Core Value 1. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.

The best example of this Core Value is my Definition Essay and it’s rewrite. This essay was the first product of two meetings with my professor that helped specify what this specific paper and my overall hypothesis would be about. In my first draft, I had problems picking out the best quotes and examples from my sources as they weren’t as persuasive as I  first believed. Some of my claims also came off as weak due to the way my sentences were structured. After asking for and receiving feedback from my professor, I was able to go back through my sources and find evidence in the same text that was more persuasive while making my claims very direct. I also worked on cutting out repetitive or unnecessary statements that were pointed out to me without losing the flow of my overall work. 

Core Value 2. My work demonstrates that I read critically, and that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities. 

An example of my work that synthesized ideas from critical reading to create a discourse is my Rebuttal Argument. Like my other arguments, the rebuttal started with finding academic sources and analyzing them to understand the author’s point of view. In my rebuttal, I took pieces from authors who had contradictory points of view and used them to counter each other ultimately to support my hypothesis. This was done alongside adding my own thoughts on the issue giving my essay original purpose rather than regurgitating the information already presented by the outside sources. I did this without losing the integrity of the outside author’s work or misrepresenting it to fit the needs of my paper. 

Core Value 3. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

Through the Visual Rhetoric assignment, I was able to learn how arguments and claims could be made through visuals as well as text. Watching the PSA I chose without audio allowed me to put emphasis on each small decision the director and crew were making. These small and large decisions don’t just allow each scene to play out but can add to the overall message. This could be seen in the way a character’s face changes to show disappointment or a sudden change from a light setting to a dark one to encourage the feeling of disaster. In my analysis, I took all of these details into consideration and described them in detail. I then summarized how the creators utilized these visuals to convey the purpose of the PSA to their audience. 

Core Value 4: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

When writing my essay, I spent a large amount of time looking for academic sources that would support, or sometimes counter, my claims. This work is shown in my Annotated bibliography. While doing this assignment, I focused on using sources found from Google Scholar and the Rowan Online Library. This allowed me to use peer-reviewed articles from academic journals, which the majority of my sources are. Each source has an explanation of my understanding of the piece without criticism of the author’s view. Below this, I have the “How I Used It” section. These statements prove how I later would take these works and interpret them into pieces of evidence that I could use to support my hypothesis. 

Core Value 5. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citations. 

Throughout every part of my process, I made sure to properly cite the works of outside authors used in my own essays and arguments. The culmination of this is seen in my Research Essay. In this, the work of my three argumentative essays can be seen, along with how I cited sources. Each time I quoted, summarized, or directly referenced an author’s piece, I implemented an in-text citation. This included a mix of the author’s name, publishing source, or the title of the text.  These were all appropriately used immediately before I gave the information taken from their work. The summas or quotations were written with the appropriate context of the writer and their point of view. With this, I also included a References section at the end of my essay that cites each source with APA bibliographic notations.