Alyssa Sinko

Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric

Dr. McLaughlin
12/11/14
My Semester as a Whole
As a science major, I am not a writer. However through this course it has become
evident that writing is as important for a science major as it is for an English major.
Throughout my portfolio, this change in thinking is evident.
Towards the beginning of the year we completed the audio narrative. The purpose
of this assignment was to use the tools we learned in class to captivate and audience and
to tell a successful story through rhetoric. My writing shows the mastery of the intended
outcomes of this assignment because I used the details such as pitch and climax to
captivate my listeners. This assignment took me the longest time to create, which is
humorous considering it was the shortest assignment all course. I spent hours trying to
come up with an idea to no avail. Eventually I created a funny story about my childhood
acting experience, which worked well. This assignment was my best work and the work I
am most proud of all semester because humor and narratives are my strong suit. As a
member of a large family, story telling has become a way of life around the dinner table
and I am used to emphasizing important details of a story and adding humor. Although
this was my first essay all semester, it shows my growth as a writer because for the first
time I became confident about my writing abilities, which made the next projects a lot
easier to create.

The next assignment was the rhetorical analysis. The purpose of this assignment
was to use rhetorical analysis skills such as appeals and camera angles to create an
argument on a specific aspect of a film. I displayed this understanding by analyzing Mark
Zuckerbergs character by means of these rhetorical strategies and by citing works we
read in class. This assignment built upon the audio narrative because it used the same
writing process of drafting and redrafting until the outcome is reached. Also, this
assignment required extra thinking and work because we learned and used more
strategies to perfect our writing process and our analysis skills. This piece is the main part
of my portfolio, which displays my understanding of writing and rhetoric because it uses
many aspects of rhetoric to analyze a film. It uses the multi media aspect when analyzing
camera angles and the writing rhetoric side when analyzing the speech of the characters.
Argumentation is also evident throughout this piece because I used these aspects of
writing to prove a specific point about the film.
The next assignment was the research paper. The point of this assignment was to
use the strategies of research and the strategies of argumentation we learned in class to
create research, which drew a new conclusion. I shows mastery on this by proving my
point that the stigma of mental illness can be reduced through the example shown by Law
and Order: SVU by using the resources from the library and citing and analyzing them
through out my paper. This assignment builds upon the last assignment of basic paper
structure and how to prove an argument with how to find sources and how to properly
integrate them through out your paper to make a point. This assignment shows my critical
research, reading, and thinking skills by integrating different sources through out my
paper to prove a new point. I was able to find different citations on different topics and

bring them all together to reach a new conclusion. This research developed me as a writer
by showing me the importance of tying together a vast amount of sources in order to
prove a new point. It also showed me how to make new conclusions and prove them in a
scholarly manner.
My last assignment was the TED talk. The purpose of this assignment was to
draw together your research and learn to present it in an effective, scholarly, and
compelling way. I showed the mastery of this assignment through my scholarly
PowerPoint, which highlighted important facts and my use of story telling when
describing the episodes of Law and Order SVU, which displayed my points. This
assignment built on the last assignment because it was still necessary to prove your point
through scholarly research, however the presentation of this material changed. This
presentation displayed my growth as a writer because I presented my project as
effectively as possible despite my stage fright.
Multi media played a role in these assignments. For example in the first
assignment it played a role through the audio section of the story. Learning to tell a story
through your voice instead of through a paper is a very different skill to master. In the
second assignment, we analyzed the rhetoric of a film, which is very different than
analyzing written words on a page in front of you. Analyzing films have the script/speech
component along with the rhetoric of the camera angles, setting, and music. And of
course, in the last assignment when we presented a TED talk. This recording used the
rhetoric of speech but combined with the rhetoric of a PowerPoint. Both share similar yet
different rhetorical strategies, such as emphasis and captivation an audience. The

multimedia aspect of the assignment connected to the course because it still used the
basis of rhetoric while in a multimedia format.
This portfolio displays my knowledge of writing as a process because each
assignment required a different amount of preparation. For example the research project
required a proposal, then an annotated bibliography, peer editing, and finally the paper.
These separate steps highlight the writing process. These process skills are evident
through the many steps I took in order to finally get my finished project. My writing
process is now more elongated than it was previously, because learning the crucial steps
have allowed me to really organize my thoughts and bring them together neatly into a
final project. Before this class I would just write and edit without any clear structure and
this hurt my writing and did not develop my thoughts as thoroughly. This is evident in
my portfolio through the increase in developed though I displayed from the basic
narrative story all the way to the developed research paper. Thank you for a great year
and I hope you enjoy my work!