Writing my rhetorical analysis of “Theater Counts: How Theater Education Transforms Students’ Lives” by Gwen Middleton and Mary Dell’Erba helped me gain confidence in my writing abilities. I discovered that I could write a sufficient amount on a limited topic, and I was able to experiment with new techniques. My writing activities for this assignment were different from my assignments at the start of this course. In this essay, I tried allowing my analysis’ content to control the structure of my writing, instead of the structure controlling the content. I learned this technique from one of my first few assignments in this class. It drastically improved my essay by helping me avoid repetition and the inclusion of unnecessary information. Writing this…show more content… I quoted specific vocabulary from the article in order to demonstrate how the rhetorical concepts used can influence readers. My understanding of rhetoric has not necessarily changed from this project, however now I feel more educated on the depth rhetorical appeals can have. Before, I thought of rhetoric as an obvious way in which a writer attempts to gull their readers, but now I know that subtle changes within writing can be made that can greatly impact the audience. Now that I know how rhetoric can be applied, I can use it for everyday activities. For example, I can use it for speech writing and public speaking, which I occasionally have to do for school and extracurricular clubs, such as the National Honor Society (NHS). This knowledge can also be used to improve my writing for this class, as well as other college courses in the future. Additionally, feedback from my peers will help me become a stronger essayist. The peer comment I received on my assignment argued that my conclusion began to stray from being analytic, but instead seemed to be more
