I honestly didn’t feel confident writing my First Essay. The Toulmin analysis was a new format to me, so the new terms confused me. While writing my first essay, I took a long time figuring out how to start it. Eventually, I started typing my analysis and tried mentioning the Toulmin terms as best as I understood them. I also tried using the rhetorical triangle to analyze my artifact, so I was able to get a slightly better understanding of the rhetorical appeals. After receiving feedback from my peers, I was told the formatting was fine, but the terms need to be explained better. Reading the teacher’s comments made me realize I need to work on sentence structure, since I have a tendency to write in passive voice. The recent lesson on passive vs. active voice helped me see how my sentences were passive; however, that’s a skill I still need to work on, since writing in passive voice unknowingly became a habit. My Critical Response papers also has feedback about passive voice, so this is a problem in all my essays. There were also slight grammar errors that I thought were right, but I learned how to fix them thanks to references within the feedback. I thought commas went outside a quotation, since this is what I was told in high school, but after looking through teacher feedback, I read the reference and now know how to fix it. The comma was also a problem in my first critical response. Aside from this, I need to proofread my paper to make sure I don’t misspell words or use the incorrect word, such as “effective,” and “affective,” which was a mistake I made in my second critical response.
If I were to revise my First Essay, I would fix the passive voice pointed out in the feedback. I would also just read over my paper for any other instances of passive voice. I got feedback clarifying the warrants, so I would go back and properly explain my artifact’s warrants. Backing was also something I didn’t quite understand; I knew they backed up the warrants, but not fully knowing what warrants are confused me. There was feedback that said one of my reasons could be the backing of a warrant, so, after properly explaining the warrants, I would look back for evidence that supports the warrants. I would also change an in-text citation error I made. Grammar is something I need to check for in general for my paper. I made small grammar errors that could’ve easily been avoided had I proof read my essays. In the future, I plan on reading my essays at least twice for punctuation and citation errors, and to make sure I’m using the right words. As for the rhetorical triangle, I need to look over each appeal so I can properly use them.