The work I have produced throughout this semester reflects the growth I have achieved in my writing. This class was one of the most productive I have been able to take so far during my time at John Jay, and I am glad that the work that I have produced can be public through my online portfolio. There were three major assignments in the class other than the portfolio, and each contributed to my learning in different ways. The first assignment, the informative report, was where our class first learned writing and APA conventions that we either were not familiar with or had not mastered at that point. Citations were still totally alien to most of us, as high school did not prepare us for having to actually give credit for the information they have found. This allowed students a way to actually shape the information in their own way, and in their own words, rather than …show more content…
Having read some of the drafts of my peers, it is clear that many had been writing too vaguely, or too generally, and had not really been addressing the issue they were writing about other than on a summarizing level. Many students had great claims, but weak evidence, and through such peer reviews I was able to reflect on the weaknesses of my own work. It was through this that I understood how properly develop my ideas into a coherent and logical work, and where I understood how to apply Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. Pathos being the most important aspect, as I realized that the only way to have an interesting paper was to have it be written interestingly as well. Not quirky or with cliched phrases, but infusing the paper with the same passion that I had about the topic itself. Looking over my work, I can see the leap in articulation between the informative report and the argumentative essay, and I became much more confident for the final