Category: Student Work

Unit 2 Reflection

In this unit, even though it was short, I learned more about the different uses of rhetoric that can be found in many social movements that are pro or against said movement. Different creators of the images or videos may use ethos differently to either promote a disdain for their side while others may promote an inclusive understanding to get people to agree. 

I already knew that people should look at social movements with an open mind because many of us including myself write off a movement or fully agree without looking at the other side or investigating things yourself. Another thing is the use of certain rhetorical devices and how organizations use fear appeal to scare us to use their product or do what they want. 

I wanted to learn more about the different sides of the movement for representation in city college. For example I would’ve wanted to know what the faculty’s reasons were as to why the students were mainly white.

I think that my main strengths for this unit was understanding the different uses of rhetoric and being able to write more. I am most proud of how long I could write especially since the next paper will be around 7-10 pages. 

I would try to revise my words and be more specific when it comes to analyzing the uses of rhetoric. I noticed that some uses are subtle and hard to pic up if you haven’t really seen it pointed out often or new to it like Hypophora or distincto.

I would rate myself at a 6/10 because I could have participated and been more attentive with the assignments. 

During this unit, I looked for examples of the uses of rhetoric to give me a better understanding of how to use them in the exercises. 

I think this unit was slightly harder because the previous unit was more of a write what you want to talk about and create your story versus write about something from this specific topic. However once I found a topic, I was able to meet the writing target. 

One thing I would do differently would be to read more uses of rhetoric instead of specific and plain examples.

I wish there were essay examples for the rhetorical analysis so that I would have a reference in regards to how to structure my essay.

I wouldn’t recommend anything other than including more examples to give use a better understanding. My favorite activity was analyzing the ok Cupid pictures because I never saw them before (I didn’t take the trains much anymore after the pandemic) and I also saw videos of people complaining about the images being on public transportation where kids can see. There also weren’t any activities that I didn’t like or felt were ineffective. 

Unit 2 Reflection

  1. What do you feel like you learned about this unit that you didn’t know before? I definitely learned more about how rhetorical devices are used in social movements and how different rhetorical devices can be used to connect different perspectives of different people to create one big message.
  2. What did you already know , but now understand better or learned more about? I already understood a little more about how rhetorical devices play an important role in society and also I learned much more about how Aristotle’s 3 appeals can help play a role during the discussions with the social movements as well as applying this knowledge to the 2nd paper. 
  3. What are the strengths of the writing you did for this unit? What are you most proud of? The strengths of the writing I did this unit improved on the level that I became more aware of what I write. For example, if a sentence was to not make sense for any reason like grammar, punctuation,etc then I would right away be able to notice and make some corrections to it. 
  4. If you were to revise the writing you did for this unit, what would you want to do differently? For the 2nd paper, I did notice that I do sound a little formal in the paper, so perhaps I would have changed the way I wrote in terms of writing in my “own” language.
  5. How would you describe or rate your participation/engagement in this unit? I think my participation/engagement was sufficient. There is room for improvement, but overall I believe it was sufficient enough.
  6. What did you do in this unit that helped make you successful? The improvement in critical thinking for the freewrites in class led to me gaining ideas for my second paper which was a helpful improvement from my perspective.
  7. What additional things (resources, support, information, etc.) do you wish you had had for this unit? If anything I’d say some additional tips on how to improve writing in terms of figuring out would be something I wish I had for this unit. 
  8. Is there anything you would like me to change (in the structure of our course, in how I’m presenting information, etc.) going forward? In my opinion I don’t have any problems with the structure of the course. 
  9.  What were your favorite readings/activities, and which readings/activities didn’t feel effective for you? I think the recent “Beyond Vietnam” readings was not effective for me because even though it was interesting, I didn’t feel the connection with this reading in terms of being engaging in my opinion. The Kent university social movement captured my attention to be my favorite reading because the pictures of the brutality that occurred to the students captured my attention.

Rhetorical Analysis of Social Movements

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 tother 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 weren’t encouraged to go to college (few colleges for women existed anyway).

-Women were expected to marry and care for their children, husbands, and households.

-Once women did marry, 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. These women were called “Suffragists”. Women were fighting for theirs rights for so long by small steps e.g strikes with amount of 300 women. These women been putting masking tape on their mouths which had to show that they don’t have a right to speech. Other popular move was protest signs and popular sentence these days was “How long must women wait for liberty”. However the biggest impact started in 1917, when the USA entered World War 1. Many men went to Europe fight, and many women volunteered there as nurses. Women also filled Jons in the states that had been held by the men now overseas. Realizing how important women were, President Woodrow Wilson changed his mind about the suffrage movement and started supporting women’s right to vote. Unfortunately most of these women were white, and other races had to keep fighting for their rights.

