Hans Tucker Alsup

Julia Remsik Larsen

English 120-086
1 April 2015
Reflective Argument
Throughout the semester in the course composition III, I feel as if I have made progress
in becoming a better writer. Throughout the semester of this class we were assigned to write
certain goals that we are to achieve during the process of a normal assignment in the form of a
cover letter. These goals were seemed somewhat convergent, but did help me realize certain
aspects about my writing that I had not previously noticed. Because of these cover letters I not
only a better writer, but I also feel as if I have made improvement on aspects involving other
people, technologies, and the English language as a whole. In this assignment I will address the
given student learning objectives and argue as to why I succeeded in completing each.
The first student learning objective, or SLO, I will argue is SLO A, which says to
examine, organize, and write what you think about arguments from different genres, while taking
into consideration tactics, proof, and how they presented their argument to their audience. I feel I
have defiantly succeeded in this objective for primarily two reasons. The first reason is that in
this class we have not only been analyzing and discussing certain positions in our assignments,
but we have also been looking at and conversing about things as a class, such as plagiarism.
There was an entire class period where my classmates and I critically analyzed the laws
presented on the topic on the projector during class. This example covers the aspect of deeply
examine somebodys argument while also taking into consideration their rhetorical situation,

evidence, and tactics. The second reason for while I feel like this objective was reached is in our
major writing assignment 1. In this assignment we had to take a topic and state what we believed
about it. This helped me achieve the student learning objective because in writing this
assignment, I took an issue and argued a position, making me look at and organize different
arguments as well as look at information and reflect upon it in order to support my position.
Probably the biggest, most general, outcomes is the actual reflection. This objective
requires one to look at their work and reflect on it taking into consideration how they have
developed over the semester, as well as describing how using different technologies can be used
to gain advantage. When I look back on my development over the course of this semester I do
not particularly see any huge improvements. I did, however, see my writing get a little bit more
refined and crisp. While I may not have seen much improvement personally, perhaps another
person looking at and evaluating the work I have done this semester would have some different
points to bring up and also may see it as I did develop considerably. I feel like improvement can
be somewhat subjective. The biggest thing I took away from this semester was that through the
use of the amazing technology available at my fingertips, as well as other rhetorical information I
learned from the class, one can create a huge advantage over peers, and perhaps eventually
colleagues, who do not use them to their full capacity. By writing these assignments in different
genres as well as in many different formats and technologies. Throughout this course the class
has had to write things varying from a paper about what we believe in to a short documentary.
With these multiple genres we gained a better understanding about how to situate tone in a paper
to our audience as well as learned how to adjust your rhetorical analysis specifically to what you
are writing about and who you are writing for. In class we used a wide variety of technologies to
gain an edge in learning topics and composing assignments ranging from our laptops and

classroom projector to a classmates microphone in the making of the documentary. Practicing

this variety of technologies will just further improve my technological skills and put me and my
class ahead of the typical technological knowledge required for a career.
The next student learning objective that I will argue is whether I achieved in assimilating
other peoples views and outlook into my work in an appropriate, proper, and efficient manner. I,
personally, feel as if this was an objective that I had almost fallen short of, but did achieve
because of our documentary assignment. There were many opportunities I had over the semester
to make amazing strides towards this goal through peer reviews on large assignments, but I did
not attend them. However by just having a very vocal class that openly asked questions and
voiced their opinion, I did take into consideration their opinion on the major writing assignment
2. I also made progress towards this goal with major writing assignment 3 where we were
required to, in a team, create a documentary about an urban legend. It was in this assignment
where I ultimately reached this goal. We had to collectively express our ideas in a manner in
which we would all be able to organize and understand them. That to me feels like a very strong,
and completing, step towards this objective.
Another student learning objective that I will discuss and argue about is whether or not I
examined and defined different ways to write and perform research of a field of academic
research to comprehend the various options of creating and expressing knowledge. The event I
will use to prove that I completed this goal was the class day where our professor described how
you write different formats, as well as how you should organize and perform your research. As a
class, we spent around the whole period, which is two hours, discussing how an individual
should write relevant to the format and genre they are writing in. Our professor also showed us a

video about how to perform research in an effective and time efficient manner. This taught the
class how to correctly express themselves on a more specific level.
The last course outcome I will argue is if I advanced in my fluency of Standardized
Written American English at varying stages of writing including the sentence, paragraph, and
document. While I may feel like this objective did not develop as much as it could have, I still
did see improvement in the fluidity of my writing. I defiantly got better at writing on specific
topics at a much faster and efficient pace. An example of this would be my work on low stakes
assignment 1. In this assignment we were told to write a rhetorical analysis about a movie trailer
that had not yet been released. In class, we spent a few days extensively learning about the
different types of rhetorical appeals. This included learning very basic rhetoric dating back to
ancient philosophy and applying it to movie trailers that we watched and analyzed in class. With
the help of this activity I defiantly feel as if I made progress not only in that low stakes
assignment, but also for other papers as I am able to analyze other topics, evaluate their
rhetorical situation and appeals, and have a better understanding of what I am supposed to be
writing about.