Assignment 26 - Anna Baskin

Reading essays in class anonymously was an extremely helpful exercise. I felt like I improved my writing, developed a new tone through the frequent exercises and also enhanced my creativity in how I molded my argument. I especially appreciated the encouragement to break away from the traditional five paragraph essay format, and the warnings about no-no words – while I knew some words were weaker than others, checking with a list was a concrete way to discourage useless words.

I did think that more description of what we are writing would improve our rhetorical analysis essays. I felt like we jumped into the first essays and continued to improve our writing, but learned little about how to analyze a work. Later in the year we critically analyzed pieces like “An Inheritance of Wood” in inner/outer discussions, and just before the exam we read sample pieces and you broke them down for the class. Both of these activities helped me learn to read the text critically, but I think they would have been more helpful at the beginning of the year, so we can practice these skills while writing our essays.