This story will greatly reflect me on a chapter in my life where I had to develop and face a tough challenge that I still must deal with at this day in age, my pronunciation between 2 of my languages of English and Spanish. My problem with having to learn how to speak 2 different languages while learning how to speak in general as well has always bothered me and affected my mental health for a while which caused me to seek out for professional help at my school for years. My audience that I want to listen to my story are those who have had the same problems with my speaking would be those students and even adults who must try living a life especially in the United States where everyone is diverse and are from many countries around the world.
I want my story to reach those who don’t feel comfortable speaking up and trying to learn how to socialize in public since speaking to others is a normal deed in our society. My reflection on taking steps to better develop my grammar with English and Spanish especially since both I must use in my daily life and in my household brings back many memories on the struggles on my path to better myself socialize and not shy away those who have wanted to talk to me. Some of the meaningful insights that I’ve reflected from my story would be my young 4-year-old self-trying to make it through and learn how to talk to people like a normal person. This important insight helps look back at the time where I couldn’t determine between the words “there” and “theirs” and shows that till this day I struggle with pronunciation and grammar. These insights like reflecting how much better I am with socializing with people and proving to myself that by having practice with something will better help my life for the future.
To conclude my stressful young story, some terms like pathos and ethos would better reflect the way I could be able to have this story reach out to others that could relate to me and understand how stressful life would have been. Pathos was shown in the story trying to express my emotions from distress to anger for the times I’ve tried my hardest learning at a young age for about 3 years and was the hardest class I’ve had to get through and learn English and Spanish grammar at the same time. Ethos would be proven to show others that my story could be related to others and have more trust in my story since I did grow up with immigrant parents in a household only speaking Spanish and having to learn English as well.
Reflection – The audience I targeted was teenagers and adults under 22. I felt that sharing this story was very important to people because it shows a lot of character development not only for me but for others also. I chose to write about this it shows the significance of tv shows/movies for children. It can help them understand languages and the environment they are in faster than a lot of other ways of teaching language and it help them build a personality that they want. I mean we can all remember who we anted to be like growing up with tv’s and movies. A lot of the things we said came from these sources.
Language and literacy are used in everyone’s life, and it is around the globe. This allows us humans communicate with each other, learn more about ourselves and the world around us, and helps our character development.
Growing up PBS Kids and other kids’ channels such as Noggin/Nick Jr played a role in learning English. I was born in the US, but both my parents are from Haiti. At home they would barely speak English with us since that isn’t their primary language making Haitian Creole the first language I spoke. It wasn’t until I was around 4 years old when I started speaking clear English so that other people could understand me. These channels gave me the ability to communicate with people other than my family and start making friends as a child.
Some shows that helped me learn how to speak are nothing but classics everyone should know. Mickey Mouse, Electric Company, Cyberchase, etc. But I also watched a lot of movies with my dad such as Boyz in da hood, Coming to America and listened to music a lot. Focusing on a lot of words being used in entertainment industry allowed me to speak better and learn better. I believe that if English is not your first language, watching films, shows, and listening to music is an amazing way to learn a language and their culture. It played a key role in my development and communicating with others.
My audience was targeted students who are minorities who ever felt lost in their own community. I tailored my language and rhetorical choices to appeal to them by sharing the stress I endured during my trip. The meaningful insight I gained through writing this assignment is learning to write in the first-person point of view at a specific moment. The purpose of my writing impacted my learning and my writing because It reminds me to stay on track and find new ideas on the subject I’m writing about.
Every advertisement uses Rhetoric methods (ethos, pathos and logos) to make people interested in it. For this assignment I will analyze the advertisement from Gatorade (One of the large power energy drink companies). They always invite the biggest superstar in any kind of sport. For example, in this advertisement, they invited Michael Jordan to endorse their drink. From this example we can know that they use logos and ethos to make people connect thinking that all professional basketball players might drink Gatorade and show that their energy drink is very effective. They also used the influence of Michael Jordan to make their brand well-known. Most of their customers are people who play any kind of sport, which is why they always invite superstars from sports like Michael Jordan and Usain Bolt and they always sponsor a lot of sports competitions.
They put “WORKS 30% FASTER THAN WATER” beside Michael Jordan, as like he is talking this sentence to the customers. Because of ethos methods, people might believe that this energy drink works 30% faster than water. They compare water with their drink because we drink water every day and we can’t service without water especially people who play sports they need more water than normal people. This example is only a little part of Gatorade’s advertisement. They always sign new famous superstars from sports to endorse their brand to make them always relative with professional sports.
