English 450: First Assignment

Pre-writing.

It’s ironic, zero pre-writing actually took place in the creation of this response to a prompt proposed by my professor yesterday, that questioned what past teachers had taught me about my pre-writing process. Had this been a larger assignment, I would have used different “pre-writing” techniques to tackle it. However it is not, so this less organized approach will do.

If I remember back to my elementary school days, along with the intense tetherball and fierce foursquare games some learning may have taken place. I do remember a pre-writing process we learned in class during, I believe, 5^th grade. It was called the “brain storm cloud”, which now sounds more like the state my mind is in during a tough finals week. But, if I recall correctly, it dealt with large spheres or the “clouds”, in which you would place your ideas and concepts. Then, you would connect the clouds with lighting bolts and from their, you were expected to piece together a well-written paper (of the 5^th grade variety). The goal of this style, I guess, was to layout a foundation that would support and produce a smart and well-organized paper. It’s funny, when I think of storms the last word that pops to mind is organized, or even smart for that matter.

Another pre-writing style I picked up was provided to me in High School, I can’t remember the name of it, but it was and still is pretty useful. The idea was to list out what generally you wanted to talk about, like an outline. Then, write the paper. Once you have completed the paper, break each paragraph down into more general concepts. After that, reverse both the original outline and the new list and compare/contrast. The idea is to enable the writer to be able to look at his paper on both a micro and macro level. I fall back on this method every once and awhile, as it does give me the ability to make sure my paper is both linear and coherent.

Question about Encomium of Helen by Gorgias:

“Speech is a powerful lord that with the smallest and most invisible body accomplishes most godlike works.” (Aristotle on Rhetoric, 253)

I would like to learn more about Aristotle and his ideas of speech and the larger entity of Rhetoric. Obviously, I want to become a better writer, I need to fully wield this god/lord like ability, speech. I also wonder to what extent Aristotle was trying to reach by making a statement such as this one, and to whom he was trying to communicate these ideas with. I hope these questions and many others can be answered through this English class this semester.