One thing that I learned about this unit that I did not really realize before was that rhetorical devices are used alot in social movements. What I understood already was that one Indian farmer’s protest was a really large movement that happened because of the government but now I’ve learned a lot more about why it was happening and what people are doing to combat it. Something that I am most proud about in this unit is that we get to write about what we want to and also connect it to our unit which connects to our learning objectives. Something I would add is more quotes because I do alot of my own writing with little quotes. I would describe my participation and engagement as good but I could have done better. It was midterms week so everyone including myself was somewhat stressed. One thing I did was take breaks in between writing as we went over it in class and also use a writing timer. I feel I did better in this unit due to me feeling better in writing essays. One thing I would like to discuss further is more laws that have not been covered in the media because the governments in many other countries hide things.
Category: Student Work
Jakub Mikulski’s Portfolio
Portfolio
Course learning objectives:
This class had to help me:
-Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.
-Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.
-Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.
-Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.
-Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.
-Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias.
-Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.
-Practice systematic application of citation conventions.
Personally, I feel I had most of this Personally, I feel I had most of these objectives, but I can say for sure I have broadened them, and from the empty words that professors in high school say, I actually understood something of them. The most important thing in my essays that I developed in this class was the ability to locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine articles, and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. I started researching more information for essay topics and got to know a lot of things, increasing my knowledge, but I feel everyone was important for me.
Paper 1 Reflection
That was the first and hardest thing to get done in this semester for me. I had no idea what to write about. I’ve been thinking about this topic for a couple weeks, time was getting shorter, and I had nothing, many drafts that I threw out to the bin. Two days before the final draft deadline, I realized that the topic had been near me for the whole time. Because I live with my brother and his husband, who are a homosexual couple, I started to write about my tolerance. I realized that I’d been born into a family full of love and tolerance. Until some time, I didn’t know about homophobia. When I realized such a behavior that I saw to my friend, “who looked like a gay,” and been offended. That behavior couldn’t fit in my mind, why do other people do it? Why people are aggressive to each other, especially offending everyone “different” who has different sexual preferences? Hate other people because of what they love or are interested in. Of course, it wasn’t the only topic I mentioned in my assignment, also every races are being discriminated by others. Asian people are also under critic, especially after Covid pandemic. There was a huge hate because, some people thought pandemic is caused by them. Also sexism is such as thing I’ve mentioned, it happens in many countries that’s normal thing that women’s are compared to worthless things that should be under control, they don’t have right to vote in some countries or are earning less money then men do, also they ain’t employed so eagerly. When I was a kid that behavior was unimaginable for me. Now when I’m an adult white, straight man I can see it and even feel it every day. It’s really sad how people can hate other people and how destroying it is.
Paper 2 Reflection
In this assignment, I haven’t met all the requirements, and I am not happy at all with this assignment. That is why I wrote it again in the next part of this assignment.
I wrote it about the Women’s Suffrage Movement- for the beginning, we have to go back in history to October 28th, 1886, when President Grover Cleveland took the stage on Liberty Island, New York. He dedicated the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France representing freedom and democracy. But suddenly, women’s rights leader Lillie Devereux Blake and 200 other women sail by on a boat. They/re golding a sign that reads “American women have no liberty.”. At this time, women in the USA didn’t have many rights, and they haven’t had it since the first settlers arrived. That time: women were not encouraged to attend college (there were few women’s colleges to begin with). Women were expected to marry and care for their children, husbands, and households. Once women married, they were entirely dependent on their husbands. Women couldn’t own property, and they had to give any money they made over to their husbands to manage them. Women weren’t allowed to vote. By the mid -1800s women started to fight back, demanding suffrage, or the right to vote. Today, women around the world continue to be inspiration for other women in other countries to fight for their rights. It’s sad that in 21 century not all of people have liberty. In my opinion that movements are necessary and should be promulgated.
