Paper 1:
For Paper 1, I discussed the 2013 Super Bowl commercial by Ram called “Farmer.” My argument in this piece is that the commercial proves that Americans have the same instilled values of the American farmer through the evoking pathos among the audience, depicting the culture of American patriotism, and further utilizing rhetorical devices in the commercial. The revisions that I have made consist of elaborating more on the context and commonplaces of American values, describing the pastoral imagery of the farmland, add detail on the ethos of Paul Harvey as a narrator and American figure, and strengthening the topic sentences by making them more analytical.
For Paper 2, I presented the disparities in reporting between the CNN and Fox News coverage of the Governor Chris Christie scandal. My main argument is that the details of the event are skewed in an effort to lessen or heighten the importance of the scandal and influence the audience in two separate political directions through the reporters’ use of quotes by Christie, varied connotation from word choice, and additional video or images publicized. The revisions that I have made include editing the introductory paragraph to describe the overall scandal itself, how it has affected the possibility of Christie’s 2016 presidential run, and how it hurt the people of Fort Lewis directly. Additionally, I fixed the depiction of CNN’s report as more biased against Christie instead of neutral/indifferent. In the entirety of the piece, I reinforced topic sentences and made sure that they related back to the thesis.
Overall, I believe that my writing skills have consistently improved and I attribute this in part to blogging. My understanding of rhetoric and logic from reading How to Write with Flair as well as Thank You for Arguing have aided me tremendously as a writer. Likewise, the feedback that I have been receiving from fellow classmates during blogging sessions and the Portfolio 1 conference with you, the professor, have been crucial to my overall improvement.