Jason Brown

Professor S. Brandon

ENG 112

March 18, 2012

What I Have Learned

I want to start off by saying this has been a fantastic semester so far and that I love this class. I have learned plenty of new things that have been helping me to get through school work, but most importantly it has been helping me in life situations.

This class has taught me how to be a patient person, because when it comes down to writing a paper, like this one or doing hard homework you have to be patient if not you will feel like just giving up on everything which you cannot do at all. Being patient has also been helping me in my life situations at my job, because if it was up to me I would have been quit from being disrespected by rude customers.

Have you ever been told you talk way too much? Well, I have been told that I communicate with anybody and everybody. To me, being a better communicator will get you through life a lot more. You never know who you could be talking to at that moment. The person that you could be talking to could make you a rich person or even talk knowledge into you that you did not even know about. During this class I have learned how to be a better communicator than I once was by participating in different discussions with other people and with the professor. I have been learning how to be a better listener than I once was also, because I am the type of person who will talk and never listen to anybody. When other people talked to me I used to just stand or sit and pretend like I was listening, but it was mainly going in one ear and out the other.

            Speaking of communication using rhetorical knowledge is a great way of trying to communicate with people, because it helps you learn how to talk and write to your audiences. Everybody has mainly used there rhetorical knowledge when they talked to their friends. The rhetorical knowledge helps you recognize the elements of argumentation in text by using what they call the rhetorical triangle. The rhetorical triangle is when the author talks or writes it text depending on who their audiences are in a time called chronos. It also adapts the writing to meet its demands for argumentation in the context. Rhetorical knowledge helps you out when you are trying to argue about something. Like if you get the arguing with your girlfriend about something this helps you get down to main point about why you are arguing with this person instead of going hours and hours of arguing about this point that turns into something else. This rhetorical knowledge can help you analyze the needs and expectations of instructors, students, and other audiences. Rhetorical helped me learn how to bring credibility to my paper, because without credibility in your argument paper how are people going to know that you are speaking the truth about what you are arguing. Learning about rhetorical helped me deliver text appropriately in print, digital, visual, or oral so it can meet all of my audiences expectations and needs. For example say I am writing about an argument to my boss about texting and driving, but somebody else is doing the same to compete with me and this paper is going to help the boss find out who to promote to the next level I would want everybody to use a step in oral communication by listening to me read my paper and tell me that my paper has credible points in it plus it goes with the audiences that I was writing to.

            Learning about how to use critical thinking, reading, and writing process also helped me how to write a paper. By applying techniques of inquiry and research to my paper easily such as finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing the appropriate primary and secondary sources. It made my distinctions in thinking, reading, and writing more effective by helping me think deeper into things after researching on it to put into my paper with the writing process.

            I have also learned how to use my time more consistently with my work and all my other hobbies from reading about Thomas Jefferson who had the things that he did timed out. Reading about Thomas Jefferson also made me a better person physically and emotionally now I do not save things for the last minute, because I made my own schedule and timed my days out.

            Yes, I did learn about MLA format in English 111, but after using it now in English 112 I have got this method down pact and I love how it works. This does help me be more patient with writing my paper, because it makes it a lot easier than what it is if you did not use a 12 font, indent, or use double space.

            To conclude this being in this class has taught me a lot. All these things that I have learned about I use in my life now mainly of how to communicate with people and how to listen. It made me a better person in real life of how to be patient and of how to not hold things off to the last minute. Leaving things off to the last minute makes things more stressful on you and actually waste your time. My professor takes the things that we learn about and puts them in real life situations which makes this class more interesting and helps me to learn easily and more effectively.

            In this class I feel like I should at least end up with a B average, but it is not my call to what I get. I know that I did learn a lot from this class and I am willing to keep learning more from it. My favorite part of this class so far was learning about how to use the rhetorical knowledge, because you always need to know how to speak to your audiences and at the same time have the credibility that you need. Also another favorite part of this class that I learned was how to improve my oral communication, because this method helps you meet new people that you might need throughout your life, but the only way you can communicate with people is also by listening to them and not ignoring what they have to say to you. If you do that you are not learning about this person neither is you using this method of oral communication effectively.