Paper 3 Reflection
That’s an assignment that I spent the most time with. I’ve been working on it for almost a week, every day for a couple of hours, and I’m most proud of that one. In this assignment, I chose the topic “Do advertisements, movies, and television shows have an impact on people, and if so, how much?”. I mentioned that in my opinion, TV shows, movies, and commercials have a huge influence on our lives. Many people don’t even realize how powerful those devices are and how they’re changing our lives every day. Every series that we watch has an influence on our personality. Every commercial makes us buy something. We want to be bigger, better, and completely different from who we are. As a first example, I used a video that I watched in one of the first classes “Happiness”- Steve Cutts. Personally, after watching this video in my English class, I realized how this rush is killing many people with its toxicity. We are enjoying monotony, and it can lead us to a boring, unhappy life when we’re triggered to eat, work, and sleep, ignoring other factors of enjoying our lives. This video opened my eyes and changed my life. I also brought up example with Jeffrey Dahmer and the impact of a movie about him on people. Many of them had been afraid to date for a long time because of psychotic people like Dahmer. Other examples included comedy and its positive impact on our behavior because, as the saying goes, “laughter is healthy.” One example is cartoons; I don’t watch them much anymore, but I used to watch them all the time when I was a kid, and I discussed my thoughts on the impact of cartoons on young minds in this article. To be honest, I’ve enjoyed that assessment the most because I’m most proud of it, and I also enjoyed that topic the most. I incorporated a lot of things from my personal observations, as well as internet research and things I learned in class, into my assessment.
Social Movement Rhetorical Analysis
In my assignment I would like to raise the topic of one of the biggest social movements that happened in New York, bearing in mind Silent Protest Parade. This social move happened on July 28, 1917. In this protest demonstrators marched along Fifth Avenue starting at 57th Street in New York City in silence to protest violence against African-Americans following race riots in East St. Louis, Missouri. The East St. Louis Riots were a series of outbreaks of labor and race-related violence by White Americans who murdered between 39 and 150 African Americans in late May and early July 1917. Another 6,000 black people were left homeless. This incident was a major catalyst for the silent parade. This horrific event drove close to six thousand Blacks from their own burning homes and left lots of people dead. It’s said estimated attendance in this protest is around 10,000 people. That’s a really impressive amount for those years; this amount was possible because of the event organizers: the NAACP,church, magazine “The Crisis” and community leaders to protest violence directed towards African Americans have been popularizing it. But the main person who has been a rhetor of this social movement was James Weldon Johnson, American writer and civil rights activist. Really huge impact had his poem named “Fifty Years” published on January 31, 1913; but I got its second life after the previously mentioned riots. This poem combined with his speeches, had influence on people to go out on the streets and show their discontent in the form of a strike. The main and only audience were African Americans who fought for their rights, because all the organizations agreed that this parade needed to be composed of Black citizens, rather than a racially-mixed gathering. They argued that as the principal victims of the violence, African Americans had a special responsibility to participate in this, the first major public protest of racial violence in U.S. history. This is an example of Burke’s ideas about identification. Relationship between rhetor and audience when one one part identifies with the other; in this example between African mericans. Media coverage of the march helped to counter the dehumanization of black people in the United States. The parade and its coverage helped depict the NAACP as a “well-organized and mannerly group” and also helped increase its visibility both among white and black people alike. Marchers hoped to influence Democratic President Wilson to carry through on his election promises to African American voters to implement anti-lynching legislation and promote Black causes. Four days after the silent parade, black leaders involved in the protest, including Madame C.J. Walker, went to Washington D.C. for a planned appointment with the president. The appointment was not kept, as the group of leaders were told that Wilson had “another appointment. They left their petition for Wilson, which reminded him of African Americans serving in World War I and urged him to prevent riots and lynchings in the future. Wilson did not do so and repudiated his promises. Federal discrimination against African Americans significantly increased under the Wilson administration. After this problem starts to grow, which also means an increase in the popularity of protests and the frequency of their execution.
This protest was the first one of the biggest social movements like that and helped in the emergence of the next, more and more, such as: Harlem Race Riot in 1964 with African Americans in New York, but also for other groups people e.g. LGBTQ+, who also protested for their right as a customers in 1969, named Stonewall Riots.
