For this assignment, you will be writing what is called a Reflective Essay. You will be looking back and writing about your experience in school and with writing, previous to this class, but you will also be talking about what you have done in this class up to this point, specifically rhetorical analysis. You will be looking for things in the past that have prepared you to do college level thinking and writing. If you worked with rhetorical aims and situations in High School, then the correlation will be obvious. If, however, you have never heard the word “rhetoric,” but analyzed plot, character, them, setting, and point of view (elements of fiction) in your previous English classes, you have actually had some preparation for rhetorical analysis. You read different genres of fiction – poetry, drama, short stories, or novels; you considered the purpose when you looked for the theme(s) in a text; you considered audience as you read the words on the page and responded to them, whether negatively or positively. You should end our paper with a discussion of the role of rhetorical analysis in understanding and evaluating an argument. Do not use a summary conclusion in your paper (see handout on conclusion models).

My rhetorical analysis class has just started and I got this assignment. I have totally no idea where to start. I can't think of anything I learned before that are related to rhetorical analysis. Can anyone give me some ideas? It will be better if you can provide some online sources.