Week 3: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your CNF.

The context of my CNF is to tell my audience about the factors that make up my identity; from the relationships that impacted me, the outlet that sports gave me for learning and connecting, the effect music has on improving my overall emotions, or what media was able to do for me. My intended audience for my CNF is people that have the same interest as me and my class.

Week 4: Annotate one article you plan to use in your research. Share what kind of information you wrote in your annotations. Did annotating help? If yes, how? If no, why not? What else do you need to do to process this article?

The information I wrote in my annotations was that the transition from a child to adulthood is where you explore/ experiment with your identity and see what your identity is. Also that our family guides us to our identity, which ultimately leads to us finding our friends. For me personally, I didn’t find annotating that useful because I felt that finding something in the article going to my outline and writing down what I thought worked better for me; Then annotating on the side of the paper then after going to my outline.

Week 5: What have we done so far that has been helpful to your writing process? How might you apply this helpful information or tool? What has been confusing/What would you like to spend more time on? If the clarification/additional focus does not occur during class time, how will you acquire the knowledge? 

Something that was helpful to my writing process was the trip to the library and learning how to do research. In that trip my class and I learned how to use the ccny database which gave us a great start into starting our research. How I’ve been applying what I learned from that visit to the library is what I should look for in a resource. What I want to spend more time on is developing my writing piece on giving more information to back up my thesis statement and also providing a counter argument. 

Week 6: Select one learning objective or one component of a learning objective. When, where, and how have you learned it? How have you developed in this arena?

Creating drafting strategies is a part of the learning objective I learned. I show this at the start of the CNF writing process. Making an outline before I started writing helped me come up with ideas and organize the essay how I wanted. And it was during the creation of numerous Exploratory Essay outlines, the rearranging of each main point, and the revision of the thesis statement to take a neutral stance is when I made progress in this area.

Week 7: Analyze the rhetorical situation of your Exploratory Essay.

Since the Exploratory Essay is a research project with a neutral stance, my thesis statement focuses on the influence of adolescent identity development on interactions with family, friends, and the media. The Exploratory Essay’s goal is to inform the audience about the overall effects of each factor—both positive and negative—on teenagers. The Exploratory Essay is intended to be read for academia.

Week 9: Discuss your research sources. What media are you using? How do these different types of media support your topic/ideas? your writing work?

The majority of the research’s sources were research papers and articles that either focused on the influence of families or the media on how adolescents identity development. By giving me deeper understanding on identity development and the positive and negative aspects, research papers and articles backed my topic and views. This strengthened my understanding, which helped me in my research to look into the impact that family dynamics have on one another.

Week 11: As you have continued your research and worked on your RCA, how has your argument evolved?
With the continuation of my research and the writing process RCA, my argument has taken a drastic turn. In my previous RCA draft, my thesis statement was, “Although media has a great influence on adolescents due to the multiple forms it has, the meaningful relationship with family may provide the important influences on adolescents’ identity development in giving adolescents positive traits.” In this argument, I am arguing that one is better than the other. But as my research expanded, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of saying one is better than the other, I changed my argument to that family and media both are massive pieces in the development of adolescents’ identity.

Week 12: What is the relationship between your Research essay and your MMT? It may help to compare the rhetorical situation of each.
My RCA and MMT are related in that both inform their target audiences about how family and media can affect how adolescents build their identities. While the RCA gives readers insights of both the advantages and disadvantages of family and media, And the MMT communicates to its target audience the advantages of media and family influence on adolescent identity development.

Week 14: What have you learned that has proved most useful to your composition process?

Using outlines as a brainstorming technique was the lesson I took away from this semester that helped me the most with my writing process. Additionally, to help in organizing ideas so that they are clear for the readers to see when reading my work. The second thing that helped me in my writing process this semester was the feedback I got from my peers, who helped me see errors that I couldn’t see by myself and helped me write better.