Why this one?
I decided to write it again because of the grade that didn’t’t satisfied me. At the beginning, I was in shock because of the grade, and then I realized that I hadn’t met many of the requirements of this assignment. So I had to revise it. Unfortunately, the first draft wasn’t as good as it should have been. Anyway, in my opinion, this subject of women’s suffrage is really important. That was really important for me to choose another topic as important as the previous one, and I didn’t have to look far. In my opinion, the most important topics are about people’s behaviors toward each other (and also about environmental issues, which I will consider in my future essays if possible). As I often say, “Hate breeds hate,” which means that when we hate someone, whether it is offensive hatred without a reason rather than constructive criticism, it influences other people to have the same behavior toward this person that hates and also other people. That’s how hate and toxicity are born. This has been evident for a very long time, even in my essay, in which I talk about racism and mention the 1917 protests. In my assignments, I try to choose and describe those that are important and interesting to me.
My work this semester.
As the semester comes to a close, I reflect on my journey as a reader and writer. Taking this English course has allowed me to develop and strengthen my skills in both areas, and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow.
One major takeaway from this class was the importance of pre-writing and planning. Prior to this course, I often found myself struggling to organize my thoughts and ideas when writing an essay. However, through the use of brainstorming and outlining techniques, I learned to effectively plan and structure my writing. This not only made the writing process smoother, but it also resulted in clearer and more cohesive essays.
In addition to improving my pre-writing skills, I also gained a deeper understanding of the writing process as a whole. Through various writing assignments, I learned the importance of revising and editing my work. I became more aware of my own writing habits and identified areas where I needed to improve, such as using more varied and specific language or expanding on my supporting evidence. Through the peer review process, I was able to receive valuable feedback and make necessary changes to my writing.
As a reader, I found that this course expanded my analytical skills. Prior to this class, I often struggled with fully understanding and analyzing texts. However, through close reading and discussion, I learned to break down texts and identify their themes, symbols, and overall message. I also gained a greater appreciation for the power of language and how writers craft their words to convey meaning and emotion.
One aspect of this class that I particularly enjoyed was the opportunity to read and discuss a diverse range of texts. From classic literature to contemporary non-fiction, I was exposed to a variety of genres and authors. This not only broadened my literary knowledge, but it also allowed me to see the world from different perspectives.
As I look back on my work this semester, I am proud of the progress I have made and the skills I have developed. However, there is always room for growth and improvement. In the future, I would like to further develop my skills in research writing. While I have completed research assignments in the past, I feel that I could benefit from additional practice and guidance in this area. I also want to continue to improve my ability to analyze texts and engage in critical thinking.
Overall, this English course has been a valuable learning experience for me. I am grateful for the opportunity to develop and strengthen my skills as a reader and writer, and I am excited to continue growing and learning in future classes.
English Research paper (climate Change)-Draft #2
“Climate change is this real variable that we are combatting. It’s not just, it’s a shame that the polar ice caps are melting. That of course is happening too, but there’s stuff at home happening. It’s not just a remote issue. It’s affecting everyone in very dramatic ways.” (Max Lerner, NYC parks department, sustainable facilities division.) Climate change is a serious topic that happens in New York but it’s not talked about as often as it should be. It has been happening since 1970 according to the department of environmental conservation. “The annual statewide average temperature in New York has warmed 3°F (0.6°F per decade) since 1970. The state’s average temperatures are projected to rise by as much as another 3°F by 2080 with the greatest warming occurring in the northern parts of the state.”
