Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.

I met this Course Learning Outcome through writing reflection papers after each assignment. Those made me realize why the rhetorical elements matter and how to choose the correct ones depending on the given situation. 

 

Below is the evidence, examples of my reflection papers: 

REFLECTION PAPER 1

Reflection Piece 

Aviation is a passion of my life that made me who I am today. I started flying at the age of 16 and as a girl among all the men I experienced a lot of discrimination, which I didn’t understand at the time. From my current perspective, it is visible that women success rate, if lower, is caused by the biases, discrimination and harassment that sometimes not visible, builds up in our minds and stops us from success. The exigence, which is what prompt me to write this argumentative essay is my own experience and need to argue whether women’s success rate is lower due to discrimination and whether the lack of women in aviation is caused by the industry favoring men. I believe that both of those questions are important, need to be heard and need to change, that’s why writing this paper was valuable to me.  

The genre of this paper is an argumentative essay, which main role is to inform, present the argued topic and then argue it. The writer always comes up with a thesis, which is the main argument and then picks a side on which he would stay throughout the paper. Argumentative essay should explain the topic well, that’s why it is good to first write an informative essay to explore the topic. In our class, we did the expository essay first, which showed me even more topic to argue.  

My stance is very passionate as flying is my own hobby and I went though the described path myself. It is very personal to me to speak about women in aviation while I am one of them. Even though I could understand why men don’t like presence of females at the airport I can’t understand why they underestimate our value. It’s outdated and I will never agree with them. 

I wrote this essay mainly to my classmates and Professor Danielle Carr, but I also shared it with my friend’s aviatrixes, my husband (who is my biggest fan) and my family. My audience could be every single student pilot in the flight schools in Long Island, which is the only place to learn how to fly in New York City. I wish they could give them my essay as a part of theoretical training to make sure they will make aviation community a better place. I would also like to consider my audience every single STEM student at City College of New York, especially at Grove School of Engineering. The other day I was talking to my friend, Electrical Engineering student, who expressed to me how badly he felt for every single woman in STEM. He realized how hard it is and how uncomfortable it could be when facing all men at the new job, new class or when presenting to entire group of men. I wish that all the men could see it in that way and treat us equally, not only in aviation but everywhere else. My essay could help many people see the reality of discrimination. Another group of people who could read my essay are flight instructors. They are the teachers and they should give their student a lesson how not to treat female colleague at the airport.  

The media I chose for this assignment is multi modal, because first we submitted our paper online using the Blackboard website, which makes it a digital form, I will also print my paper to make it easier to read which makes it a print. I also chose to create a PowerPoint presentation with the information in my essay to present to my class and my teacher which makes it an oral form of media.  

The purpose of this essay is to show and prove why there’s not so many women in aviation. People would think it is their choice, but even if they are right, what made women make that choice and not to become a pilot? Those arguments are presented in my paper. Another purpose is to change it, and hopefully after my audience will read my essay they will understand how hurtful trusting stereotypes could be. It literally leads to people doubt themselves and changes their lives. Following stereotypes we stop ourselves from growth. I truly hope that my essay could open the eyes of every single person who still believes in them. 

 With this assignment I hit Course Learning Outcomes. The first one is CLO number 1 which is “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situation”. Writing this essay helped me understand the structure of different types of essays, including the informative essay and argumentative essay- which is the one I’m reflecting about. Argumentative essay requires deep analysis of the chosen topic, exploration of it and arguing chosen thesis.  

Second CLO I learnt from this project is CLO number 2, which says “Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing”. Though writing this essay I practices and almost perfected process of drafting, revising and editing, which was completely unknown to me prior to this assignment. Now I feel confident about my organization of writing, steps that are needed to write a great paper and understanding the editing process.  

Third CLO I gained from this lesson is CLO number 4, which says “Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes”. While in class, we practices peer reviews, as well as digital reviews that took place on the Blackboard platform. I enjoyed both and I found it very precious to hear someone else’s opinion about my paper. There are things that we don’t see about our own writing that other people can simply point out and change our perspective.  

Forth CLO I became more familiar with is the CLO number 8, which is “practice systematic application of citation conventions”. It was the hardest part of my last assignment and this time I found it so natural and helpful to do. I think that is very important to avoid plagiarism and note the author’s thoughts, ideas and citations. Someone else’s work should never be taken away from the author but showed and admired.  Learning MLA citation helped me become a better more knowledgeable writer whose paper will look solid and trustworthy.  

Another CLO I learnt is CLO number 5, which is “Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range od audiences”. This essay will have multimodal format, as I will print it, I will also send it as a digital form and I will present it in front of the class using PowerPoint presentation. Those three forms are different way of delivering my paper and they could address different range of the audience. Print would be easier to read for my Professor, while the oral form of presentation, PowerPoint, will be much more likely to be remembered by my classmates since they will see my performing my speech along with some visuals such as photos, videos being screened the same time.  

 REFLECTION PAPER 2 

Reflection Paper 

The purpose of this expository essay is to present the problem of lack of women in aviation, what are the reasons behind it and to show the ways to fix the existing problem. As a female pilot myself it is a touching and important topic worth exploring. I also believe that the conclusion of my essay should be heard by every single women and men in the world to change the existing stereotypes that stop them from making their dreams come true and limit others. The audience of this work could be anybody who would like to pursue a career in STEM or once upon a time had a dream about becoming a pilot. It could also serve any curious person along with my classmates as a source of interesting information. To accomplish this assignment successfully, broad research had to be done including finding a valid source of information. The proper way to do it is by checking the author of each source and confirming its validation.

The genre of this paper, as already mentioned, is an expository essay whose main role is to explain, illustrate or clarify chosen topic to the readers. Because not everyone is closely involved in aviation, quite the opposite, it is a rare profession especially amongst the women, this essay had to be written carefully, paying attention to all the terms and words used and giving a full explanation of each professional term. The design I used was a printed copy as well as an online pdf format to be able to submit it through the Blackboard platform. The exigence, which is what caused me to write this expository essay, is to raise awareness in the aviation industry about the absence of the women in aviation. As an experienced aviatrix I know that flight operations are easy enough to be remembered and practiced by 18-year-old kid and that the stereotypes about aviation industry should be forgotten. I believe that we should encourage people to fly as much as we encourage teenagers to get a driver license. Throughout this essay my stance has stayed the same, I believe that women and men are equally capable of becoming a pilot and they both should be given equal opportunities and chances to do so. 

The Course Learning Outcome 1 of this class is to explore and analyze a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Through this assignment I was able to learn the reasons behind writing an expository essay and how to write it correctly including the rhetorical situations. Knowing that the paper must have at least 5 pages and be constructed out of many parts, just like a sandwich, could be overwhelming for an English 110 student. Luckily, we were given pre-post packages and other guideline packages full of questions and information that are very helpful for a young writer. I believe this was one of the best ways to approach learning how to write, research and draft the paper. It covered the Course Learning Outcome 2 about developing strategy for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising and editing. As a person who likes to work on their own, I found group work a little bit challenging, but I noticed that having someone else look on your work can really be beneficial. Each writer has their own point of view and creativity which can help us understand mistakes being made or ways to improve our paper. This class helped me to learn the Course Learning Outcome 4 about engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes both online through using our Blackboard platform and in class through in person reviews.

One of the most challenging parts of this assignment was using the MLA citation guidelines. Before writing this paper, I had never encountered it and it was the first time I had to look for sources myself and then strictly follow the MLA rules to create the works cited page. I am extremely grateful for the Course Learning Outcome 8 because I believe it made me a much better writer being able to properly quote ideas and sentences while avoiding plagiarism.