While writing this paper, I began to tailor it with the audience by explaining in detail how I got into literature. That’s why I had explained what happened to me in 9th grade with learning new things about literature like foreshadowing. Which later on affected me into watching more stories in media like Black Mirror, Attack on Titan, Death Note and more shows. I then begin to explain one of those shows that is Black Mirror to show how much detail was placed into it. This should hopefully show the viewer on why I like this aspect of literature and an example of that being used in a show. What I noticed when I wrote this was that I was able to write a lot more than I thought because in some other papers I would have a harder time to write more things in it to meet the quota on how much should be written. Here not so much due to the subject being something I enjoy to see and explaining it was pretty nice and relaxing. Another insight was my writing seems basic where I have simple English, I don’t say any complicated words just using simple words. I have seen it in my other works too where I don’t use more complex words or sentences I think anyways. Concepts that have impacted my piece as well as the author since it seems the creators for at least Black mirror have made sure to explain more things of the episode they made and how they placed a lot of detail in it. Whether one was having music that represented the characters personalities or how they took inspiration from things that had happened in real life.
Stories have interested me in the past but those were mainly from what I remember shows from tv like Spider man or Spongebob. Books I had mainly seen when I needed to but I would usually choose magic treehouse series of books because I did like the stories and adventures the characters get me. They were all interesting but I haven’t known them much other than being fun until 9th grade. 9th grade I had an English class which was okay during the beginning, however when we reach I think the middle and end of the year. We began to learn about literary devices, they are an aspect of writing that can be identified and help it out. Only one that has stuck with me to this day was foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is when a hint to something that happens in the story in the future. This had me interested a lot when I heard about it and the reading I think we had and analyzed was the Veldt. In there it had some analyzing we had to do and one I remembered while writing this was the lions. In the end of the story the lions had eaten some people, this was possibly foreshadowed with how in the beginning it talked about lions eating and it heading to drink water, exactly what it had done at the end of the story. This was a spark of interest with things later on in the future furthering my interest, an example was a show they revealed in that class being Black Mirror. It led to me searching the show with how interesting the concept was and how much detail is placed into each episode which has its own story in them. They had introduced a new literary device that was symbolism. Symbolism is things that tend to represent other things. An example could be using pink to represent love or red to represent something dangerous. These two literary devices had me look into more shows and enjoy stories even more with them. Some of these shows or stories were Attack on Titan, Death Note, Xenoblade and possibly more that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
Black Mirror is a show about technology and how people are seen using the technology. It’s a dark show at times showing how technology can affect people in the future, whether it’s by a rate system people can do to others that determine their status in the world or making digital clones of people. All the episodes have their own stories making it an anthology series that can have some references to previous episodes. They also contain some details whether it’s symbolism or foreshadowing.
An example of symbolism was in the episode “15 million merits” with the main character receiving a hand crafted penguin statue, representing it being much more real and heartwarming. Then at the end he receives a penguin statue that’s made from a factory, this is to show at the start he was willing to fight the system they had lived on. This was a system where to get a better life you needed some celebrity like America’s Got Talent. However, when he vented his frustration he then gained his own show about saying he will fight the system and tell everyone to not give up. That is all an act for a show, revealing he traded his will to fight for a good cause to get a better lifestyle which could be debated is still not real. Another instance with symbolism and also foreshadowing was “Black Christmas”, in a scene there are two people about to have alone time. There is a wall with three Xs that glow red which indicate the situation they are in on both that part but also the violence that will soon happen. There was another shot with the girl leaving only to then be followed up by a scene with a character sharpening his knife. There are more scenes and episodes that show something like, I recommend checking it out at least the first few seasons.
When discovering literature it can be nice to see the little details that soon become prevalent later on makes me see how much care was placed into writing the stories. Showing how everything is connected made me even want to try writing stories myself. Due to how great it can be to see a story come together, the lessons shown, small bits to show something grander later on. It has made me watch more stories mainly in anime, games and sometimes some books. The stories have also impacted me like Black Mirror with the technology being shown in the series becoming more and more real which scares me.
I just found out that in an interview the creators for that episode had actually inspired the robot dogs from the dog from the left, regardless the advances that had been done as of now is impressive and scary to think of at least for me.
Like the dogs from metalhead or the app that lets people review others on how they act from the episode nosedive. I hope to soon learn more about stories and what they offer to the readers.
1) My audience was my classmates and my Professor. I wanted to use formal language for obvious reasons: it was an assignment; however, I wanted to target people who have also struggled with higher-level English courses (AP) to resonate with them more. People who have taken AP Literature or AP language: my Professor, classmates, and anyone reading this piece of work.
2) The first and foremost would be my writing skill and style, writing scientific papers for my high school career. It was challenging at first to develop another style and form that was not always in the active voice/pronouns like I or us in the paper. It was a learning curve for me. I developed analyzing skills, formatting skills, how to make my paper flow, and how to smoothly transition into ideas without slashing paragraphs. My grammar also developed; although I was somewhat proficient and confident in my grammar before, after the course, I understand the formalities of grammar and have a deeper understanding of literary composition.
3) Certain authors and their points of view stood out to me since that was the biggest learning curve, understanding to make their point of view “talk” while trying to prove your point of view/lens impacted my writing and understanding of the article or piece of writing. The context of the articles also mattered since an author may say something that supports your claim, but the statement itself wasn’t about your claim; it only unintentionally supports it. Some may then argue that the piece of evidence does not support your claim: I am assuming that they support my claim without any actual proof.
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