In their article, "Autism and Rhetoric," Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau, argue that Autism is a rhetoric and they analyze it from their own perspective. He does it from the perspective of the father of a boy with autism and she does it from her perspective as an Asperger's autistic herself. They explain that autism is not a disease but a "a way of being in the world though language, through invention, structure and style" (263).
This article related with the others we read about autism, specially with Wardle's. She explains how people have to adjust their writing and communication ways once they enter a new work environment. In this case, the authors explain how most scholars think that it's not possible for autistic to adapt and communicate with neurotypicals. Herilker and Yergeau disagree with that statement and explain it from their own perspectives.
I enjoyed reading this article, the topic was interesting and the authors had great arguments. The fact that they included their own experiences and points of view made it more attractive. It made me think how autistics are stereotyped nowadays, specially in movies, and how that doesn't show what people with autism go though and how they really are.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Reading Response (Anzaldúa)
In her article, "Tlilli Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink," Gloria Anzaldúa explains what writing means to her and how her writing process works. She feels her writing process is deeply influenced by her cultural believes and identity. She likes to think of her stories as performances and not as dead objects.
Her process begins in her soul, she sees these stories before she writes them. In her mind she is the director, the performer and the audiences of these stories. After she 'sees' them, her work is to find the perfect words to describe what she saw.
This piece reminded me of the others readings we've done about identity. First I thought about Cixous who wants women to write as women. In this case Anzaldúa want as to write from our souls and not to ignore our origins and believes. Then I thought about Villanueva who was sad about having forgotten his background an so many stories and memories that he had left behind. Instead of that, Anzaldúa embraces her culture and 'exploit' it in every was possible.
I liked this article because it was short and easy to follow. The topic was interesting and I liked learning about her culture. I was also happy to see that I'm not the only person who sees things in her head before they happen. I have a similar creative process when a make paper mache toys. First I see in my mind what I'm going to do every step of the way and then when I actually do it, it goes mostly the same way as I pictured it in my mind earlier.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
1. Her definition of individual and communal art is based on how culture is shared. She argues that Western culture is becoming more and more selective or elitist. If you want to see a painting or a sculpture you have to go to a museum hence you have to pay. On the other hand, communal art is there to be reached by everybody who wants to get in contact with culture. Like aborigines who painted in caverns.
2. I don't think it would have been more effective. In fact I think that writing that way helps her make her point. Also, it she had written it in a traditional academic format, it wouldn't have been her writing it, it's not who she is and is not what she believes.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Reading Response (Cixous)
In her article, "VIEWPOINT The Laugh of the Medussa," Helene Cixous has a single objective: she wants women to write as women. She has a strong feminist point of view. She believes that writing is ruled by men and that women are being oppressed by men's literature. She wants women not to be afraid of writing as themselves and showing who they really are and what they really think.
This article made me think about Alexander's transgender theories. It's funny how he wants us to embrace differences and understand others while she is so focussed on separating men from women.
I didn't like this article. It felt like I was reading a transcription of a motivational speech. She makes herself clear but I don't like the way she expresses herself.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. The reading didn't make me uncomfortable but I didn't like it. I'm a woman but I feel that her ideas are way too feminist. I can't imagine what men would feel while reading this. I think they would feel uncomfortable or maybe upset in a way.
2. I think she wants women to write without keeping anything to themselves. She thinks that women keep thoughts in secret because they feel ashamed or scared to show what they really think and feel.
This article made me think about Alexander's transgender theories. It's funny how he wants us to embrace differences and understand others while she is so focussed on separating men from women.
I didn't like this article. It felt like I was reading a transcription of a motivational speech. She makes herself clear but I don't like the way she expresses herself.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. The reading didn't make me uncomfortable but I didn't like it. I'm a woman but I feel that her ideas are way too feminist. I can't imagine what men would feel while reading this. I think they would feel uncomfortable or maybe upset in a way.
2. I think she wants women to write without keeping anything to themselves. She thinks that women keep thoughts in secret because they feel ashamed or scared to show what they really think and feel.
Reading Response (Alexander)
In his article, "Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gender Body," Jonathan Alexander intends to demonstrate how transgender theories along with feminist compositionist approaches can help us understand the narration of gender as a social construct. He explains that gender is "neither natural nor essential, but rather the performance of self-expression within any dynamic relationship" (201).
Like Gee, Villanueva and Delpit, Alexander focuses on identity and its importance in the writing process. He believes that how we understand ourselves as gay or straight is socially infected by labels that can stigmatize certain behaviors and reify others.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
3. I believe "normally" gendered students can gain a new perspective about transgender lives and maybe relate to them somehow. We can apply this to other social constructs or minorities.
