The examining of rhetorical situations is an approach to the study of writing that has definitely built on the way I studied writing before coming to CCNY. I was introduced to the terms author, audience, tone, purpose, stance, language, genre, and medium in high school.  However, when examining pieces of work to determine rhetorical elements in high school, no connection was made between those rhetorical elements. Because of this I would write rhetorical pieces without the use of key elements. For example, I often wrote argumentative/persuasive essays, so I wrote with the purpose of persuading in mind. But, I did not focus on other rhetorical elements like tone, genre, audience, and language. Now, when writing for other classes as well as projects outside of college, I use the purpose and audience to alter the language and tone accordingly. Additionally, this approach to writing has built on the way I study writing because I had never written a source based essay or compared the rhetorical elements of different sources prior to this course. It was in writing my source based essay for this course that I first examined pieces of writing for rhetorical elements to compare with other sources. Doing so has helped strengthen arguments as well, and this can be seen in my source based essay. One of the sources I used was an academic article written by three credible authors. The authors’ credibility and the facts they stated without their personal opinions makes it easier to fulfill their purpose of informing and persuading the audience. This example shows the importance of rhetorical elements in writing.

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