Cover Letter
Dear Reader:
As a fresh international student, I don’t
have much experience in English writing. In my first semester at CSUN, I wrote
three essays in ENGL 113 A class with my professor’s help. I chose the two
essays that best reflect my improvement in writing, my experience as an
international student and my career goals: “Learning from Reading” and “The Use
of Rhetorical Strategies in iPhone 5 Trailer”.
“Learning from Reading” shows my
experience of studying. I was a spoiled child and reading changes me. After
setting up a goal of studying, I began to work on English. It is not easy to
achieve my target, but I made it. I am now becoming a student in CSUN and I can
catch up with the local students in my. Nevertheless, it stills a lone way to
go for me on English study and it is endless. I got a serious cold when I work
on this. It last about three weeks and it was killing me! I had to stay in bed
so I had some absents and missed some workshops. Those makes the process of
carrying out this essay even harder.
The second essay is about an
advertisement of the iPhone 5. I have changed my major to marketing when I
arrived at America, because American has the world best marketing in either
academic or practice, especially the Apple Inc. The main point of marketing is
communication and I have learned the rhetorical strategies—logos, pathos and
ethos—in the class. Analysis the trailer of iPhone 5 helped me understood the applying
of those rhetorical strategies, so I put these analysis in my portfolio.
To be honest, I had many mistakes in
these two essays unintentionally. After we had a workshop with my classmates
and I modified my essay with professor’s help, I corrected some of the mistakes
and made revisions. I changed the order of some paragraphs because they were
not in the right place. Writing is probably the hardest part in learning
English. Every time, I had to first translate the topic in Chinese—my first
language—when I tried to write something, and then think of the topic and find
evidences to support my opinion in Chinese before translating my thoughts into
English and typing them in essay. I learned the skills and rules of writing a
good essay from the course during this semester and used them in my essays. I
can feel the significant improvements of my writing skill via my essays. Even
though my writing is not good enough to get a grade of A, at least now I can
easily express my feelings and describe my experiences in English. Most of the
time I can show my ideas clearly in Chinese but I just cannot express myself in
English. It was hard for me to give expressions in the foreign language. In my
essays, arguments and thesis cannot be conveyed correctly sometimes even though
the essay has strong supportive evidence.
I worked very hard on all the essays and
I did do my best to get my idea across and to make my essays satisfactory.
However, I know my essays are still not perfect. All I need to do to develop my
writing skill is to practice more and read more in English. I will absolutely
do that continuously in the future. Thank you for taking your time on read this
letter and my essays.
Sincerely,
Rachel Yiyi Ge
Essay #1 --Progression 3
Rachel
Yiyi Ge
Kitty
Nard
English
113 A
14 November 2012
Learning from Reading
There is a
proverb: “One is never too old to learn”. Learning is a thing that people can
never stop for the whole life. It makes people knowledgeable, brilliant and
confident. Reading is one of the easiest methods to earn knowledge. Reading requires
courage, self-discipline, creativity, and persistence for me. I was born in a
literary family so reading became a habit for me since I was very young. Personally,
reading helps me a lot in my life.
Reading enhanced
my personality. I am the only child of my family so my parents spoiled me. I
used to be selfish: I never shared food or toys with other kids, I took things
from my grandpa without saying thanks, I was rude to my parents when I was not
satisfied. Things were changed when I got my first book from my mom on my six-
year-old birthday—The Book of Virtues,
written by William J. Bennett. I have read thousand of books in my childhood,
this one is not my favorite but it is the one that influenced me the most.
Everyone recognizes these traits as essentials of good character:
Responsibility, Courage, Compassion, Honesty, Friendship, Persistence and
Faith. This book contains hundreds of stories to instructing and inspiring
anthology that will help me understand and develop those characters. It also
provides examples of good and bad, right and wrong so that I develop such
traits in great works of literature and exemplary stories from history. It is
my initiatory book, which I could get the sources of the ideals by which I wish
to live my life.
Reading lets me know
about myself and helps me to figure out what kind of life I want to create. After
I entered high school, I felt like I could do everything like an adult but
actually I was not mature enough to be responsible for myself. Then I started
to feel confused about the definition of growing up. Meanwhile, I have read a
poem named Growing Up, which written by Cheng Gu, a famous Chinese poet
in the 70s. In the poem, he stated that the landmark of growing up is neither
entering high school nor writing an essay in a foreign language. The most
remarkable milestone of growing up is knowing your goal of your future and taking
the responsibility of yourself. This really means a lot to me in my whole life.
