Blog 1

Throughout my life I have acquired common, as well as precise, social skills that overtime have been developed into my writing and rhetorical skills. Many things have molded them including television shows, Facebook, texting, media, as well as everyday life. As with every living being I have my strengths and weaknesses, and have proved more strengths then weaknesses by getting to the point I am in my life. Some of the strengths I have include: taking facts from research to make my point more powerful, as well as having a knack for persuasion. These are both things I excel in due to the usage of them in my everyday life. For instance, I am always trying to convince my friends to do or not do certain things and also always doing research whether it is for science or simply to figure out how to do something. One of my strengths, persuasion, relates to one of my favorite movies Inception, which the whole movie was based on convincing others to do things. Inception, although some things were unrealistic, helped me understand more of the psychological component of convincing people ideas through emotion. On the other hand my weaknesses include my grammatical errors and a rather minute vocabulary compared to some. Both of these things I would like to improve because I think it will help me greatly in the world to better back my point, or opinion. There are many ways I can improve my writing, including but not limited to; all of my daily conversations, texting, the internet, and most importantly this class. My daily life will help me improve because I am a very friendly and outgoing person and communicating is a great way to find out new words. Blogging can even help me by just reading some of the quotes people post and seeing how things are punctuated and also the different styles that people use to write. I think this class would help me the most out of all because it is an English class and although I am very lazy, I like to succeed. So if I am required to work and write papers I will and with time I believe my grammar and vocabulary will improve through peer review and constructive criticism. Although I may get down on myself a little now since I am not the best of writers I can just remember not to give up like one of my favorite songs, which is “Till I Collapse”, by my favorite music artist, Eminem. I can’t wait to see how my writing skills develop throughout this upcoming semester, with all of the different types of writing we will have to do, as well as writing in our personal journal. Hopefully my goals to become a much better writer will be achieved so it can help me move forward. I have many challenges left to overcome to get to my final goal of being an Orthodontist with my own practice and improved writing will help me get there.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eminem/tillicollapse.html - Till I Collapse Lyrics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception_%28film%29 - Inception

"My Addicted Son" Analysis

In our world today there are many things malevolent that go on, such as: robberies, gangs, violence, and even drug abuse. In an ever changing world all these things seem just to be getting worse and worse as time goes on. So, in relation to Sheff's memior for The New York Times Magazine, what he states is fact and not just a made up story. Although the story is personal and about his son almost all of the readers can feel his pain brought by his son's drug addiction. This is true due to actual experience with oneself, someone close, or even the dramatic stories we hear or see in everyday life. It seems that Sheff is trying to reach out to the broad category of people who will read his article, through the story of his son to better inform us about the dangers of drugs. From this it helps forewarn many people not to turn to this path and, if already against it, help others steer clear from that path.

Not only is he warning us about the dangers of drug use but, I also believe that he is trying to let us know what the victim and people close to the victim go through. He also tells us what can be done to help the victim, which is sometimes very limited, as shown in the article. Next he, informs us to realize what hardships the victim must go through while recovering. In my opinion I believe the author to be using a Pathos and Logos appeal to get the message to the audience. Ethos, by demonstrating the emotions he must be feeling to the audience through his hardships and using a Logos appeal through the facts he brings to the table about the low success rates of recovering and rehabilitation centers rates.

From this essay I think I will use some of the same rhetorical approaches that Sheff used, just for different topics. One thing that I will try to use is the Ethos appeal, because my audience is people who have gone through the same thing while he could not due to the audience of his memoir being so broad. I will definitely be using the two most successful appeals in my mind, which are Pathos and Logos because, I think that playing with someone’s emotions or showing data can help someone better understand where someone is coming from or better understand their ideas.