When interacting with people unknown to you, you must be able to use formal language. This is because speaking in a polite manner allows for clarity and ensures that you continue speaking with the person. When conducting a field report, interviewing and surveying is essential to collect data. When doing so, the linguistic differences among the people becomes obvious. Furthermore, the researcher must be polite when approaching people in public as well as when inquiring about an interview. By doing so, rhetorical sensibility was developed. I was able to adapt my language based on the situation I was in. For example, when conducting a survey at Fordham University I made sure to approach people in a polite way. This sense of rhetorical sensibility can also be seen throughout the various assignments given to us during the semester. For example, the field report was written using a passive voice in the past tense. This is different to the observation skill building exercise where the use of pronouns like “I” was allowed.

Being able to effectively gather information from an article is very important, especially for an assignment such as a field report. In order to make sure I gathered valuable information from the articles I used for my field report, I made sure to annotate them. After doing so for the rest of my articles, I started writing my work. I started off with a first draft of my assignments, and when they needed to be revised, I simply went back to correct my mistakes. When making these changes however, I found that they often affected other parts of the paper. This wasn’t a big deal, and in most cases. I was able to improve upon my initial draft further.

When working on the various assignments given to us in this class, I was able to take into account the rhetorical situation of each. For example, when writing the field report my goal was to explain the student loan debt crisis and the remedial measure being used to take care of the situation. This differed from my observation skill-building exercise, where my goal instead was to paint the scenario of the CCNY spring activities fair. Although both papers differed in goals, the medium in which the goal was achieved was similar. Both the field report and the skill-building exercise were typed and printed on paper. However, the genre of each assignment was different. The field report was more of a conventional scientific paper, whereas the observation skill-building exercise was not. This meant that the field report used more formal language than the observation skill-building exercise. On the other hand, the observation skill-building exercise used more descriptive language. By using different types of language, I was able to meet the audience’s expectations for both assignments. In the field report, the audience’s expectation was to be informed about the student loan debt crisis. In the observation skill-building exercise, the audience instead needed to have a picture in their heads of the event that was being observed.

A lot of the work done in this course was collaborative. Some of our essays were peer reviewed prior to turning them in. This extra level of revision was helpful when trying to perfect our assignments. Aside from peer reviews, most of the course dealt with writing the field report. We worked in groups in order to divide the amount of work done. Working in a group allowed for easier data collection. For example, my group was able survey a large part of the Fordham University Lincoln Campus. This not only allowed for a more efficient time in gathering data, but also allowed for a slightly larger sample size. However, the group work didn’t stop there. As a group, we were able to input our own ideas into a field report, which allowed for one person to make up for what the others may have been lacking.

When writing, one must determine by which means works the best in order to convey the intended message. Failing to do so could lessen the value of the information presented in the writing. The field report is one such example, where multimodal composition must be used in order to clearly convey the message. Language is one such mode in which incorrect use of it can lead to a worse outcome. The field report is a scientific type of paper, therefore formal language must be used. Also, the first person must be avoided at all costs. The use of language in the field report was important in order to deliver clear and concise results. However, language wasn’t the only mode used. Visuals were just as important to the field report. Through graphs and charts, we were able to display our findings in a simple and easy to read manner.

Each assignment in the course had a purpose; whether it be to improve our skills, or to research a topic. For the interview skill-building exercise, the overall purpose was to gain experience in conducting an interview. However, when doing the assignment, I developed a stance of my own. I interviewed my friend who had dropped out of high school because I wanted to gain insight on what it was like to dropout of high school. This was my main reason for interviewing him. I had always thought that you had to be under terrible circumstances to dropout and that afterwards your options for the future would be limited. However, after interviewing him, my perspective on dropping out of high school changed.

Certain pieces of writing require you to do some preliminary research. When doing so however, one must take into account a multitude of factors. These factors include things like relevancy, accuracy, credibility, etc. For example, articles that were written in a period of time where the information may be outdated are not useful in most circumstances. Many assignments given to us in the course involved us having to do some sort of research of the topic on hand. When I looked at articles to use for an assignment like the field report, I had to look at relevancy a lot. This is because statistics change all the time, and the state of the student loan debt as it was a couple of years ago was less useful to me than the current state of student loan debt. Once I had determined that an article was good to use, I had to incorporate it into my writing. The introduction section of the field report is a good example of how I was able to use the articles I found in order to explain the student loan debt crisis. For the most part, I paraphrased in order to explain the main ideas of each article in my own words. However, I quoted the article at times when what the article said was important.