Climate change affects our everyday lives without us noticing. We might think climate change is nothing serious but it is. Climate change needs to be taken seriously and needs to be more talked about. “Risks associated with climate change include greater incidence of heat stress caused by more frequent and intense heat waves; greater incidence of heavy rainfall events affecting food production, natural ecosystems, and water resources; and sea level rise leading to increased flooding in coastal areas. Climate change may exacerbate existing stresses on the people and activities of New York State and, in some cases, might provide opportunities such as enhancement of its water resources and agricultural potential.” “An extensive literature on vulnerability to heat-related morbidity and mortality has been reviewed elsewhere [3,4]. Areas with lower prevalence of air conditioning (AC), for example, have been found to have higher rates of heat-related deaths [5,6], while areas with more green space tend to have lower rates of heat-related deaths [7,8].” (Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 1433)
According to the Wikipedia website “ Climate change in New York City could affect buildings/structures, wetlands, water supply, health, and energy demand, due to the high population and extensive infrastructure in the region. A seaport like New York is especially at risk if the sea level rises, with many bridges and tunnels in the city. Major facilities for Aviation in the New York metropolitan area, and the New York Passenger Ship Terminal, are also located in areas vulnerable to flooding. Flooding would be expensive to reverse. Tide gauge records indicate a rise in sea level of about 50 cm (20 inches) since 1860.” (at Columbia University , n.d. Web. 16 October 2009.)
After all these things happening from climate change which lead to negative impacts New York City made a plan to stop the climate change etc. “ The US$10-billion plan would extend Manhattan Island by as much as 150 meters into the East River by using materials, such as sand or concrete rubble, to build an elevated landscape. Lower Manhattan is a transportation hub for the city and a global financial center that flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The project would help to protect the area from what could become daily floods on some streets by 2100, city officials said during a 14 March press conference, citing their assessment of climate-change risks.” (Tolleson, Jeff, 2014) This means they’ll add more land to Manhattan but would that actually stop climate change? Because in my opinion it wouldn’t, adding more land to New York City would just continue to contribute to climate change. They would just end up building stuff in places they’re not supposed to, which would pollute the oxygen in the first place. They would also build that on the river which clearly makes no sense in my opinion because they’re taking away nature’s water to build material.
New York’s population is way too high, it has been increasing in the past years which can lead to a major population in the future. We should be scared if we don’t take action on climate change as soon as possible. According to the Macrotrends.website the area population of New York City in 2022 increased 0.23% from 2021. This is a lot for just one year. Also I gathered up information in the website of ontariotechuniversity.com about the cities/states that would have the largest population in the future and here’s what I found:
One recent example of this could be November 7, 2022. The temperature outside was 70 degrees fahrenheit. This type of climate in November from my point of view should be concerning because it’s fall, and not even because of that but winter is right around the corner. I would say it would be fine if it would’ve been in October by the beginning or middle of the month but It’s November already. “We all know how frigid New York can get and so, when we hear that the month of November is going to be unseasonably warm, we tend to forget about what that all means on a climate change scale and just revel in the fact that we won’t have to wear our scarves, gloves and boots for a bit longer this year.” (Rahmanan, Anna. November, 2022). This article makes it look so normal but it clearly explains it’s climate change and it’s on a scale. This should not be normalized because people would just pretend like nothing is happening and would not take this topic seriously while it is.
Note: I know I have to write more but I need feedback on what else do you think I should add because I am also thinking of gathering information to make my own chart about the population in the United States to see which state is more populated but what else should I add?
References
Department of environmental conservation. (2022). Climate change effects and impacts
Rosenzweig, C. Solecki, W. DeGaetano, A. O’Grady, M. Hassol, S. & Grabhorn, P. Responding to Climate Change in New York State: The ClimAID Integrated Assessment for Effective Climate Change Adaptation in New York State
Madrigano, J. Lane, K. Petrovic, N. Ahmed, M. Blum, M. & Matte, Y. (2018) Awareness, Risk Perception, and Protective Behaviors for Extreme Heat and Climate Change in New York City
Earth institute at Columbia University (2009) Climate change in New York City.
Tollefson, J. (2019) New York City climate-change plan proposes adding land to Manhattan.
Macrotrends (2022) New York City Metro Area Population 1950-2022
University of Ontario Institute of Technology (2022) City population 2050.
Population connection (2022) The Connections Between Population and Climate Change Info Brief.
Rahmanan, A. (November 1 2022) Brace yourselves for a fairly warm November in NYC.
