The different types and styles of writing assignments assigned throughout this semester, Summer 2025, was somewhat varied and interesting to formulate. The major assignments such as the research paper were styles I was fairly familiar and experienced with. These assignments focused on a more “to the point” style of writing that focuses more on facts and statements rather than exclusively persuasion. I’d like to think I’m generally decent at these types of papers as I tend to formulate my arguments in very logical and fact oriented ways. The other two aspects of rhetorical writing are a bit more difficult for me to do (ethos and pathos). 

Ethos and pathos are types of writing I’ve always had a bit of a problem with doing well. This semester helped me try to expand these areas of my writing at least a little bit. I definitely still focus on the logos style of arguments over the other two, but I added some elements of ethos and pathos in parts of my final draft of my research paper. Overall, my rhetorical writing has gotten at least somewhat better in two areas which I would say is a good thing. 

Most of my writing assignments in this class were fairly straightforward with what was expected. I used this to my advantage when writing by focusing on those things first and foremost. After those requirements were met, or mostly met, I would go back and add to the assignment what I felt it needed or revise how I worded some arguments or critiques. I choose this method of writing because it helped me stay organized and made it easier to get what was needed for the assignment done. Because of this, it made going back later to revise and improve upon my work a bit easier as the framework of the assignment is already there and taking away, changing, or adding to it is much easier than having to restructure an entire part of the assignment.

Some assignments felt more bland or boring than others. The annotated bibliographies and resume are the two that stand out the most. The annotated bibliographies being basically summaries made it feel less like a writing assignment and more like a basic overview of the paper/source I read for the actual assignment later in the semester. The resume is also just your stock standard resume. There wasn’t anything super extravagant or interesting about the assignment or the writing for it. I could probably have made them more interesting but that could have potentially made them less useful to the reader for getting actually meaningful information out of them. The annotated bibliographies in particular were more about making a good, well thought out summary than some big rhetorical writing assignment. 

The very ePortfolio this is on is another example of where I could be better at making things more visually appealing or eye-catching. Personally, I prefer sites that are easy to navigate and don’t have lots of visual clutter. For instance, something like Apple’s website for most of their products have very few useful tabs or information on their main page but lots and lots of pictures and graphics of irrelevant information. I would rather just make something simple to navigate and easy to find the information you are looking for because time is the most important thing to me. I hate when my time is wasted by bad planning or by whatever thing I’m trying to use is deliberately inefficient at giving me the information I want and/or need. I could definitely make this ePortfolio more interesting, but I just don’t see that much reason for doing so if the point is to show off the assignments themselves.

Organization of each assignment was something I tried to make as easy to understand as possible. To me, catching someone’s attention is less important than retaining the attention. You can make something super interesting, but if whatever you are writing is extremely wordy or long winded, then the reader has a good chance of getting lost or just losing interest in your work. Personally, I feel like spreading out those attention grabbers is more effective than shoving them all into the introduction section of a paper. Most people forget that general conversation and writing go hand in hand. If you read a paper out loud and it feels awkward to say or understand, then it is probably just as awkward for a reader that isn’t you, the person who wrote and understands what the writer is trying to say. Because of this, I tried to spread out the interesting information I gathered for the research paper throughout different sections of the paper when applicable. For instance, I could have put a lot of the more interesting information about video games and their genres and sub-genres into the introduction, but I chose to spread it out between the introduction for basic background information, the results section to further expand upon the prior knowledge given in the introduction, and the discussion section to expand the idea into other studies or into new avenues of research. This method feels more natural rather than shoving all of that information into one of those three sections, and it gives the paper a feeling of a gradual increase in complexity and applicability in the knowledge being presented to the reader.

Overall, while I feel like I have a slightly better understanding of aspects of rhetorical writing like ethos and pathos, I believe I still mainly focus on logos for the majority of my writing in this class. This was in part due to the nature of what we were writing but also due to how I personally like to formulate my arguments. I understand the importance of ethos and pathos and their usefulness in writing, but I still prefer a larger focus on the logical thinking aspect attributed to logos for the types of writing used during this class. Writing assignments like summaries, resumes, and research papers kind of support this idea as well due to all of these focusing on the facts rather than feelings or persuasion.