Reflective Letter

My thinking about rhetorical choice started as a simple design: me speaking to an audience. I never truly considered the finer aspects of what that entailed. I tried to be as honest and open as I could, framing my thoughts in an understandable manner. However, it wasn’t until this unit that I really began looking not so much at what I was saying, but how I was saying it. I noticed from the readings that people didn’t really care to read what I wrote if it was not in some way related to them. I began organizing my thoughts around a target audience; one which I believed would be interested in what I had to say. I started choosing my sources differently, finding people who were not only experts in their given field, but who had a specific point that fell in line with what I was trying to say.

My writing style, though at times effective, began in a static and not very influential form. I rarely considered my audience and usually wrote for myself. I used to think if I composed my thoughts and presented them properly, people would take notice. My research was focused on sources which I found appropriate according to my own standards, disregarding the complexity of the information they had and how it may not be comprehensible by some. I did research the “hard” way: Google searches en mass (I used to do card catalog searches when I was in high school so these searches didn’t seem so bad). I paid little attention to what was being said about the topic from others, more concerned with my own thoughts than how I could incorporate others into my discourse.

Every aspect of my compositional style has changed, from the readings (specifically Peterson’s “Writing for a Web Audience”) and various classroom discussions regarding personal experience. I see how using the power of the internet can enhance and emphasize your point without sacrificing quality. I can choose a topic and frame my initial thoughts around what others find interesting about it, but lead the discussion towards what I want to address. I present my ideas in such a way as to appeal to the audience I’m targeting. I choose sources that have material that is simple but solid, easily understandable from the source itself and doesn’t require a translator to interpret (which eliminates bias). The most improved section would be my research style: lateral research have saved me hours upon hours of site searching as well as improving the content of my sources and their application towards my research topic.

Moreover, I have found that my source integration and argumentative style has become more focused and effective. I have a view point that I want to support and find multiple sources which are close to what I am thinking, but on varying sides of the subject. I then create a discussion amongst them and eventually use their evidence in formulating my ideas. When I begin researching a topic the first step for me is to understand the discussion and the “sides” that are present, then to choose where I stand in relation to them. This can be tricky as I usually find myself creating my own “side” as I usually believe in limited portions of the others. When deciding what I believe I am aware of my personal bias, my own values and stereotypes that hinder objective reasoning. I know I can’t eliminate it, but I can understand it and when I am being biased so as to avoid eliminating sources because they don’t agree with me.

When I started my volunteer service I had very little experience with active research and found myself hesitant to approach people. This affected my writing as I had trouble incorporating my service experience into a complete thought related to my research topic. However, after reading Wysocki’s “The Multiple Media of Text” I began seeing my volunteer service as its own multimedia source and one which I could analyze using the same methods he described for other sources. This opened a whole new door and I started looking for more interactive sources, ones which were easier to comprehend but also thought provoking. I found Ted Talks videos and they fit perfectly with my rhetoric. More to the point, they were relatively short, full of useful and pertinent information, and they were captivating: the ideal source for any researcher. These are now the foundation for my ideas and thoughts regarding our cultural relationship with education. After compiling and integrating my other sources into categories which compliment their strengths, I used the Ted Talks sources to round out the overall tone of the supporting evidence. The website I created (http://culturaleducation.weebly.com) utilizes all the information I compiled and presents it together in under a single idea of changing our methods of education to better serve the intelligence of children.