Sunday, May 3, 2009

Gasparo, Success or Failure?

Scott Celec

English 111-29

Mr. Gasparo

May 4, 2009


Gasparo, Success or Failure?


When I came to Tidewater Community College I thought that English 111 was just going to be a regular, old, boring class. I thought all we were going to do is write, write and write some more. Well we did write a lot but it was worth it. The essays that we were assigned in Mr. Gasparo's English 111 class were very educational. We had to write many pieces of work, with many rhetorical appeals included within them. When the class first started back in January we had to write a diagnostic essay, somewhere in the middle we wrote a rhetorical analysis essay, and finally we wrote my favorite the argument essay.

The Diagnostic essay was like an introductory essay where we could choose whatever topic we wanted to talk about. It was an assignment to get the class used to turning in essays through their TCC e-mail accounts. Also Mr. Gasparo was available in the Writing Center every Thursday from 12 to 7 in case any students had any questions about any paper. If your schedule does not allow you to be on campus at that time or if you want to know earlier on during the week, just e-mail him. He will gladly answer any questions you may have on a particular assignment.

The Rhetorical Analysis essay was way harder than the first but still possible; basically we had to use the three rhetorical appeals of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos twice somewhere in our essay. The essay also had to be written about someone in your life that you look up to or helps you. I chose to write about my friends and family but some of my other class mates wrote about movie stars, rap stars, etc. This was my least favorite assignment because I couldn’t figure out where to use the rhetorical appeals best. But somehow I pulled through and got the paper in on time.

Finally we wrote the Argument Essay, this essay took us more than half of the sixteen week semester because not only did we have to write at least a four-page paper, but we also had to present our argument to the class in the form of a PowerPoint. This paper was my favorite not only because it gave me a challenge as a writer but because it really tested us on our writing skills that we had learned throughout the semester. Everything we learned from Mr. Gasparo’s lessons and videos prepared us to write and present this paper. He showed our class how not to stay on topic and where to put images in our essays to flow with the paper. This argument essay took a really long time to get all the research together. I would say it took me about a month to plan out and get all of my need resources to write it. Overall Mr. Gasparo’s boring lessons did show us what kind of mistakes to avoid when writing our papers. Also, for future a student, a good way to succeed is not to procrastinate on doing the assignments you are given. Try to stay ahead of the game!

Overall Mr. Gasparo I would give your teaching style a B-, because in the beginning you did not clarify when some assignments were due and that caused a lot of confusion for your students. It would be more helpful if you gave the class reminders when projects were due in class like you started to do near the end of the spring semester. Also some of the videos that you showed in class were not completely understood by your students; let’s say they were ahead of our time. I really liked how you graded our papers without holding back though, at first I did not like how you criticized my papers, but then I learned that good criticism is what’s needed to make good papers. Overall you are a great teacher so I hope you continue teaching at TCC. So in my eyes you are a success!

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