Rayce Dendel

English 2010
MWF
8:00 A.M
Final Reflection

This paper will be a short summary on the experience I had in my English 2010 class at
SLCC during the summer of 2016. In this essay, I will discuss how I worked to achieve the
course goals of this class as well as reflecting on how I went through my own writing process to
produce the pieces attached to this site below. I will also be discussing how this class impacted
my research process by providing examples from the topic that I chose to write on all semester,
which is global warming due to overpopulation.
I will start by saying that this was the first class ive taken during the summer semester,
and I can say with certainty that it wont be my last. I enjoyed continuing my education through
the warmer months even though it meant I was limited on the amount of outdoor activities I
could take part in. We started the semester by examining some base aspects of rhetoric and
writing. An example of this would be the concept of ethos, pathos, and logos. These are the
different ways to appeal to an audience, through your own credibility as a speaker, through
emotional or empathetic appeal, or through sheer logic. Usually a good piece of writing or an
effective speech has some element of all three. I kept this in mind as we began to draft our first
large assignment.
A profile or memoir was the first piece of writing that we were asked to draft. I thought
that I was going to have trouble with this, because originally I was just going to write about the
overpopulation of the planet in general, and I wasnt sure who I would focus on to write a profile
of, because I certainly hadnt had any real or significant experience with global warming, so a
memoir was out of the question. Thankfully, my professor helped me narrow down my topic to
something a little less broad. I chose to focus on global warming as a result of overpopulation,

mostly because global warming was one of the points I originally wanted to highlight under the
umbrella problem of overpopulation. I found out as I started researching that my professor was
right to make me focus my attention to something more specific, because there was a trove of
research to sort through on just global warming alone, not to mention under-education, resource
management, and the myriad of other problems associated with global overpopulation. In the
end, I decided to write my profile on Al Gore, because he really helped accentuate the larger
problem I wanted to focus on with his actions. You may read the profile below.
The next major assignment Id like to review is the report. Now this may seem odd,
because if you have been through the school system recently you know that you swim to your
degree through an ocean of reports and papers, so you would think that these would become
the most bland assignments of all. This was different however, because in the report we were
asked to take a non-biased or argument based position, which was hard to do with a topic that
we already felt very strongly about. This was challenge number one. Challenge number two was
doing in depth research into the side of the argument that we disagreed with. For me, this meant
researching the theory of natural climate change, which counters the theory of global warming
by saying that our planet is naturally heating up and cooling down, and how this phenomena
accounts for the changes in temperature that we are currently experiencing. At first I didnt really
believe this theory, and consequently I didnt really want to look into it. But as I was forced to do
some in depth research, I quickly discovered that not only did this theory have solid scientific
merit, but it was a theory that I could get behind. My professor told me that by researching the
other side I could only strengthen my argument, and he was right. This is a valuable tool to take
into my writing in the future, not to mention that real world applications it holds for everyday life.
This leads me to the second major tool with everyday real world application that I gained
from this course. The name of this tool is source verification, (unofficially). This may seem like
a concept that is pretty cut and dry, but I think requires a second look after being forced to
review this topic again myself. You must verify your sources sources, and their sources if they

have them. This is a statement that is overlooked and undervalued, and is a sentiment that I
believe is worth reiterating and accentuating. There are so many sources of knowledge in this
modern world, and not all of them are telling the truth, whether they know it or not. It is worth
investigating into the primary sources of information that you take from the world. This was a
theme that we applied to all the papers we wrote, particularly the report and the position
argument, and I think it really helped shape and define the research we did, and subsequently
the papers we produced. Take the time to investigate your sources, and your sources sources,
because you just might be surprised at what you find. I know I was.
I believe that this English 2010 course was effective in its educational goals. I believe
this because I could see the effect on my writing this course had. Having to write on the same
topic in 3 or 4 different styles of writing was more challenging than I predicted, and I can say
with conviction that overcoming this challenge has improved my work from what it was before. I
believe that I can now connect with an audience more effectively as well as research more
efficiently and thoroughly. I believe that I have a better scope and view of what academic writing
should be, and how to go about achieving this higher level of composition. Through intensive
peer review sessions with my classmates and specific, and targeted feedback from my
professor, I was able to fill in some of the gaps in my writing, as well as provide some useful tips
and ideas for my fellow students. I found that the biggest issue with the writing of my peers was
that they were having trouble connecting the topics they were passionate about to the larger,
general audience and population. As we talked through it, I was able to suggest ideas about
how to connect their topics to a broader spectrum of people, and this helped them bring their
issues to light in a much more applicable and appealing way. This also helped ensure that I was
doing the same with my own writing, so I think that this was valuable time spent in class
reviewing and revising each others work.
In conclusion, I think that the writing youll find in the e-portfolio accurately reflects an
ongoing effort to produce better and better compositions and pieces of academic work. The

assignments are not perfect, but I think they accomplish the goal I set out to achieve, and in this
way they are effective. I hope that you enjoy reading or browsing through them, and hopefully
they convince you of a thing or two. In the meantime, I will continue to try and improve my
writing, and carry on this practice into the future, in the hopes of producing better and better
compositions.