From his poem, I noticed that life is short and limited, no one can make his or
her life longer, but one can make his or her life wider by experience more
different cultures. That was why I set up a goal of studying abroad when I was
16. There were two options for me: studying abroad or finish my college in
China. And the reality is that I was not born in a rich family so it is not
easy for my parents to support me to study abroad. But, if I finished my
college in 3 years, I can get a job in my mom’s company easily. It seems that I
can get a stabile job and live comfortably in the future in China. But this is
NOT what I wanted. I did many researches about studying abroad and started to
improve my English. Firstly, I attended an IELTS training school. I have to
provide my IELTS score to apply for entering CSUN and it requires a limitation
of 5.5 out of 9 for international students to be admitted without engaged the
international English program (IEP). To motivate myself and achieve my goal, I
wrote myself a diary as a reminder. Every time when I felt tired for catching
on my dream, I read that diary again and again and then put myself back to
study. I took my exam on 19th February 2012. It was just after the
Chinese New Year. All my families were gathering together to celebrate the big
festival at our hometown: Anqing. But I did not join them; I preferred to go
back to Beijing to study alone at school. Everyday I woke up at 7 o’clock in
the morning and stay at the library for the whole day until it closed at 9 o’clock
in the night. I did thousands of exercises and read a lot of related books to
get fully prepared. After I took the exam, I feel relaxed. I was filled with confidence
because I worked very hard on preparing the exam. The result came out at 29th
February 2012 and I was very happy: I
got 6 out of 9. I sent my transcript and all the files to the admission and
record office of CSUN and received my offer.
Reading also
helps me on learning English especially on my writing skills. English became
the biggest challenge to me after I made the decision of studying abroad. As
the matter in fact, writing is the most difficult part for all international
students not only for me. I can write very well in my native language—because I
have read thousands of books in Chinese and I can easily find arguments and
evidences to support my opinion. But it
is really hard for me to write in English. In order to enhance my writing
skill, I began to read English articles since I recognize my weakness in
writing. One of the hardest writing experiences during my college: it was the
first English essay I had written when I was a freshman. It was an investment
project and I have sent thousands of emails to gathering useful data and it
took me almost 3 moths to finish the project. There are difficulties
everywhere: I had to translate all my thoughts and knowledge into English and I
had collected a lot of data but I didn’t know how to start my essay or how to arrang
all the data together. To carry out the project, I have read a lot of economic magazines
and newspapers and I even invented a writing process for myself. I made myself
a list to organize the contents of my project. It was a hard time. But I got
the highest score in my class due to my continuously hard working.
Reading changes
my life and how it helped during my study life. It really has a lot of
advantages—Reading can make me smart and wise: I have learnt so many things
from reading. And reading helps me a lot when I wrote: I can easily find
arguments and evidences to support my opinion. Nevertheless, I am keep on
reading more article and gain knowledge to make myself more wisdom and become a
spiritual warrior.
Essay #2 --Progression 2
Rachel
Yiyi Ge
Kitty
Nard
English
113 A
15 October 2012
The Use of Rhetorical Strategies
in iPhone 5 Trailer
Apple is granted
as one of the greatest companies in the world for their brilliant marketing
strategies. As it is said, the heart of marketing is communication, which is based
on rhetorical strategies: logos, pathos and ethos. Logos means logic, facts,
reasons and rationalities—the authors must be thoughtful, providing good reasons
and supportive evidences to persuade the audience that their ideas are valid,
or rather, more valid then anyone else. Pathos is emotion, sense, memory and
common experience—communicators need to let people feel the same way as themselves,
or rather, more likely to say ”me, too!” Ethos is credibility, quote, authority
and judgment from professionals—speakers should be considerate, trustworthy,
knowledgeable or fair. In the official trailer of iPhone 5, all of these three
elements are cunningly utilized in combination, presenting an incredible
performance to the audience.
Rhetoric is an art,
which people use to process the message we send and receive. The main purpose
of the official trailer of iPhone 5 is to convince people to buy them. In order
to achieve that, the speakers—Apple’s salesmen—must know the demand of their
clients. In the beginning of the advertisement, Jony Ive, the Senior Vice President
from the design department, gave a speech to arouse people’s interest to
reflect on their relationship with their iPhones: “When you think about your
iPhone, it’s probably the object that you use the most in your life. It’s the
product that you have with you all the time. With its unique relationship
people have with their individual iPhone, we take changing it really seriously.”
