Timothy Cutlip

Ms. Diaz
English 120
Traditional Revision Reflective Essay
For the traditional revision in my English 120 portfolio, I revised my Major Writing
Assignment (MWA) 1. For this assignment I was tasked with rhetorically analyzing an
advertisement and I chose an advertisement from the University of Technology, Sydney for their
international studies degree. After writing the rhetorical analysis I received feedback from my
instructor and peers so I could learn what and where to revise my paper when I returned to it for
this traditional revision. When making the revisions I followed the comments left by my
instructor and they varied from something as simple as removing some bold font or uppercase
letters, to rearranging sentence and paragraph structure and adding more in-depth details.
I began my revisions with my cover letter, in the section detailing the student learning
outcomes (SLOs). In my original paper I did not include enough detail for the required SLOs, so
upon returning to revise I added additional information about my exact progression, citing
evidence within my paper, such as One student talked about how the professionalism combined
with the great personality of the professors made them feel really good about getting an
education there
Moving on toward the paper itself, I began in the introduction by changing the title. I
centered the text and removed the bold font. This was a mistake I made by using format seen in a
proposal instead of an essay. I removed the capitalized University making it lowercase instead,

because in this case it was not actually a proper noun. The second paragraph included a sentence
where the flow wasnt quite right and as my instructor Ms. Taylor Diaz pointed out, The
location of this is a bit awkward (Diaz). The original sentence was The University of
Technology, Sydney knows this and takes advantage of that knowledge immediately in the
advertisement, and I revised it to The University of Technology, Sydney knows this and
immediately takes advantage of that knowledge in their advertisement. This revision changed
the location of the word immediately to improve the flow of the sentence, without changing
the original meaning.
Continuing with my revisions I began to direct my attention towards paragraph three,
where a comment left by my instructor informed me I should not use Within to start this
section, but instead use In so I changed the sentence to reflect that. Again in the first sentence,
another comment was left asking me to describe what was meant by diverse in the sentence
footage of students who appear culturally diverse so I wrote and included a short
description. I inserted the following description between commas after diverse in the original
sentence, for example there were many students from different locations and ethnicities around
the world in the background of several scenes. Further in paragraph three I made a mistake
addressing the Head of the International Studies Program, Dr.Jeffrey Browitt, where I
accidentally omitted Dr. I made sure to include the correct title for Dr. Browitt in my revised
paper. I received a comment from my instructor asking for the specific description of the
students within this sentence beginning with, Students speak mostly of how great the study
abroad opportunity so to include a description I revised the sentence to In the advertisement,
there are many testimonials of international studies students speaking about how great the study
abroad opportunity to clarify that the students in the ad are specifically students in the

international studies program having hands on experience, and not just any ordinary student at
the university.
When I started addressing further rhetorical techniques in the advertisement, specifically
ethos, pathos, and logos, I provided a short introductory paragraph to the rhetorical appeals and
dove immediately into the ethos found in the advertisement. My instructor commented with, Let
ethos have its own paragraph (Diaz). I split the paragraph at the point I started describing
ethos in detail, All of the examples provided by current students increase the credibility, or
ethos, of the university, and that sentence became the beginning of a new paragraph dedicated
to ethos, as both pathos and logos also have their own paragraphs. Another problem with this
paragraph was also the fact that it wasnt yet a paragraph, and just a singular sentence. I have no
idea why I thought this was okay at the time, but after receiving a comment about it from my
instructor, This is all one sentence it needs to be broken up. (Diaz), I did exactly that by
removing the conjunction and and creating a new sentence with what was originally a runoff
sentence. I also ended a sentence after yet the dialog seems to be impromptu by beginning
the next sentence with If their presentations are not impromptu so I was still able to continue
the thought and improve the flow of the paragraph.
Even though I received this encouraging comment from my instructor Ms. Diaz,
Overall, strong rhetorical analysis I was able to improve the strength of my rhetorical
analysis through the feedback I received. In particular, most of the improvements were in the
form of grammatical errors, sentence structure and flow throughout paragraphs, and by providing
further detail to my examples. Now I realize just how many times I should review my papers
before submitting them, because great papers take many revisions no matter the writer.