Part C: Reflection on Traditional Revision

LARE: The Right Prescription for Pharmacy Techs

The MWA I chose to revise for the traditional revision is MWA #1 because I was advised
by my instructor to revise this particular piece of writing. MWA #1 consists of writing a
rhetorical analysis for an advertisement that will be read by a student committee of my peers in
order to determine how other schools are recruiting students in our field of education. For this
assignment, I chose to write about an education program for my intended career in pharmacy. I
chose an add that appealed to me and would offer enough information to entice the student
committee to read it. I also created a catchy title by identifying the program as the "right
prescription" for the committee members and other students to convince them to choose the
program. I also wrote in a formal fashion because I considered the audience reading my piece
was grounded in an appreciation for factual data and statistics. The main points of this piece
consisted of describing what pharmacy technicians do and the steps that a person needs to take in
order to become a pharmacy technician.
I often find it difficult to revise my written work, especially when it comes to a piece that
requires little revision. Although I believe that writers should be able to write in a variety of
ways, I also believe that writers should write from their strengths. Therefore, it is important for
me, as a writer, to learn how to improve on my strengths by taking feedback and incorporating it
into my work. The strengths of my graded draft were that I developed a clever and funny title.
The proposal was also noted as being "spot-on" from my instructor with no issues of
repetitiveness. Another strength was that my vocabulary was "stellar" with a great introduction.
Although my introduction was great, my conclusion was a little repetitive, as I made similar
points twice. My instructor suggested that I remove some of the conclusion to make my work

more succinct. I further needed to improve on splitting apart the paragraph that describes the
LARE Training Center into other paragraphs containing the ethos, logs, and pathos sections.
For this revision, I incorporate suggestions from my instructor provided on my original
document to improve my writing. This was somewhat more difficult to do though because I was
not quite sure, at first, how to implement the suggestions without compromising the integrity of
the original document. I, therefore, opened the original directions for the MWA #1 assignment
because I could not remember what purpose the paragraph I was revising originally served. I did
not want to start cutting and moving sections without knowing why I wrote that information to
begin with.
The paragraph that I mostly focused the revision on was the explanation of rhetorical
concepts for the ad I chose. I kept some of the paragraph in tact while I moved some sections to
the logos and pathos sections as suggested. When I did this, however, I quickly realized that I
had addressed some of those same items within the existing logos and pathos. So, I only ended
up synthesizing some sentences together while moving another entire section to the pathos
paragraph. For example, the sentence that addresses the 85% certification and job placement rate
was changed slightly by only adding the word "guaranteed" in front of the words "job
placement." I also inserted the sentence, "This appeals to students because it gives them more
assurance they will be able to find a job in the competitive field of pharmacy upon completion of
their program and builds credibility for the institute" to provide supporting evidence for why the
statistical data is important. I, therefore, took my instructors advice and moved some of the
information from the second paragraph and added it to the logos and pathos sections.
Addressing the concern of being repetitive in my writing, my instructor also noted that
the conclusion could stand to lose some information that made similar points twice. She struck

out several sentences that restated what was previously addressed throughout the writing piece. I,
therefore, simply read the entire paragraph with the struck out text and without it and agreed that
the conclusion could stand on its own without those items. I, therefore, deleted them from the
paragraph, which made my conclusion short and succinct.
Throughout the revision process, I focused my changes on the content of the paper and
did not make changes to the structure of MWA #1. Some of the smaller revisions included
changing the case in one of the words "Logos" to "logos," as this should not have been
uppercased. Additional evidence can be found as I changed the word "mentioning" to
"highlighting" in the second sentence, "Highlighting the WOW! Philosophy used at the institute,
the ad alludes to the idea that students will be taught in a fun and engaging manner within a
professional learning environment" because I felt that the word "mentioning" was somewhat
passive and I wanted to use a word that was more active in this sentence. I have also learned that
I write with a lot of detail. I feel that my writing is better if I address as much of the guiding
criteria as possible. However, I believe that by doing this, I become repetitive. I have not yet
found a way to get my point across while being succinct. After revising the conclusion, I learned
that I need to be very clear as to what I am addressing and find ways to write my ideas down
without including too much detail. I chose to revise this assignment by developing my strengths
as a writer by improving on an already well written piece and incorporating suggestions in order
to make my writing stronger. Overall the changes that I made to MWA #1 improved my writing
because it reduced the amount of repetition, which made my writing more succinct.