6.3: Essay 3 (Self-Analysis)

Questions to Guide Your Argument

(You do not have to answer all of these, but use them to brainstorm your thesis and body paragraphs)

• Analysis of Different Forms: How did your understanding of ethos, pathos, logos, or kairos change when you transitioned from analyzing a text (essay 1) to analyzing a visual image (essay 2)? Which medium was harder for you to dissect, and why?
• Evaluating Strengths & Blind Spots: Looking objectively at your past essays, what is your greatest strength as an analytical writer? What is your most persistent weakness? Use specific quotes from your own essays to prove this. You can reference your timed essay too.
• The Role of Feedback and Revision: How did peer, tutor, and/or instructor feedback impact your initial understanding of an assignment? Did feedback or revision influence your following essay(s)? Argue how a specific revision you made improved the clarity or cogency of your work.
• Future Application: How will the rhetorical skills you've identified as your strengths serve you in future academic courses, your career, or personal life? What skills or other areas do you still need to improve or learn more about?

Sources Required

For this essay, your "outside sources" are your past course work and your textbook. At a minimum, you should quote and properly cite:

1. Your Essay 1 (Textual Analysis)
2. Your Essay 2 (Visual Analysis)
3. Course Material: At least one reference to a specific concept from your course textbook to ground your self-analysis in academic terminology.
4. Optional: you have the option to bring in 1 outside source as additional support for your analysis under any of the areas in “Questions to Guide Your Argument.”

Requirements Checklist

• Length: 1,500 words minimum.
• AI Usage: AI cannot be used to create, change, or translate your writing. Any allowable AI usage must be cited on the Works Cited page.
• Works Cited: A properly formatted Works Cited page containing your past essays and the course textbook.
• Formatting: Standard MLA format. Treat your own past essays as "Unpublished works" or for MLA citation purposes. Following is how that should be cited on your Works Cited:

Last Name, First Name. "Title of the Essay." English C1001, Professor Misaghi,

Date of Submission, Santa Monica College. Student paper.

^replace the 'Last Name, First Name' with your name, add in your own essay title, and change the date to the submission date. Everything else can stay as shown in the example above. Remember to double-space your entry and use handing indents as shown on the MLA Resources page.

Applicable Course Objectives & SLOs

• Objective 1: Define, recognize, and utilize forms of critical reasoning, including deductive and inductive reasoning, in a variety of rhetorical contexts.
• Objective 3: Evaluate and document evidence to construct arguments in a variety of rhetorical situations, distinguishing knowledge from belief and fact from judgment.
• Objective 4: Revise arguments and improve writing in response to peer review and instructor feedback.
• SLO 2: Reflect critically on one’s own thought processes to identify and avoid cognitive biases and common fallacies of language and thought.
• SLO 3: Draft written arguments to respond appropriately to texts, with attention to intended audience, purpose, and social context, and revise for clarity, cogency, persuasiveness, and soundness.

See dates posted on Canvas for rough drafts, peer reviews, and final draft.