Evans 1

Lindsey Evans

English 015

Dr. Jessica O’Hara

3 March 3 2014

Portfolio 1 Letter of Introduction

For Paper 1, I wrote my rhetorical analysis about the United States Army Reserve commercial titled “Where Can…”  For this paper, I argued that the commercial combines aspects of patriotism with the American Dream to convince citizens that joining the Army Reserve benefits both their country and themselves.  To revise my draft, I focused mostly on wording.  After receiving comments on my first draft from the blog, I eliminated the repeat of the word “lastly” and separated the ideas of the image of war and the “Army Strong” phrase into two different paragraphs.  Then, in the new fifth paragraph, I talked more about how the commercial draws upon several ideologies at once to capture the reader.  Finally, in the second paragraph, I included a more detailed analysis of the commercial’s choice of title.

For Paper 2, I analyzed two different newscasts about Shaun White’s performance during the Sochi Olympics (one from USA Today and one from Daily Mail).  USA Today viewed White’s Olympics with utter disappointment, blaming White himself for the failure while Daily Mail blamed White’s performance on the poor conditions of the half pipe.  To revise this paper, I corrected the misspelling of the word “shear” to the proper “sheer” twice.  I made the ending of the first paragraph more specific to the news articles being discussed rather than a broad overview of media.  In both the second and fourth paragraphs, I made the introductions more concise and eliminated the popular “A picture is worth a thousand words” phrase in the latter.  Also in the second paragraph, I focused more on the newscast’s personal blame of Shaun White.

Evans 2

Finally, I changed the last paragraph to focus more on loss than victory to mirror the true result of White’s Olympic Games.

Overall, I do feel as though I am growing as a writer.  The revisions have helped me to become more concise with my language, and I have learned a great deal through the passion blog postings about how to appeal to your audience.  Also, Thank You for Arguing has taught me an incredible amount about rhetoric, making me a better thinker.  I had never thought about the differences between fights and arguments before or even realized how to use tools such as ethos, pathos, and logos to win your opponent over.  English 15 has indeed helped me to become a better student on all levels of writing, grammar, and philosophy as a whole.