My “Self Essays”

I think of the three essays which I have written most recently, the Introduction, Reflection, and Conclusion essays, as self essays because they are more personal and the topic is my personal growth and writing process. I like my intro. essay most. I found it fun to write, because it made me take time to sit back and reflect upon my growth as a writer over the years. I found this exercise made me feel good about my writing development, and although I have a very strange and unique writing process I think it is well adapted for my auditory learning style. Overall my only concern with the essays is that there were occasions where I wanted to address Professor Scott directly and I chose to do so with the familiar “you” form. I’m not sure if I want to change this so that the essays could apply to a broader audience or if I want to keep them specific to the class. I think that since she is the primary audience for my portfolio I will not change my pronoun choice. I generalized the three major assignments but I feel that these essay are just to explain my writing style and process to Professor Scott specifically and no one else so it would be silly to say “the reader”.

Per editing

Throughout this year I have struggled with per editing. In the past I have not had much experience with critiquing my peers’ work and with the practice I did have I knew the people and their writing style well so I felt comfortable giving them suggestions. In this class aside from the people in my group I am not well acquainted with individuals and am even less familiar with their writing styles. For this reason I feel awkward responding to many of my peers in this class. I feel like they may take my critiques as a personal offence. I have tried to combat this by including positive feedback as well as suggestions, but I still feel that I may come across rather harsh. I remember receiving papers back in middle school and feeling as though my teacher had torn apart my paper and brutally beating it into the form that she desired. This is what I fear my peers will feel.

Presentations

I was very pleased with how my presentation went. I was surprisingly not as nervous as I had expected. I believe that this was because I felt that I was very well prepared to give my speech; most of it was memorized, and I got up extra early before class to rehearse it a few more time in front of the mirror. All of the feedback slips that I received, both from you and my peers was very positive. It was a great way to finish off a week of exams and projects before heading off for a nice week-long break.

Feedback

I appreciate the feedback I received both from you and my peers. I took your advice and changed the title of my speech to be more specific and used the original abstract one as a sub title. Mostly what my peers found were typos, but they seemed to feel that the tone of my speech was too sophisticated and the word choice too academic. Some felt that it would be better as an essay. However, I think that this is because they were reading a hard copy of the speech and so they felt it was an essay. To test my theory I gave my roommate a hard copy to ready and practiced delivering the speech to one of my friends. The roommate didn't think it should be an essay, but she did comment on the sophistication of the writing, but not in a negative manner. The friend loved the speech and found it easy to follow and the argument clear and compelling. I think that because it is a speech it is difficult to analyse unless it is presented auditorially. I have made changes to areas which I felt were legitimately too wordy and confusing, but I feel that the piece was meant to be a speech and works very well as one.

Speech 11/14

I have finished a fairly decent draft of my speech. I am very pleased that I chose this as my genera because I have found it to be very effective in allowing me to convey my ideas. I feel that I am able to construct more complex and in depth sentences that may otherwise be confusing because I am verbally delivering the speech so I can use pauses, word emphasis, and hand gestures to ensure that my audience is able to follow my though process. I have enjoyed this assignment most and feel that I excel in this forum of communication.

Chosen Genre

I have chosen to deliver a speech for my project. This was a fairly easy genre to research, especially because of the recent elections. I have decided there are two components to every speech, the actual content of the speech and how the speech is delivered. I watched a lot of u-tube videos of famous and non-famous speeches. I feel that the speaker is what really sells a speech to most audiences and he/she is responsible for leaving a positive memorable impression. Many speeches, such as the infamous "I Have a Dream" speech keep the audiences attention by rallying them and getting them excited and energised about the topic.
I also researched speeches given by Quakers and saw a drastic contrast. As I had predicted, Quakers focus much more on the content of their speeches and do not attempts to rally their audience. They may issue a plea for support, but primarily they provide information in such a way that the audience makes many of the conclusions for themselves. Quaker speeches are not at all "in your face" or aggressive. I plan to put a lot of effort into the constructions of my speech so that the content is appealing, but I will also try to be entertaining and animated, since the majority of my audience will be high schoolers. I have considered making a PowerPoint of pictures to keep my audience entertained and possibly passing out a general outline of the speech for them to follow along with.

Speech

I have completed my speech; yeah! Ironically as I read The Concept of Audience I found a lot of point which apply to my speech. It was interesting that the author so frequently compared the difficulties of writing to giving a speech to a live audience. I frequently feel that my writing is to directly addressed to a particular person. When I write, I write like I speak, so I envision a particular audience in my head as I write. I anticipate their reactions and develop counter arguments to them. However, the main flaw in my process, is that by having a particular audience in mind I only address their point of view and fail to think of others.
"You already know how to argue..... Life has taught you the elementary course." I found this introduction to be particularly interesting because my enter portfolio revolves around avoiding argument and finding alternative forms of discourse in which to convey one's point. It is interesting to try to write a persuasive paper about avoiding arguments without writing an argumentative essay. It would be pointless to write and argument about why arguing is wrong, therefore I believe one of the most difficult tasks I had writing my papers was tone. if the tone was argumentative, the entire essay would appear hypocritical.