To whom

Elaina M. Bassett
191 Main Street West

Cover

Elaina
Bassett

Banner Elk, NC 28604

P.O. Box 3153
(828) 773-9846
eb0185118@lmc.edu
November 12, 2014

To whom it may concern,

To whom it may concern,

Within this paper I will discuss how my literacy has progressed throughout the
semester as well as my thoughts from the beginning to the end of this semester. The theme
seems to be my improvement throughout the semester; though this may seem as though I
am just writing what the teacher wants to hear I honestly improved my writing and look at
it differently after this class. My strong points are my passion behind my writing which
hopefully helps the flow of my paper. I feel as though my headers help my paper flow as
well. My weak points are, as always, my introduction as well as my conclusion and I can
always use help on a thesis statement as well.

This semester I have learned a lot about myself both as a literate individual and as a
person. I have also learned a lot about others in my life. Rhetoric 101 has affected my literacy,
reading, writing, as well as given me opportunities to work on various subjects within literacy.
Literacy:
At the beginning of the semester I thought that literacy was just being able to read and
write, its more than just that though. Throughout the semester we read various articles from
writers about their literacy life and how their life experiences impacted how literate they are
today. When we were encouraged to think about our life in a literal concept it was truly amazing
to recognize how many things influenced me as a literate person today, whether it was from
stories I wrote as a kid to the books I read in my free time, all of these impacted me in a literal
sense. Ive come to realize that being literate is more than just being able to read and write, but
also being able to comprehend what is portrayed within the text. Literacy impacts everyones
everyday life; as a student it is a major part of my learning career. Without being literate I would
be unable to understand the meaning behind my texts and learning would be harder, because I am
literate I am able to read and write as well as comprehend and discuss during lectures. Being
literate also helps you to communicate effectively with others. As the semester went on I was
able to acknowledge how my literacy was changing. I looked further into writings and
discussions and was able to elaborate more on what was happening within them.
Reading:
I always viewed myself as a good reader, having said that I was only a good reader when
I was interested in the context. Coming into college I was expected to read articles and books

that did not interest me, therefore, causing me to have a hard time and question myself as a
reader. As the semester went on I became more confident in my reading skills, though I may not
have felt as comfortable as I did when I was reading books that were enjoyable to me, I was able
to look more into the readings and gain my own new knowledge from the articles I was reading.
Now as I read I look for meanings that arent clear in the text, but actually ones that the author
doesnt necessarily write out for the reader. By doing this I was able to understand more of the
articles and able to share my new knowledge of what I felt the author was interpreting during
lectures in class. To be honest I became lazy halfway through the semester and about gave up on
the readings in Writing about Writing because I felt that they talked in circles and I wasnt
grasping the whole concept of what the author was trying to say. When I realized this was
affecting my grade I began to encourage myself to read. This helped out in my papers a lot
because I was able to put forth the knowledge I learned about writing from the articles into my
papers, this in turn making them better for my readers.
Writing:
In high school I always considered myself a decent writer; all of my SAT essays were
always college level and my English teachers seemed to enjoy my writing. Coming into college
meant coming into a new reading audience and I planned on them not being as easy as high
school which was the case. The first paper we wrote, about our literacy narrative, was very nerve
wracking for me; I had no idea where to even start. In the long run I did decent on it and have
actually scored a perfect score on one of my papers so far this semester which, for me, I take as a
major accomplishment. My papers that I am writing today I feel are better worded and overall
better reads than the papers I was writing at the beginning of the semester. Now I am confident in
considering my audience within my papers and working to make them flow better. I also feel as

though my vocabulary has expanded which makes my papers sound better, especially when I am
writing a research paper. Every one of my teachers this semester have had me write at least one
paper and have stressed the importance of writing in my life. Your writing reflects you, it reflects
the way you talk and think and people will judge you by it which is why you need to perfect it as
much as possible. It is stressed to learn how to write properly because it is how you display
yourself within your texts, whether it be an email or a letter. Within the rhetoric 101 class you
learn how to take every constraint into consideration when you are writing, you learn many
aspects of writing skills in this class as well. Rhetoric 101 is not a class you just need to make it
by in, it is a class you need to dedicate yourself to because you are not only learning about
rhetoric but you are learning about skills that will help you for the rest of your life and can have a
major impact on how your future plays out.
Discourse Community:
A genre can be any way that information comes, an example could be a play book for a
sports team on something as simple as a paper. The section in this semester when we learned
about genre was in the discourse community section. Within this section we were able to pick a
discourse community and judge how it fit into Swales 6 Rules of a Discourse Community. My
discourse community was my sorority ZN. The most difficult part of this was the interview
needed to write my essay. The interview was the hardest part because you actually had to sit
down with the sisters and interview them one-on-one and get their different outlooks on the
sorority. Another hard part was being able to watch the discourse community from afar and be
able to take note of everything that was happening and the reactions to it. This essay was
interesting for me though because I was able to look into my sorority and get to understand it
better; I also got to look into Greek life as a whole to understand it. After reading others papers

on their discourse communities I was able to realize how different everyones communities really
are and throughout my class I could notice the different lexis within each discourse community. I
would love to do another paper on discourse communities because I was able to get out on the
campus and talk to others and learn about them and their interests and discourse communities.
Texts:
For me, before we learned about it in class, a text was any type of writing. After
discussing text in class though, I have realized it is anything that you can get information from; it
could be a poster, a text book, or even a picture. After having a discussion in class I came into
full understanding that text is anything that you can portray knowledge from. When I realized
that this was the case I was able to see that within practically everything I could gain knowledge;
even the bag on the floor of my room gives me new knowledge because of its text. I feel as
though text is a very broad term but it is easy understand. While anything can be considered
text, it is easy to understand that if you can gain knowledge from it, it will be considered a text.
One concept that I found partially hard this semester was the rhetorical analysis paper. It was by
far the hardest paper for me. There seemed to be way too much to take into consideration while
analyzing the commercial I had picked out and I felt that it was by far my worst paper I have
ever wrote. Something I gained from the rhetorical analysis essay though was that I was able to
look into the commercial and figure out the message that the rhetor was trying to get across to
their audience and why they used the effects they did within the commercial.
A lot of growth has happened this semester through me and well as my rhetoric skills.
Rhetoric 101 was a very important class and the impact of it will stay with me throughout my
life. Within this course I was able to gain many skills that will help me throughout my life as a
student to an employee and even as a friend. As you can tell throughout the semester I seemed to

have found myself in writing and what works best for me. With all of the different papers we
wrote, much like the discourse community, I was able to explore my writing abilities. Everything
has changed throughout the semester between my writing, reading, and even understanding
messages the author is trying to portray in the passage. Overall I grew throughout this semester.