Dear Professor Turgeon

I have learned a lot about writing over the course of this semester. I thought the

class was great, and I enjoyed all your nerdy references. I feel that the things we learned

in UWRT are very important when it comes to literacy. The skills and techniques carry on

into everyday life and other classes.

One of the first things we learned in class was Rhetorical Knowledge. This is the

ability to identify and utilize strategies in text in order to enhance it's purpose. As we
studied this goal in class, I was struck by how often pathos seemed to utilized in order to

sway opinion. It was a lot more prevalent in opinionated pieces as one would expect,

much more than logos. As I commonly saw pathos used to sway readers opinion, I used

in my original draft for my argumentative essay, but alas it didn't fit the parameters of the

assignment. For the argumentative essay, I drew heavily on logos in order to sway the

readers opinion with logical arguments. Even when it came to the more unlikely

solutions, I used similar precedents and a postive tone in order to make my case. This was

even more apparent when I made my video for my digital storytelling project. Knowing

my target audience, the class, I made sure to make my video not only informative, but

eye-cathcing and interesting as well. I was also able to be flexible in order to change tone

to properly get information across in the proper context.

Critical reading was also a very important skill. It's not enough to simply read a

text, but to actually understand it. Learning how to use writing to expand knowledge is

important in life. I found that critical reading skills were incredibly useful when it came

critically analyzing peoples drafts in class. Everyone in class employs a unique writing

style, and being able to understand them is important to critical reading. I was able to use

my critical reading skills to a great extent while researching fake news for my

argumentative essay. Since the very topic I was covering was about false articles and

such, I use critical reading to help me evaluate real sources in order to write my paper.
 By far I feel learning about composing was the most useful thing we were taught

in class. Learning how to structure and draft projects is key to succeeding in writing. It

was very important to learn how to be structured but also flexible, I also feel like learning

how to properly brainstorm and flesh out ideas was very useful to me. I feel that it

especially helped with my digital storytelling project, as I used my composing skills to

make an outline and plan out my video beforehand. This organization helped make my

video come together clearly and concisely, and also allowed me to make sure it all came

together. Of course another key part of this was being flexible in order to help the video
flow, whether it be trimming scenes or lengthening lines of dialogue in certain parts.

Plus, it took a lot of editing to make sure the video came out clear in it's message but also

entertaining to watch, drawing the viewers interest.

Learning about Conventions was also useful. It was useful learning how to

structure different works of text depending on genre. It is very important to reorganize the

structure to suit your point accordingly. Grammar and punctuation are also very

important to learn, as it keeps your writing at a high standard. It also helps set up the

proper rhetoric to back up your purpose in a text. It is very important to attune your

writing style to suit the proper tone and break up the text in specific ways to ensure it

suits the genre. For example, knowing genre guideline made it easy for me to write

assignments such as my personal reflection. In that paper, we were given the task of

writing how we made our WoW player, and what inspired us to choose what we did for

the game. Because it was meant to be about our thinking process, I was allowed to be

more informal. Another fantastic example is my Argumentative essay and Digital

storytelling projects. With those assignments, I had to utilize different genre rules, formal

or not. Though they are about the same topic, it had to have very different ways of

presenting the arguement. .

Finally, critical reflection is sort of a culmination of a lot of these concepts. Using

all of these concepts to reflect on your previous papers and improve on future ones is key
to improving your writing. It is interesting to compare the quality from my earliest

writing, or even just comparing the quality from my original drafts. Compare my original

two drafts from my argumentative essay, and you can plainly see how much I improved

before submitting the final draft.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the class and improved my literacy. These core

concepts and class goals will help me in the future, and I feel that if I keep using these

techniques in the future I will continue to improve my writing.

Sincerely, Nico