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Austin Jordan Packer

Dr. Stacey Van Dahm

December 9, 2017

E-Portfolio English 2010 Reflection

E-Portfolio English 2010 Reflection

In the Fall semester of 2017 I took an English 2010 course at Salt Lake Community

College. This was my second English class I had taken in college. This course built on the

concepts developed in English 1010 especially regarding rhetoric and styles of writing. Through

the course I was able to learn to focus on specific parts of a larger conversation.

Our first assignment was a letter to the editor on a topic of our choice. We were meant to

pick something controversial as it gave much more for us to work with. I picked the topic of

abortion which I would find out through the semester was a bigger argument then I had first

believed, as I was faced with the many separate yet connected ethical, and legal problems

regarding the subject. However, from this I was able to learn how to better focus on certain

aspects instead of trying to tackle the issue as a whole.

I found the second assignment to be interesting and the main project which is posted in

the e-portfolio. The assignment was to create an infographic or multimedia project about our

subject. For this assignment I remained with the topic of abortion, but I specified on the moral

argument of abortion. It was important that I was able to focus on a single aspect of the
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controversial argument because otherwise there is far too much to write about. I soon found out

that I wasnt specific enough in my moral argument on abortion because it still required wide

explanation of each subject of abortion just with whether it was considered moral. So, with

project 4 I revised the old subject to what my new introduction states as This in an effort to

further understand if morality can answer the questions concerning abortion. This was a much

more specific topic that I was able to cover instead of abortion as a whole. By focusing on

morals, I was able to have a clear and focused goal which helped me much more to research

through the paper.

Another key element of the class was learning about and incorporating rhetoric. Within

all of our assignments this was a continuous theme. In me second project I was able to use

appeals to logos through explanation of data found in a survey from the CDC. Following the

data, I wrote:

More understanding of what those changes were is written about by Sarah Kliff a

writer for the Washington post. She writes about the decreasing trend in abortions since

1990 she says "A number of factors likely contribute to this trend, including state-level

abortion restrictions and a wave of violence against abortion providers in the 1990's,

when five were killed. The decrease in abortion providers has correlated with a decrease

in the rate of abortions." (Kliff)

With these changes in state-level restrictions, violence, and killing of abortion providers

it was individual's morals stances which drove them to fight, run, or kill.

This was able to both give more validity and connect to the topic. It gave validity by further

explaining what was being seen in the graph with a credible source. It also connected to the
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topic by then transitioning into a change in individual morality that caused such action. This use

of logos helped to clarify and support the paper on the issue of morality.

Throughout the class I feel that I was able to better learn how to write on a specific

subject of an argument instead of trying to tackle the entire conversation. I was also able to learn

the importance of good research, and many of the resources available to conduct said research.

While using these sources to appeal to rhetoric to help build the separate projects that I worked

on.