Last year, I began my new life, crossing the Pacific Ocean, to study in America. As my new sailing of life has begun, my writing sailing has also begun. Continuous exposure enables progressing of my writing sailing. In the course of English 107, we were studying simple and basic knowledge of writing, such as thesis, PIE structure and how to use secondary sources. This semester, leaving English 107, I came into English 108. It seems like a new land to me. It is full of more secrets and more adventures than English 107. In English 108, I step into a higher level of writing. In particular, we not only need to write an essay that has clear thesis, right PIE structure and prefect format, but also need to know how to analyze essays, how to do research, narrow a topic and make arguments. Specifically, I am experiencing this adventurous trip step by step. I write a rhetorical analysis essay, conduct research and narrow down topics for the controversy analysis essays as well as construct a persuasive argumentative essay. All of these improve my associated skill with research and analytical writing significantly. .
Before my first time of writing rhetorical analysis essay in English 108, I had no clear mind about the rhetorical analysis. When I read an essay, typically I only read what the author discussed, and merely picked out the thesis of the whole story and tried to find the topic sentence for each paragraph. As a result, I got lost on the point that the author wants to deliver, especially for long stories. However, after studying and practicing how to identify and analyze the audience of an essay, the purpose the author wanted to appeal to his or her audience and how to use strategies about ethos, logos and pathos, I understand that rhetorical situations exists everywhere in our life. Almost any situation where communication occurs is a rhetorical scenario. For example, when one person attempts to pass some messages to another person for a specific reason, the rhetorical situation occurs.