Reflection About Zoos

This quarter truly helped me narrow my focus and improve my overall ability to write using different strategies. Before this course, I had little experience with picking one topic, examining it from different perspectives, and then choosing which side I agreed with. When I decided to choose the debate surrounding zoos as my topic, I truly did not know which side I was going to use in my convincing essay. However, the preparation and research we did for class and in the inquiry essay helped me clarify my thoughts and pick a side. While there were certain challenges and unfamiliar concepts I encountered throughout this course, such as finding appropriate sources and writing a convincing essay, I learned to adapt and accumulate more writing skills.

In my first draft, my conclusion was weak and did a bad job at ending the essay on an interesting, yet convincing note. Quoting my original draft, my conclusion stated, “Some would say that zoos should exist simply for the human benefits. Supporters argue zoos provide jobs, an overall positive economic impact, and generate large amounts of revenue.” There is nothing wrong with beginning my conclusion like this, but because it’s boring and a repetitive statement, it is not a strong way to end the paper. Consequently, in my next revised draft, due to a suggestion from Professor Lafever, I started my conclusion with a narrative to make it more engaging. In the narrative, I compared life in the wild to live in the zoo, with the intent to display the differences to the audience. Another way I revised my paper for the final draft was to include more examples, such as the Jouvenal article, which gives quantitative evidence of large numbers of animal abuse and death for just six small zoos in the Maryland area. This adds further credibility to my paper because it gives factual evidence of animals dying, and also utilizes pathos by appealing to the readers moral values against the wrongful killing of animals. Using more sources with each revised draft served to strengthen my

One of the rhetorical knowledge learning outcomes is the ability to interpret and respond to different audiences. Going into this class, I was looking to improve on identifying audiences because I struggled with that in WRD 103 last quarter. Of all our assignments, the inquiry essay, the convincing essay, and the advertisement helped me improve because they all were intended to reach audiences in different ways. For instance, the inquiry essay had a purpose to inform, meaning the audience could be a variety of people. Hence, because I didn’t form an opinion within this specific essay, I learned not to direct it towards one group with a specific opinion, but rather a variety of individuals who may have differing opinions. In contrast, I learned that when arguing to convince the audience is identified as someone who disagrees with your claim or has not yet formed an opinion. The convincing essay and the advertisement were assignments where I had to target the audience who may disagree with me, which was very different from the inquiry essay because it took a clear stance and was aiming to convince rather than inform. While the audience’s with the convincing essay and advertisement were similar, the advertisement was unique because it was a visual assignment, which meant I needed to consider what my audience would find physically appealing as well as