Reading 1

I never actually realized how almost every piece of writing we write is rhetoric. Our purpose is always to persuade our audience to accept the idea that we are trying to impose in our writing. The last year I've written quite a few rhetoric pieces, college essays, college personal statements, scholarship letters, all examples of writing pieces where I was trying to convince my audience that I was the best candidate.

Up until reading those chapters, I had never thought that we really do use persuasion in everything we write. Even a letter to a teacher about trying to bump up our grade, is a form of rhetoric writing because we are attempting to persuade the teacher to give us a boost in our grade and we usually state our reasons as to why we deserve it and why we want it.

There's also a whole process we have to go through before we start writing, you can't just sit down and and begin rambling on about whatever it is you're trying to talk about... Well you can, but you most likely will end up with a pretty bad essay. You first have to identify your audience, because writing to a person in authority is a lot different than writing to a group of elementary school students. You then have to try to connect with the audience and focus on what position you are taking of that idea.

It was interesting to see the writing process laid out in front of you, these few chapters really brought to my attention the importance of writing rhetorically and the process behind getting started in writing a rhetoric piece.