One learning objective that I’ve personally succeeded in learning is to explore and analyze a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Before this class, I have never heard of the term rhetorical situation but I did already know bits and pieces of it from my prior courses in High School. I learned how to explore and analyze a wide variety of genres and rhetorical situations through exposure. I’ve had to read a lot for this class, some of which were hard such as the Heidegger reading which honestly had me rereading multiple times. I’ve also had to read various articles about my future research project about a specific New York landmark/site which has me reading testimonials and news articles from various times and tones. I’ve had to go from reading a PBS article to a whole development plan proposed by a government official just to get an idea of the past and possible future of Penn Station. I can definitely say this exposure has helped me achieve this learning objective as I’ve been able to understand and analyze the main points of various forms of written media.

I’ve developed in the area of being able to analyze different forms of written media as part of the learning objective as I’ve mentioned before the exposure forced me to learn how to approach different genres for analysis. Before, I used to just read and extract the main points but now I read through the text, pick out the main points, think about why the author makes those points, and keep the rhetorical situation in mind so that I can truly understand what I am reading. As I continue reading different genres and written media for this class, I predict that I’ll only continue to develop more in my ability since I’ll be constantly thrown more and more to read and analyze.