Starting ENG 110, I still remember the small nervousness in my gut that always comes with starting a new class. But when I entered the classroom and sat down, that feeling quickly subsided. My professor started with introductions and proceeded to go over the major assignments we would be doing this year: The Language and Literacy Narrative, a Research Paper, and the Second Genre Assignment were the main ones mentioned. I thought about each assignment with a bit of apprehension. Every week, a major assignment would need to be completed. Little did I know, these assignments would build upon each other and make me a better writer. I would learn how to use rhetorical devices better, incorporate rhetorical appeals into my work, and prepare myself for future classes in my major by working on these things.

         The first assignment I would work on was the Language & Literacy Narrative. I was tasked with writing about a specific moment in my life where my language/literacy skills (or lack of them) were significant. I decided to write about a trip I took to visit my family in Togo last year. I met many members of my extended family, but I wasn’t able to communicate with them due to the language barrier between us. While writing the narrative, I had the idea to incorporate a metaphor for the language barrier between me and my relatives, with it being represented as a literal, physical barrier: 

“Because of the towering barrier between us called language, only crossable at an impractical pace with my mother as an interpreter, I wasn’t able to build a bond with my extended family.” 

While I liked the idea of the actual metaphor, looking back I found that the execution of it didn’t really strengthen the ideas in the way I liked. The distance only being felt at the end, when communication is impossible, isn’t really accurate to my experience in Togo: There was more of a slow burn, as I came in with excitement which dwindled over time. That distance made itself known much earlier than is portrayed in the narrative. Another reason why is because it was limited to just one sentence near the end of the narrative, it seemed like filler to pad out the paper. So when I had the chance to correct it during Part I of the Second Genre Assignment, I jumped on it. In this assignment, I was tasked with translating my Language and Literacy Narrative into another textual medium. I decided to turn the main ideas into a poem because of the freedom it would allow me to express my ideas. This time, I made sure to use the themes of space and distance throughout my work: At the start, the two characters are near each other:

 “They’re very close; the room is quite cramped.”

 But as the poem continues and the two characters slowly realize that they can’t communicate with each other, the space between them gradually grows until finally:

  “There is a valley to his left, as far as the eye can see.” 

By introducing my metaphor early and developing it throughout the poem, the reader can better feel the impact from the final line, and notice how the metaphor ties into my core ideas. The distance gets bigger as time goes on, and the reader is able to pick up on it and see how and why the characters feel and act at the end of the poem: The valley at the end makes the woman the man initially felt close to no different than a stranger to him, so he no longer tries to talk to her.

         In class, we were introduced to the 3 rhetorical appeals: ethos, logos, and pathos, referring to appeals to authority, reason, and emotion respectively. Throughout the assignments, the appeal I happened to use the most was logos. Logos is an especially strong rhetorical appeal because it is usually incorporated via factual evidence, which can make your claim much stronger. The first time I used logos, I had to write a research paper about my stance about a topic of my choosing, which happened to be online piracy. Logos was the most important part of this assignment: Not only did I have to use multiple sources to support my thesis statement, I had to synthesize them and clearly explain how they related to my point. By doing so, and explaining the logic behind including each source, I could not only strengthen my stance, I could convince the reader as well. For example:

 “De Kosnik’s point is relevant to my reasoning that piracy is important to digital preservation given that efforts to preserve cultural texts in a legal manner have been outpaced by pirates in not only security, but reach to an intended audience. Because of the technological structure of pirate networks, the security of media uploaded there is far more robust and less likely to suffer complete deletion.”

By commenting not only about how my source relates to my thesis statement, but taking the logic further, I build a much stronger argument.

This continued into the second part of the Second Genre Assignment, where I had to turn the Research Paper into a visual medium. This was initially difficult to visualize for me, because not only did I have to make a product that was visually appealing, it had to make my stance on my topic clear as well. While trying to come up with a concept for my project, I thought about an exercise we had done in class about the art of slow looking using Kehinde Wiley’s “Charles I” as an example. We learned how certain details that seemed invisible or minor actually helped convey Wiley’s ideas: The subject’s pose, the choice in background and how the subject almost blended into it, and the actual size of the painting all work together to give the viewer a sense of “royalty”. I realized that those details were also rhetorical devices, harmonizing together to convey the artist’s message. Keeping the video in mind, I got to work on my project: I used an image of a shady individual using a laptop, covered in shadow, and juxtaposed it with another image of a regular person using a laptop, smiling. I used a thin diagonal line to separate the two images, and for good reason: I wanted the viewer to get the sense that these two were clashing, that the two perceptions of a pirate were fighting to see which would be the true one. Although I eventually got the first part down with the design of my picture, looking at it didn’t seem to get my point across. This is when I decided it was necessary to add text to my project. I added two lines to it: 

“Is Piracy Really that Bad?

Look through the lens of a consumer and the answer is clear.” 

This text, paired with the visual elements of my Second Genre Assignment, conveyed my ideas much more strongly. I used the last line specifically because I wanted the viewer to think about how to see piracy itself, and combined with the header, would allow them to come up with the answer by themselves, to reason that the “dangers” of piracy are greatly overstated. This class strengthened my writing skills, which are not only useful in this class, but will continue to pay off in future semesters. The Research Paper format I learned in class will certainly be used in an upcoming class I have, Writing for Engineering. I know that going forward writing them, I need to keep in mind not only how my claim relates to my sources, but how they build off of each other. Not only this, but I learned the importance of the audience: As they are the people who will be reading or seeing your work, it’s very important that the message you want to send actually makes its way to them. Throughout the class, I strengthened the strategies used to achieve this, whether it was the rhetorical devices in my Language and Literacy Narrative, or the rhetorical appeal in my Research Paper. The final product showed itself in my Second Genre Assignment, a major improvement from the initial product. Leaving this class, I’m glad now that I have built up tools for success during my time here.