Throughout the year various assignments, projects, and papers have aided me in becoming a better writer in both an academic sphere and otherwise. One such aid was these very TOW posts. Although my posts remained very consistent, they have shown signs of maturation. One of my early TOW's was about a political cartoon by famous graffiti artist, Banksy. In this post I listed the elements that made up the cartoon, but did not really explain their deeper effect (the way in which they helped/hindered the creator's message). This is in great contrast to one of my later TOW's about the an article featuring photographs of elderly people. The photographer has placed them in front of mirrors that depicted how they really saw themselves, and it was an extremely moving piece. When I wrote about it I was able to focus not only on the individual rhetorical choices made by the artist, but also on what those choices contributed to the final product.
I feel as though I have mastered identifying at least a few rhetorical devices in the majority of pieces I would be given to look at and I can also explain why they're significant/their overall effect. I do, however, find my self reverting to the same rhetorical devices in many cases and would aim to learn more that I could then utilize in my analysis of various pieces. Doing so would also strengthen me as a writer personally because I would then be able to use these devices in my own writing.
As previously mentioned, the purpose of these TOW assignments was to make us better readers and writers of mature non-fiction texts. I feel as though they helped a little bit, but really did not carry nearly as much weight as other writing assignments we worked on throughout the year. To be honest, I think the in-class essays given every few weeks helped me the most with my writing. I am aware that the TOW's can play a role in that, by providing examples to work from, but I don't feel as though they were significantly beneficial to me as a writer.
