Cover Letter

In this essay my audience was my instructor and classmates. To cater towards this audience, I adopted a professional but friendly tone. This was a personal writing assignment so I wanted to try my best to connect with the immediate audience throughout the text.
Some of the insight I’ve gained in this phase would include how I’m better equipped to read and write about a personal narrative and I’ve really developed my ability to connect with my audience. In this phase we also studied different genres and media types of literature which really opened my mind to how rhetoric can be used.
I think context and exigence stand out to me in this phase because it wasn’t an argumentative essay or something like that but was a personal piece that was based around a specific moment. This moment signifies a particular time in my academic career that changed my literacy development. In a story like this, getting the context and setting right is very important. It is also important to understand the purpose of the writing and why this moment was so significant for me.
Course learning outcome one and two were a big part of this phase as we mainly focused on the way language can shift between different cultures and contextual situations. For example when we studied different media forms such as the “English b” poem and the ted talk. These show that language can really be shown differently and can take on any type of rhetorical appeal. Reading some of the short stories also showed the way in which language can be used to construct a hierarchy of some sorts and can be used to put down another language or culture.

Literacy Moment – My Experience in a Shakespeare Play

One of my most memorable parts of high school was my first high school English class in freshman year. We were just starting high school and our whole class was excited to see what the curriculum was going to be like. In this class we studied literature in a way I never had before and it was a challenge throughout the entire year. Having to read Shakespeare for the first time in freshman year (Romeo and Juliet) was what stood out the most that year. In addition to reading classic texts such as ‘the Epic of Gilgamesh’ and ‘The Odyssey,’ our grade had to act in a play at the end of the year for Romeo and Juliet. This made understanding the text more of a challenge as we had to get our scenes right in the play. Reading and understanding the text was hard enough but we needed to master it in order to recite it in a play. Especially as the only play I’ve ever been in, I know it would be a challenge. This was one of my most memorable parts of high school and ever since then the experience changed the way I thought about literature and the way the English language worked.

As we read Romeo and Juliet I remember the entire class being confused on the flow of text and the way the English sounded. Reading other old texts like ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ and ‘The Odyssey’ prepared our class a bit more for what was to come but none of us could imagine acting out a play from this type of literature. When we were told we would have to all be acting in it we all felt nervous as the language still felt so new to us. We knew this would be the biggest challenge of our year. Since we had just finished middle school none of us were used to that style of writing that was once commonly accepted. Words like ‘art’ and ‘thou’ were new to us and at first we didn’t know how to interpret language like that. This was my biggest obstacle when it came to analyzing Shakespeare. Up until this point I hadn’t struggled to understand English before since it was my first language. The biggest struggle I had was understanding how to incorporate words like that into the flow of my scenes without them sounding too out of place.
Reading Shakespeare was hard enough on its own but reciting it was even more difficult for me. We had to make sure that we pronounced our words correctly and recited them with confidence.Our English teacher at the time made a list of the most common old English words that we would need to know for our play. It was still difficult but as time went on we were patient and our understanding of the text thankfully got better. Eventually, I was able to recite the scene correctly with the proper pronunciation and tone as we rehearsed.
When the day of the play came at the end of the year I was still nervous and didn’t feel fully prepared. I already had more lines than most of my classmates which made it a challenge already. In addition, on the week of the play I was told that I had to act in a second bonus scene that I hadn’t prepared for at all. With only a few days notice I quickly had to memorize my lines and also acknowledge the parts of the scene I would get stuck on because of the language. When I finally got over the Shakespearian way of speaking I was almost able to recite my lines perfectly without sounding too awkward or chopped up. I still had a problem however with talking too fast in my scenes. I knew this was caused by me being too nervous but I could only improve by practicing more. I rehearsed it with my classmates and by myself for hours each day until there were no more rehearsals and the day of the play finally came. At the end of it all it made me feel like I had fully mastered a new form of English. Using new language and speaking in a way I never had up until that year felt like an accomplishment. Being able to get through the bonus scene without struggling was one of the best feelings of my high school career. It was a satisfying moment I’ll never forget, especially as the only play I’ve participated in.