To me the Pekins summary was very eye opening. I learned a lot about how to construct a well written academic essay to meet college expectations. The first topic that I learned was about metacommentary, which is the connecting tissues in the structure of an essay, mostly transitions. In addition to learning about metacommentary, I also learned about the framework of an essay. During my rhetorical analysis with Pekins article on first year english composition, I found that a good introductory paragraph gave enough information so the audience would understand what is going to be discussed, but also keeps the audience wanting more. I also found that in order to make a strong argument I needed multiple sources of data and not just one type of data. In other words, use a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to propose a claim on a certain topic.

I really enjoyed how Pekins organized his article on first year english composition. The fact that he started by saying his credibility, to his three main claims with evidence to back up each, to taking it one step further by proposing possible solutions to regain the level of comprehension needed for first year english composition. Another item that I noticed was pretty good is that his use of word choice was kept to a minimal. Using too advanced of words can really throw off the readers understanding of the article and lose the focus of the reader; however, I feel that Pekins kept his word choice simple for his audience to understand. Finally, the one item that bothered me the most is that Pekins conclusion was not trying to inform the public about the decline in first year english composition; instead, Pekins was trying to persuade his audience to support his new assessment that would help increase test scores on the english composition test. I just feel that in the end all Pekins really cared about was getting audience support for his new assessment.