Rhetorical Devices: Scarcity Appeal and Cognitive Biases
Due 11/30
Find TWO examples of Scarcity Appeal
And TWO examples of some of the cognitive biases (so, maybe you find one example of anchoring effect and one example of confirmation bias)
Provide any necessary context for understanding the examples
Then analyze how these tactics are being used to persuade the audience
Discussion: Practicing Claims
Due 11/14
Today we will practice making claims. Even though this inquiry paper is not an “argumentative” essay intended to persuade, you still need to make claims based on 1) what you learn in your research and 2) the relationships between these ideas.
So, today we’ll practice using something that is hopefully easier and more fun: animated movies.
FIRST, read Chapter 8 of The Craft of Research, PDF is here. This explains some best practices for writing strong and specific claims.
SECOND, complete this Disney/Pixar movie bracket. For each pair, choose whichever movie you think is the best movie (not which one you like more). Work your way through the pairings until you have a winner. If you haven’t seen some of the movies, that’s okay — probably most people haven’t seen all of them. You can either just pick the ones you have seen, or pick which ones seem best based on your knowledge of them. Remember: BEST, not FAVORITE. There are a couple places on the bracket where it says “play-in winner.” This is because the bracket is originally from an internet contest where people voted on what would take these slots. Here, either ignore and advance the other movie, or you can choose one of your own favorites that isn’t on the bracket.
THIRD, once you have your winner, practice writing a strong claim about why this movie is the best of all of the other movies. Remember to use the best practices you learned from reading Chapter 8 of The Craft of Research. Post your claim as a comment on this post.
FOURTH, look at the other comments to read others’ claims. Either offer suggestions for how to strengthen the claims or write counter claims in response to those you disagree with. Why is your movie better than this specific movie?
Rhetorical Devices: Parenthesis and Enumeratio
Due 11/16
Post your exercises as a comment here!
Unit 2 Reflection
Something that I learned in this unit that I did not know before was the political activism that gripped the nation from the late 60s to early 70s. I had assumed that US citizens have always generally backed the country when we enter a war, as a common enemy has the general effect of uniting the people. This was the case in the American Revolution and both of the World Wars. However, in the case of the Vietnam War, I did not know that there was such a large part of the American population that opposed the US’s involvement. We specifically focused on student activism, which I believe was a good choice as it increased the material’s relevance to us as students ourselves. The theme of political activism for this unit was one that exposed me to the intricacies of the political environs during the Vietnam War and changed my understanding of the aims of the civil rights movement. It had never crossed my mind that apathy to the cause was such a great obstacle to overcome for civil rights leaders, but MLK’s words in his Beyond Vietnam speech conveyed that convincing people that inaction conflicted with his goals was a great burden to him. “A time comes when silence is betrayal”
While I feel that I learned everything that my professor expected of me in this unit I do have a couple questions regarding the anti-war movement opposing the Vietnam War. My central curiosity is to what degree these protests affected the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, if at all. Secondly I would have liked to learn more about the key civil rights leaders involved in the movement and what sparked the rapid activism in the 60s for social justice. Despite slavery’s abolishment taking place half a century prior, what was the catalyst for change from the 60s-70s that was not present in previous decades?
A main strength of my writing in this unit was the research that I did for the topic. While it could be argued that I was given the tools through the library session and some of my sources came from the class materials, regardless the sources I used for my paper were extremely relevant to my topic and useful in proving my claims. I am most proud of my use of comparisons across different people as evidence to show the similarities between them. If I were to revise my writing I would make sure the sentence structures were better as I rushed to complete the paper, and I might change the sequence of ideas, as I felt at the end that perhaps I should have said some things before others.
I would rate my engagement in the unit as very high as I completed all my assignments and put in a lot of effort in my responses, however participation in person was very low for me as I have trouble speaking publicly, despite having some things to say. Something that I did in this unit that helped me be successful was doing the readings so that I would understand what the professor was talking about. Besides understanding during class I also saw that the readings would directly improve my writing as I had more ideas to comment on and rhetorical devices to experiment with. In the last unit there was a greater emphasis on writing skills and understanding rhetoric, which I thought had a broader application on our lives in the future. This unit focused more on political history and the uses of rhetoric throughout it, and while it is important to show examples of how rhetoric has been applied with varying degrees of success in real-world situations, I would argue that these examples should be limited in their use; their purpose is showing students why they should learn about rhetoric. I think showing examples of rhetoric should be a resource used in every unit as opposed to just one.
