in the class was very difficult for me because I have never
enjoyed doing it. I genuinely cannot say why I hated doing them, but I have learned that
reviewing other peoples essays actually benefits me more than it benefits the other people. I can
confidently say this because I noticed that while I was reviewing my peers essays, I would
constantly remind them to follow the conventions of academic writing (structure, the use of
credible sources, flow, etc.) which gave me ideas on how to avoid making those same mistakes
on my essays. On the other hand, I realized that receiving peer reviews is also very helpful
because my peers are able to point out mistakes that I otherwise would not have noticed.
Although I still feel that peer reviewing is very tedious, I have to admit that it taught me how to
use other peoples mistakes as a learning method to improve my own writing. Not only was peer
reviewing a learning experience to help my writing skills, but it was also a learning experience
for collaborative working since the peer reviews were often done in groups.
Before I took this course, I never put much thought into how challenging collaborative
work could be, especially in a writing course. Oddly enough, one of the most important lessons I
learned from group work is that I like to be in charge. I had to work in a group of three to do
research on dog breeding and create a wiki with annotated sources; then the other group
members and I used the information from the credible sources to create a powerpoint
presentation and present it to the class. I felt the need to take charge in the group in order to have
productive members and to make sure that we were equally contributing to the assignment. The
first group assignment triggered my curiosity because I had never really known what dog

Viera 6!
breeding is or why it is done, but as I began to research, I was astonished at the dangers of it and
therefore stayed engaged throughout the entire project. Lastly, I would say that the first group
project really tested my persistence because the project took several weeks to complete and I
had to sustain interest so that I could present a well-informed presentation to the class. The
second major group assignment that I was involved in consisted of creating a PSA on
dogfighting. This project taught me the most about good team work and I was able to enhance
my collaboration skills. I took the responsibility to create the PSA on my computer because that
would make me in charge of completing the project and avoid me having to worry whether or not
it would be turned in by the deadline. Because I had the project on my laptop, I had to be flexible
with my time and make myself available for my group members so that we could meet and work
on the project together. Creating the PSA made me develop my creativity and made me be open
to suggestions because I had never had to present a message/call to action through a short video,
and doing so was a great learning experience.
The last major assignment that I completed in WR37 consisted of several short modules
on Connect. Each module focused on specific objectives to help me improve my reading and
writing skills. Based on the reports from completing the modules, I can say that I had the most
trouble with Paraphrasing and Summarizing to Understand a Text and Identifying Claims and
Evidence. I noticed that in fact I do have trouble distinguishing paraphrasing from summarizing
because I was never taught how to paraphrase in high school. Therefore in the module, I could
not tell the summarizes apart from the paraphrases from the sample texts given. The results from
the module showed me that I definitely have to continue working on learning how to paraphrase
instead of simply summarizing. The topics that I have a good handle on from Connect are:

Viera 7!
Avoiding Verb Tense and Voice Shift, Using Verbs and Verbals, and Dangling and
Misplaced Modifiers because those rules seem innate to me and therefore I have little to no
trouble in pointing out when they are being followed or not in texts. I feel that the modules were
helpful exercises that help refresh several grammatical rules in my mind and taught me a few
new lessons that have helped me become a better critical reader.
Throughout the entire course, I also had to do reflections blogs which helped my
metacognition which helped me see how I have grown as a writer in just 10 weeks. I am pleased
to admit that WR37 has taught me so many lessons that have improved my writing, reading, and
communication skills. The most important lessons that I have learned are that there is always
room for improvements in my writing which can go noticed by giving and receiving peer
reviews, that I work best in a group assignment when I am in charge, and that being a critical
reader is key to capturing every message that is conveyed through different mediums and genres.
Those lessons are the ones that I plan to transfer to my future classes because I know that they
will be key to succeed in them. However, that is not to say that there is no room for
improvement. I know that I need to continue working on my public speaking skills so that I can
give successful presentations, and I must also continue to improve my critical reading skills,
specially when it comes to reading scholarly texts. Overall, I would say that WR37 has been an
amazing course that has taught me so many valuable lessons to becoming an effective
communicator and that will also help me throughout the rest of my college years.