Welcome to Miranda’s Portfolio! On this web site you will find four interesting essays that reflect my writing and personal beliefs about various issues. From Doctor Jones’ GWRT 103 class, I have learned many writing techniques and enhanced my writing skills into the next level. Now, I’ll explain in detail the four assignments I have completed and how I came to shape my writing skills. Project one is about “be the change” which talks about world changers and how they made a change in the world. I wrote about my mother, a truly great woman who represents millions of Chinese scholars making changes to their own small world and how these changes would eventually turn into a big changes contributing in the raise of a nation: China. The basic idea behind this essay is that millions of world changes like my mother would together made a big change, a change that would shock the world. Project two is about article analysis that helped me develop and enhance my analytical skills by evaluating an article from its audience, main points, rhetorical appeals, and credibility. By analyzing Hanna Rosin’s published article “American Murder Mystery” in The Atlantic magazine, I found that human nature is not influenced by living environment by relating new crime patterns in suburbs to moving to better environment in suburbs. The basic idea behind Rosin’s article is that the government-sponsored anti-poverty program moved lower class individuals from urban housing projects to middle class residential housing in suburbs, and at the same time, crimes shifted from big urban cities to mid-sized suburbs. It is apparent from this new crime pattern that the deepest aspect of human nature does not change even if the people move to better environment; these people moved to a new environment and bring their old selves with them. I came to this conclusion by analyzing Rosin’s step-by-step process of writing this essay. Project three is about rhetorical analysis of a visual image, or in other words, cartoons analysis, which helped me focusing on analyzing an image from rhetorical appeals, audience, main ideas, and background research. I have analyzed Elison Elliott’s cartoon “Too Big to Fail” which focused on four important financial institutions and how U.S. government bails them out even though they have committed crimes by involving in accounting fraud. The basic idea behind it is that because the four financial institutions are too important to the macro economy, the government treated them different from average criminals. I came to this conclusion by analyzing its background research data and its visual appeals to catch its hidden message. Project four is an argumentative type of essay that requires me to back up my main argument with research data and persuasive appeals. My argument is that doctor-assisted suicide should not be considered a crime; it is an act of humanity. This is a very controversial topic so this is the essay I worry the most. I really don’t want to offend people, and since it is already too late to change to topic, I have to be very careful in my wordings. I changed my main point from “legalizing doctor-assisted suicide” to “doctor-assisted suicide should not be considered a crime; it is an act of humanity”. Please be open-minded while reading this essay. I feel very sorry for choosing this topic, but since it is too late to change the topic, I did my best to sound not “too offensive”. I apologize if you feel uncomfortable with this topic. My professor, Doctor Billie J. Jones, helped my class and I enhance our writing skills by teaching us types of rhetorical appeals, methods of persuasion, and a passion in writing. After a semester of hard work focusing on the process of constructing focused, logical, coherent, and well-supported essay, I have found my passion in writing and develop my own writing style. One thing I find particularly useful that I have learned from this class is backing up my main points from different points of view. This technique is most useful for argumentative type of essay. I also improved my research skills through semester of writing. For all four assignments, regardless of their types, research is required in finding evidence, quotes, interview, and etc. One thing I am most proud of in GWRT 103 class is that I am very good at making an argument and backing it up with supporting evidence and research data. I had a great time in this writing class: it was fun to write, and my teacher was very supportive and helpful. I totally recommend this class, so if you are freshmen considering genet classes, please consider this one!
