Before this semester I have never written a rhetorical paper or anything similar to this style of writing before. Throughout high school, we always wrote papers based on analyzing quotations and being able to justify our thesis. Writing a rhetorical analysis where there are certain questions I must answer to provide context on a certain source is unique to me. So far it has been somewhat challenging, however, I have quickly learned to adjust the style of writing that I used to for this one. The nine questions we have to answer have been an adjustment because for the most part, I’ve always just centered in on what a certain quotation means and how this supports my thesis. Now that I am used to answering the nine questions I believe that I better understand the purpose and intentions of the source’s author and what they mean when they say a certain thing. 

For example, I don’t remember ever having to state who the author’s audience is in a source. For the most part, when I wrote back in high school the teacher did not need this information because generally, the entire class was writing the same essay. So when we extracted a quote from the text we didn’t need to explain who the audience is in this scenario because we were the audience, the reader. Now that it is over these new questions provide a unique obstacle for me to overcome when writing. While this style of writing is different in some ways it is nearly identical to what I’ve done in the past. When identifying the author’s purpose and tone I always had to break down quotations and the context of a situation to connect it back to my thesis. So for the most part I am already used to having to explain why this is important and how this quotation supports the argument I am trying to portray.