He pointed out that people have always spent a lot of time with their iPhones,
texting to each other, posting status updates on their Facebook or Twitter
accounts, checking Emails, reading books or news and playing games with friends.
To most iPhone users, who may pay more attention on the new iPhone, he was just
picturing their daily life. It seems that Ive was talking about the facts that
could be considered as Logos, or he was using Ethos because he is an expert in
designing iPhone. However, it is neither. He was using Pathos, which could talk
audience into themselves and feel in the same way.
Ive then talked
about the changes they made on the new iPhone, ”It has been completely
re-designed. For the first assignment ever, we have increase the size of the
display. By making the screen taller than not wider, you can see more of your
content for still comfortably use it with one hand. And yet even with the
larger display, iPhone 5 is the thinnest lightest iPhone we have ever made. ” For
some people, they take their iPhone with them all the time, so they absolutely
want it shaped more comfortable for them to hold by one hand. He just caters to
their demand greatly! And the video begun to show the audience the new features
of the iPhone 5: larger screen, thinner and lighter body, new shape that is
easier to hold in one hand, etc. Even though it’s not very specific but it still
could be recognized as logos.
A second speech was given by Bob Mansfield, the
Senior Vice President of Apple Company. He focused more on the specific details
of the new iPhone. As a professor, he explained the new features of the iPhone
5. He was trying to show the audience his knowledge of the new iPhone 5 by
giving detailed facts and features. “18% thinner”, 20% lighter”, “LTE—faster
speed of downloading”, “LTE& CDMA chip plus A6 chip—two times faster then
the old iPhone”, “new cover glass”, etc. These technical facts support
Mansfield’s opinion: the iPhone 5 is “the best product we have ever made.” and
he even called the new iPhone an “invention”—that could be defined as pathos. In
this part of the official trailer of iPhone 5, Bob Mansfield was using logos
most, and, because he is an expert, there was a little bit ethos.
The iPhone users
are not only interested in hardware, but also pay close attention to the
software, too. Therefore, the video followed started to introduce their changes
in software. Scott Forstall, the Senior Vice President from iPhone software
department, was giving a speech about the awesome software that the new iPhone
5 has with it. He mentioned their new 3D map in the new iPhone. “You can look
at things like fly-over” he was using his own feeling of using the 3D map so
this is considered as pathos. He also introduced some other highlighted
features: turn by turn spoken direction could bring you to your destination
easily; the panorama feature could help you get panoramic photos by only use
your iPhone; Siri could do more—finding place to eat and even make a
reservation; built-in Facebook and facetime over cellular data networking, etc.
All the information above delivered the message that iPhone 5’s software is
brilliant and amazing. These are examples of logos. Besides, as Scott Forstall
is the Senior Vice President, there was ethos used in his speech.
At the end of
the video, Jony Ive showed up again. This time he was using logos mostly to let
the audience know how great the new iPhone 5 looks. The video showed the procedures
of making an iPhone 5. They used diamond-cutting technique to processing the
surface and brand new material on their product. These were absolutely logos
because of the features and facts of this amazing product.
An advertisement
is not only to offer information about the product but also to persuade the
audience to buy the product. To achieve this target, the salesmen must know
their audience’s demand. Using rhetorical strategies can help them reach their
goal much more easily. In the official trailer of iPhone 5, the speakers are
very smart. All of them are experts in their career. They were showing the new
features of their production and talking about their own experiences or ideas
on using the new iPhone 5. It seemed that they were just talking about the
facts of life with an iPhone, but it was not. They used all the three
rhetorical strategies—ethos, pathos and logos in combination.
In fact, rhetorical
strategies are widely used in people’s daily lives, in advertisement, conversations,
and even in body languages and films. It can be used in any situation, whether
you are watching a film or an advertisement. Most time people just use rhetorical
strategies unconsciously, without realizing that rhetoric can help them reach
their goal easier. Rhetoric is an art of communication; it can increase their
efficiency of conveying their thoughts and ideas to the audience. Rhetoric is just
around us. Therefore, it is really important to know how rhetorical strategies
work on us.
Work Cited
TouchGamePlay. “The Official iPhone Five Trailer”. Youtube.com. TouchGamePlay, 2012. Web. 12
September 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5X5cV-4LRo>.
No comments:
Post a Comment