I think that I performed worse in this unit as a student as I submitted a couple of assignments past their due date and I have not been able to improve much on my participation. However, I am satisfied that my writing has improved since the last unit thanks to the rhetorical devices we practice in the book and the exposure of information we get from class. I hope to progress steadily to achieve my goals as a writer.
Rhetorical Devices Week 11
Due 11/9
This is the week for Glittering Generalities, Parallelism/Chiasmus, Climax, Euphemism, and Transfer. It’s a lot!
- For Glittering Generalities, our usual– find two examples in the world, then analyze how and why glittering generalities is being employed in the example.
- Do ONLY Exercise 1 for “Climax” and Exercise 2 for “Parallelism/Chiasmus.” It might be useful to READ Exercise 1 for “Parallelism/Chiasmus” and see if you can guess the actual famous statements, but it seems very hard if you don’t already know the famous statements.
- For Euphemism and Transfer, find one example of each and analyze.
So, you are finding FOUR examples (two of glittering generalities, one euphemism, one transfer) and doing TWO exercises in the book this week.
Leave your answers in comments.
Unit 2 Reflection
In this unit, I learned a lot in my opinion , which is how to expand my mind and ideas, go deeper into topics to write about and read magazines and news about every topic we read about, of course I knew how to write an article in my own way, but in this chapter I found that I can provide more and research more, through what It was presented to us by the professor for this chapter, expanding the range of “Rhetorical Analysis” types and how to show our feelings more and encouraging us to express our feelings more, but I think I want more about adding types of Rhetorical Analysis to my next article, and how I can format my own article in a more scientific way.
The activities that we presented in this chapter helped me a lot and expanded my ideas and even the book is very inspiring and makes you delve into every topic and get attached to learn more, so I hope that my next article will be stronger than my first article with the expansion of my thoughts in this unit, and I would like to participate more with the days to improve my participation, I helped myself To be encouraged to submit every writing assignment we have on time because this will help me to free up more time and also review what we have learned previously, so I think that I have improved the most in this unit in all respects, and what I want to do differently personally in the next unit is to present all My work is on time, writing my articles in depth, starting each article early.
receive full support from my professor, and even my classmates, and the arrangement and organization of our study site is very easy for us. One of my favorite activities, or rather my favorite readings, is about women’s rights or racism, because I see them still to this day, including dialogues and topics globally, and we have a lot of ineffective feelings about those topics.
I hope to continue like this and make more and more progress.
Unit 2 Reflection
- For me the really interesting thing in this chapter was get to know some of CCNY history, about strikes and racism movements that been here over 100 years ago. As an international student I had no idea about it and even students that come from New York didn’t know that.
- Maybe better understand is not correct word for this but I really started thinking more about racism. I want to get to know more about this topic.
- I was thinking about it and that things are being discovered while learning, if we learn about some topic and we get interest to it, we will ask ourselves a question “what if…?”. So to answer the question I don’t really know for that moment.
- I’m the most proud of research I did for Rhetorical Analysis essay. I’ve been researching information for that topic for really long time.
- To be honest maybe I would change the topic, because now I think that was kinda controversial. I’m not sure was it right.
- I would give me a solid 9/10 because like I always say “always can be better”.
- Research that’s the most powerful thing and it good research really helps.
- Those units were kinda similar in my opinion, and I really enjoy it, I really enjoy this class.
- I have absolutely no idea.
- I think every resource we could have we actually had. Internet is the most powerful resource and we had it. Books, screenshots of books pages, we had that.
- I won’t say about things to change but thinks I like in this class. It’s connection, talking personally with every student and than describing this thoughts to the class.
- At today’s classes we had really interesting topic, we’ve mentioned many of topics that we don’t understand and we could talk about them in future classes.
