A Semester in ENG 111

         Taking English 111 with Paul Gasparo has been a great experience. Every class was a new experience with fun things to learn. Class was never boring because Paul always had something interesting in store for us. May it be watching Dawn of the Dead or listening to Bruce Springstein, there was never a dull moment. We always got to help participate in class by talking about things we liked that was relevant to what we were doing. I’d have to say my favorite part was being able to pick our own subjects for our research papers. I’m one of those people that if I do not like the subject I’m going to have a rough time doing a research paper on it, so this really helped. This was probably one of the best English classes I have ever had. I mean every class we either got to watch a movie or something on YouTube and we discussed it afterwards and we all got to speak our views.

         Every essay that we did wasn’t too hard and was generally fun to do.  The rhetorical analysis on ourselves was an interesting way of discussing rhetorical appeals. We had to do a diagnostic essay on one of three things, all of which were interesting subjects like “If you had a superpower…..”.  After watching “Supersize Me”, Paul had us write restaurant reviews on our favorite places to eat.  Every assignment was fun.

         Not only was the class fun, but I learned a lot too. Learning about Rhetorical appeals helped me learn how to write better papers. It also showed me how the world tries to influence you. May it be for good or bad all types of media use rhetorical appeals to sway your thoughts. It’s everywhere you look. But Paul showed us how to spot it when it’s used or how to use it yourself.  He even had us rhetorically analyze a song that we liked to help us understand it better.

         The classroom environment was nice too. Paul made it clear that all of us can learn from each other and had us do presentations every once in a while. He also made it clear that we can speak up at anytime and state our thoughts about whatever we were discussing in class. The whole classroom was very friendly and open. I mean we call Mr.Gasparo by his first name all the time and he doesn’t mind. Like he said, we are all equals and can learn from anyone.

         I really enjoyed taking English 111 with Paul and if I could take it again I would. He had a fun and interesting way of teaching. He used media and all types of texts to show us what he was talking about and didn’t just lecture us. Just make sure you do your work on time, because there are strict deadlines in this class. If you are a procrastinator, take paul’s class, because while it may be fun, it gets you out of wanting to procrastinate because of it being about things you like.