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Tara Kliebenstein
English 114B
Stephan Topf
May 9, 2014
My Reflection
English has always been my favorite subject out of all the courses I have ever taken in
academia. This is entirely because out of all the English classes I have participated in, they have
all been the same so I would know what to expect. Some days would consist of reading
comprehension, while others would focus solely on punctuation and grammar. There were even
some days where we actually had the opportunity to free write, and put whatever thoughts we
had on to paper for a consecutive amount of time. Throughout the years, I was never provided
with a specific technique to use in order to appeal to my audience in my writing. I was always
told, Engage your readers! Grasp their attention! Relate to your audience! but no one ever
showed me how. This year I learned how to use rhetoric, and how to demonstrate critical
analysis in the two essays my English 114B was assigned this semester in order to construct a
strong paper.
Little did I know, rhetoric is portrayed all around me. It is evident in commercial ads, TV
shows, music videos, and even the people I have every day conversations with. Rhetoric is
literally an art of persuading people around you by appealing to ones emotion, using credible
sources, and stating logical facts. When I first sat down in my English 114B class, I thought it
wasnt going to be able to grasp the concept of rhetoric and critical analysis fully. Needless to
say, I thought it was going to be a difficult and long semester. This was the first time in any
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English class that I was learning something new. I was incredibly eager, yet nervous to find out
whether or not critically analyzing my work while using rhetoric could advance my writing.
My strengths and weaknesses as a writer have changed tremendously throughout my
different English courses. One of my strengths as a writer would be the fact that I enjoy writing.
If I did not enjoy writing, I would never be able to fully engage in it. Another one of my
strengths as a writer is that I like to break down information; therefore I like to analyze my
writing in order for my readers to understand my point of view, which is a goof writing trait to
carry. I try to incorporate a solid analysis in all of my writing doesnt seem boring or vague. My
weaknesses as a writer are that sometimes I imagine that people have the same thoughts as me.
In most of my papers, I am very one-sided and I do not consider the thoughts and opinions of my
readers.
I have never truly experienced constructing a self-reflective essay to understand the
correct concept of it completely. In the article, How to Write a Self-Reflective Essay by Kori
Morgan, Morgan states, A self-reflective essay is a brief paper where you describe an
experience and how it has changed you or helped you to grow. Self-reflective essays often
require students to reflect on their academic growth from specific projects or assignments
(Morgan 1). In other words, a self-reflective essay should reflect on this past semester and how
the different assignments impacted me as a writer. The assignments we were assigned this
semester made me aware of different social aspects that occur in the world we live in. Not only
did I learn from these assignments academically, but socially as well.
In the Project Text essay, my class was prompted to criticize a certain social aspect that
was demonstrated in the novel, The Postmortal by Drew Magary. This novel told a story about a
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young man who received an injection to terminate his aging forever. As this cure became
more and more popular in the Western civilization, many social issues began to arise such as,
economical issues, crime rates increasing, and what I focused my paper on, religion. I simply
stated that the disputes between different religions could lead up to acts of terrorism, similar to
what the book portrayed. In my rough draft, I simply stated that people with religious views
could turn into violence and cause mayhem to the world. This was a very vague argument that
was difficult to find evidence to support. In my revisions, I was given the idea to consider
ethnocentric views into my paper, which would allow me to critically analyze why the disputes
between different religions could possible lead to violence. Ethnocentrism is the belief of ones
own group accompanied by feelings of dislike towards other groups. Including the idea of
ethnocentrism into my paper helped me construct a direct argument by focusing on certain
people with these ethnocentric views. This helped me prove that the reason why people have
different views on religion is because they acquire ethnocentric views as well, which leads to
violence.
For my project space essay, our class was prompted to observe two similar spaces of our
choosing and observe the different social aspects such as, taboos, values and social norms. I
chose to work collaboratively on this assignment with my teammate as we observed the
differences between a softball field and a baseball field. The argument stated that there is an
immense amount of sexism manifested in the competitive level of athletics. We observed these
two different spaces by the difference of physical appearances as well as the stereotypes that are
made towards female athletes. For example, Brittney Griner, a professional womens basketball

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player who excels at the sport she played, is constantly scrutinized as manly, or lesbian
because she has the athletic abilities of a man. Women who play sports are considered a taboo
because the traditional social norms state that women should only obtain feminine traits.
Other social norms also state that women should stay at home in order to take care of the kids,
cook, and clean, because that is what is considered to be normal. We also incorporated
expected gender roles of men and women who play sports. For example, men who perform
poorly during a game, display poor sportsmanship and are not punished for it. Men become very
aggressive and angry to show their frustration. On the other hand, when women display a poor
performance, we are entitled to act lady-like, act classy, and control our emotions in order to
represent good role models. Although sexism is heavily apparent in athletics, people are
attempting to change the unfairness for women who play sports. A federal law was created
known as Title Nine, which states that all women are given the equal opportunity as men
corresponding with sports.
I used rhetoric heavily throughout this paper by providing statistical information, quotes
from famous women athletes, as well as appealing to all women athletes who feel the same way.
I was also able to incorporate critical analysis in this paper by not simply stating that sexism is
portrayed in sports, but also stating there are many stereotypes, social norms, and taboos present
in athletics. I was motivated to write this paper, because I am a female athlete myself and the
sexism towards women in sports is apparent to me. I never knew how severe sexism still is in
athletics, but after writing this paper I realized there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in
order to overcome the unfairness between men and women who participate in the competitive
level of athletics.
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Luckily, critical analysis and rhetoric have taught me how to become a better writer. Not
only do I now know how to engage my readers, and grasp their attention, but I also know
how to persuade them as well as allowing them to get an understanding of my point of view
through these two concepts. Rhetoric is an important literary art that has helped me become a
stronger writer. Critical analysis has also helped me develop higher-level thoughts by thinking
out of the box and incorporating these thoughts into my writing. This English 114B class has
taught me two major aspects of writing that I plan to continue using in order to be a successful
author.














Works Cited
Morgan, Kori. "How to Write a Self-Reflective Essay | The Classroom | Synonym." The
Classroom. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.