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Rationale
Rationale
by: Anastasia Basuki (@bonananastasia) – February 22nd, 2018
In the past term, Grade 10 English students have been focusing on producing a written persuasive piece on their individual topics of interest; the three persuasive pieces that we have covered thus far are editorials, opinion columns, and reviews. I opted to write an opinion column as myself, albeit ‘myself’ being an opinion columnist for The New York Times. The main topic of my column is the contentious ties between physicians and the for-profit pharmaceutical industry, as I argue against said affiliations by discussing the rising ethical and moral concerns within the public. A current event I integrated into my piece was the recent controversy on such matter, surrounding Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
The learning outcome I focused on is to be able to demonstrate the utilization of ‘appropriate and varied vocabulary, sentence structures, and forms of expression’, as stated in the first strand of criterion D. I sought to explore said learning outcome by utilizing context-specific terminology, and including elaborate phrasing, which can be seen in the following excerpt, taken from my persuasive piece, “The dissemination of Dr. Baselga’s undisclosed transactions suggested medical regimens and propositions marred by the sway of personal, financial gain – that is, through shrouded promotions of prominent enterprises.”
Several key features and structural components of an opinion column are the publication of the author(s)’s identity, inclusion of images, the use of personalized language, with the piece itself being written in first-person singular – properties further highlighted by the sample text I've analysed, a column by Dhruv Khullar of The New York Times. An instance where I have demonstrated a few of these properties –namely the first-person singular perspective and integration of empirical language– is, “I believe it’s fair to assert, our new societal conventions are very much abysmal.”
Reflection
Reflection
by: Anastasia Basuki (@bonananastasia) – February 25th, 2018
It's been quite a term – I have gained a large amount of new knowledge, particularly on the modes of persuasion and the features/structural components of various different persuasive writing forms. As we began the creation process of our own, individual persuasive pieces, I was introduced to a new method of researching and, essentially, taking notes: writing practically all of our research notes by hand and directly into our notebooks, or graphic organizer. Either way, this proved especially beneficial during my writing phase as it encouraged me to thoroughly think, process, and truly retain the information I was acquiring. The assimilation of my newfound knowledge enabled me to write without having to switch in-between tabs, to and fro, from document to other sources of information. As Mr. Wilson had eloquently put it, such method helps minimize the risk of students plagiarizing or paraphrasing content, be it intentionally or unintentionally.
Upon completing our persuasive writing pieces, the class was given several periods to provide feedback for one another. This “feedforward’ exercise was, admittedly, somewhat tedious, however, the value in such sessions is definitely undeniable! Although I did not receive a large amount of feedback from my peers, there were a few notable comments and suggestions that made me go, “Oh, oh, shoot!”
For instance, Gung Ale’s suggestion to include a means of contacting myself in the byline –in this case, my Twitter handle– hit me right in the face, as I had previously forgotten to do so. Thanks, Gung Ale! Another instance where the feedback I received was especially of great use came from Raihan. He recommended I include a call-to-action to wrap my piece up with, reasoning that it would be so much more of a powerful text if I were to discuss viable ways of preventing physician-industry ties from spiraling out of hand. Though tentatively at first, I heeded his words, and now, I’m rather satisfied with how things turned out!
I do believe that I, along with my classmates, have definitely improved in providing each other with constructive feedback, compared to when we started out at the beginning of the year. This is not to say, however, that our “feedforward” skills have reached a level of perfection – we’re nowhere near perfect. I’ve noticed a repeating trend of slight negligence, which is honestly unsurprising, considering the time constraints and ourselves being novice editors. It seems as though large chunks of writing draw out the laziness in us – we just can’t be bothered to rigorously check for errors, or areas that could do with some improvement; we’d rather skim, would we not? Here is where our greatest weakness lies.
Nonetheless, I would not like to undermine the importance of exchanging feedback. It is always, and I repeat, always, of great benefit to have someone other than yourself reading a piece you wrote.
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