In 1935, Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of former enslaved people, founded the National Council of Negro Women to advocate for more equal opportunities for Black women in housing, education, employment, and healthcare. The organization still exists today.

In 1972, thanks to the ongoing strong voices from women, Congress passed Title IX, a law that makes it illegal for schools to discriminate based on gender.

In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice. In 2007, Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker of the House.

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.

Rhetorical Devices: Romance, Sex, and Gender Appeal



Due Wednesday 10/26

For this assignment, find in the world TWO examples EACH of Romance, Sex, and Gender appeals. You MAY repeat examples, if you think the same example is appealing to more than one of them. However, you MUST write a SEPARATE analysis of how the example appeals to each one.

  1. Find two examples of each one
  2. Explain any relevant context needed to understand the example
  3. Analyze HOW the example is attempting to appeal to the audience’s desire for romance, sex, and/or gender identity.

How does something appeal to gender identity? For example, fancy soap commercials feature women using the soaps and looking feminine. It might make me feel, “women use fancy soaps, if I use regular soap, then I’m bad at being feminine. If I want to be/feel feminine, I guess I have to buy fancy soaps.” A combined gender + sex or romance appeal for straight women might be “If I don’t use these fancy soaps, men might think I’m not feminine enough and think I’m gross and not want to date me and/or sleep with me”

Unit 1 reflection

1. For sure there are many things that I learned by this unit, but first thing that comes to my mind is looking more for propaganda, how does it works, what was the beginning etc. I mean I really get to know more about it.

2. That thing is exactly same things like in a previous point. I get to know more about propaganda and that even made me to learn more about it.

3. Personally I’m focused to learn better “office talk”, but I’m doing it by my own also.

4. I’m the most proud about “This I believe” essay, because I really had no idea about what should I write and to be honest I done it 1 day before final due. I’m really proud that I found something about I can write.

5. There are many things that I could do better. I always say like something can be better, even if something is awesome, that can be do better. So I would write better my “This I believe” essay.

6. Those were really cool, I like them. Thing that I like the most is our professor’s approach to the students and topics.

7. I made huge research of my whole life while trying to find topic for my “This I believe essay”

8. There’s nothing in my mind right now that I would like to do in 2nd Unit except learning “office language” which I pointed previously. If there will be something more I will notify my professor.

9. In my opinion Internet is the best support and actually I used it couple times for this unit, so we already got the best kind of resource/support.

10. As I pointed previously I got really good professor who know how to teach and she’s also kind which is really important, that was really import for me for my college classes I really enjoy that classes.

11. Propaganda topics was really cool and I really enjoyed that, I’m still learning about them, researching informations etc. so if that would be back in next unit I will be really happy and excited.

Unit 1 Reflection

Some things that I felt like I have learned was the ability to gain the audiences attention a lot better by using different forms of Rhetorical devices that I never fully understood before. Being able to learn how to grab the readers attention using different techniques and skills was something that I really enjoyed learning how to do.

One thing that I already knew was metaphor. But the more I read about how metaphors can be used to make your language sound more nice, I am now able to have a better idea of what message I can send by using something else.

I would like to learn a little bit more about Anti-thesis. I don’t really have questions about it but I do think that understanding anti-thesis is where I am stuck at.

A strength that I would say I had during this unit was being able to jot everything I had in my mind down on paper before beginning revision. I would always stress about how a first draft needed to be perfect. This unit, I was able to find a better plan of action in order to reduce that stress and I was able to accept that a first draft doesn’t need to need to be perfect. It’s always important to be able to write your ideas down on paper first before anything.

Something that I would like to do differently is to add some dialogue do give a little bit of an in-depth experience for the reader to make them feel like they are actually in my shoes.

I think that my participation was fairly decent and I always had something to respond to and share my ideas on.

Something that helped me be successful this unit was being able to use prior knowledge in my english classes as well as using my present knowledge to have an understanding of what exactly I wanted to write for my essay.

I would like to try and get a head start instead of waiting until the last minute to complete an assignment because I feel like I could have had more ideas if I simply just started a little bit early.

I do not wish that I had any additional information for this unit. All of the information that I learned and had was more than enough.

Every piece of information that was presented this unit didn’t give me any problems whatsoever. My favorite activities would have to be either bandwagon or fear appeal.

I would like to discuss a little bit more about propaganda and in depth on the positives and negatives of it.

Discussion: City College Student Activism

Please respond to the following questions by the end of Wednesday, 10/18

  1. How is what you learned about CCNY similar to and different from the activism we read about at other campuses (Columbia, Kent State, and the nationwide student community)?
  2. What are your thoughts/feelings/reactions to learning about this period in student history?
  3. To what extent do you think the students were successful in achieving their goals?
  4. How does this period compare to things you see going on today? (Either at college campuses or at high schools, in the larger community, etc.)
  5. In your time here at CCNY so far, what are some issues you see at our school that you would like to change, or hope that others change?

Unit 1 Reflection

     I felt that in this unit I learned how to write better because of the use of a few rhetorical devices and I learned how to organize my thoughts better when writing. Something that I feel that I already knew but now understand better was the use of language as a vehicle to achieve your aims, whether that be persuasion, to inform, or to tell a story like we did in this unit. Also in writing about my personal experiences this unit I clarified to myself exactly what my thoughts were about the issue, which I suppose was a type of personal growth on my part as a result of writing the essay. It is difficult for me to know exactly what the professor wanted their students to learn or to stay with them in a humanities type of class, there are no equations to memorize or math problems to solve, nevertheless I think that my professor wants us to learn how to discuss academic topics as a class. That is, to articulate our opinions on matters coherently and to raise further questions in the exchange of ideas. A question I have is how can we raise participation without making people feel uncomfortable? I myself have been guilty of staying silent when I have ideas to share so I have the hope that I can improve on this as the semester progresses.

     In critiquing my personal performance throughout this unit, in terms of the writing itself I believe my strongest points were my ability to be clear in what I am attempting to convey and to write without awkward phrasing as I had done in previous papers. The thing I am most proud of is that I was able to write four pages pretty effortlessly when in high school I had been struggling to reach 3 pages on my papers. A couple factors may have contributed to this such as the subject matter being a personal experience instead of a more academic kind of paper or perhaps the instruction was different, but regardless of what contributed to this success I am proud of it. If I were to revise the writing I did for this unit again I would probably add some kind of emotional metaphor or example to really hit the readers with what I had felt at that time. I believe I was successful in telling them what happened and how and where, but in trying to get them to feel something with my writing I believe I failed. 

     I would describe my participation as lackluster throughout this unit, which is something I definitely need to work on. The root of the problem does not lie in having nothing to say, as I do the readings and have some thoughts about them, but it lies in my uncomfortability with speaking in front of people. I am taking a public speaking class this semester however, so hopefully by the time I’m writing the unit reflection for the next unit I will have something different to say. As for my engagement in this unit I would say that I managed my time in writing a paper better than I had done for any paper that I had written in the past. In previous classes I would write the whole thing the night before, but in writing the first draft and the second draft and making slight adjustments in each step, writing the final draft was easy. The things I did in this unit to help me be successful was doing my assignments on time, writing the first draft in time made it easier to write the second draft in time which allowed me to finish the final draft easily. Finishing the writing assignments helped me learn ways to write more effectively by using rhetorical devices. I wouldn’t really want to do anything different in the next unit except perhaps finding some way to make participation flow more easily, but that is very difficult and I personally cannot think of any way to engage the class more without making them feel comfortable. Hearing others talk about topics that I also read and preparing things myself to say in class would benefit everyone though I think.

     Something I believe I could have benefited from in this unit was some more constructive feedback from my peers. While the professor’s feedback was of course useful, I found that the feedback I received from my peers was often vague and general, I would have preferred to have them say concrete things I should have changed or worked on. As for the structure of the course, I have to say that I do find enjoyment in our reading and writing assignments. The readings we have to do are interesting for the most part and the writing assignments have a clear purpose in improving my writing. I say for the most part because I just did a reading called “The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed Fist” that I found really dull but the rest of the readings up to this point had been pretty engaging. Something that I personally am not a fan of is the beginning of the day reflections, personally I would rather get straight into the class content so that we cover as much as possible, but I understand that maybe some students would like some questions at the beginning of class to spark their interest, kind of like stretching before exercising except for your mind. Something I would like to look into further would be the political activism against the Vietnam War in the 60s-70s.