4. He describes gender as a construct because people have an idea of what gender is and most of the times that idea is wrong. I think that gender is both personal and political because, as he explains, "there are many ways to be a human being" (200) and we all get to choose how we live our lives.
Like Gee, Villanueva and Delpit, Alexander focuses on identity and its importance in the writing process. He believes that how we understand ourselves as gay or straight is socially infected by labels that can stigmatize certain behaviors and reify others.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
3. I believe "normally" gendered students can gain a new perspective about transgender lives and maybe relate to them somehow. We can apply this to other social constructs or minorities.
4. He describes gender as a construct because people have an idea of what gender is and most of the times that idea is wrong. I think that gender is both personal and political because, as he explains, "there are many ways to be a human being" (200) and we all get to choose how we live our lives.
Reading Response (Delpit)
In her article, "The Politics of Teaching Literate Discourse," Lisa Delpit explains that even though she agrees in a lot of aspects with Gee's theory and ideas about Discourses, unlike him, she believes that enculturation is not absolutely necessary to acquire a new Discourse. She thinks that students can be taught and Discourses can be acquire in a classroom if the teacher is committed enough to teach them what they need to learn and in the way they need to learn it.
I liked what she said because I felt the same way when I read what Gee thinks about people not being able to completely acquire new Discourses. I like the examples she uses to prove her point and how she shows that people can learn new Discourses without loosing their identities.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
3. I agree with what she's arguing because I believe that people's identity is important but is not the only thing. People should learn about other things besides their own history and values without loosing them and I believe Delpit explains this really well with the examples she uses.
4. She thinks that teachers should acknowledge and respect their students' backgrounds without limiting their work to it. They should be committed to teach.
I liked what she said because I felt the same way when I read what Gee thinks about people not being able to completely acquire new Discourses. I like the examples she uses to prove her point and how she shows that people can learn new Discourses without loosing their identities.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
3. I agree with what she's arguing because I believe that people's identity is important but is not the only thing. People should learn about other things besides their own history and values without loosing them and I believe Delpit explains this really well with the examples she uses.
4. She thinks that teachers should acknowledge and respect their students' backgrounds without limiting their work to it. They should be committed to teach.
Reading Response (Villanueva)
In his article, "Memoria Is a Friend of Ours: On the Discourses of Color," Victor Villanueva explains how including our own experiences and memories in our written work can help us consolidate our identity as writers. He argues that "the personal does not negate the need for the academic, it complements, provides an essential element in the rhetorical triangle, an essential element in the intellect-cognition and affect" (174).
Like Gee and Wardle, Villanueva feels that identity and how identity as a writer is formed is really important. In his article he shows how his identity was formed among different Discourses.
I liked what he had to say in this article, I found it interesting and I agree with his point of view but I didn't like the way he chose to say it because it got confusing at times.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
7. Using Gee's concept of Discourse we would think that Villanueva's primary discourse is Puerto Rico but he has lived his whole life in America and Puerto Rico is now a memory. So I would have to say that his primary Discourse is now America and Puerto Rico is a secondary Discourse that he is trying to acquire.
Like Gee and Wardle, Villanueva feels that identity and how identity as a writer is formed is really important. In his article he shows how his identity was formed among different Discourses.
I liked what he had to say in this article, I found it interesting and I agree with his point of view but I didn't like the way he chose to say it because it got confusing at times.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
7. Using Gee's concept of Discourse we would think that Villanueva's primary discourse is Puerto Rico but he has lived his whole life in America and Puerto Rico is now a memory. So I would have to say that his primary Discourse is now America and Puerto Rico is a secondary Discourse that he is trying to acquire.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Project 3: Introduction and Conversation
The concept of discourse community is discussed constantly among scholars who try to define it. While Swales talks about discourse communities that share knowledge if rules of the conduct and interpretation of speech, and defines it according six specific characteristic, Gee introduces a much broader term which is Discourse (with capital D). To Gee what's important is not language but saying-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations, language is just another part of the Discourse. Gee introduces the term Discourse as an identity...
When I was a kid, I had never thought about the idea of playing a sport outside of what I did in school during Physical Education hours. I had never heard about field hockey either. Anyway, when I was ten years old, my older sister started playing field hockey in a club near our house and I decided to go too. I loved it from the first moment I hold a stick in my hands. First I learned how to hold the stick, then how to move the ball and push it in the direction I wanted it to go. I learned dribbling, passing and shooting on goal. I also learn to play defense and to be part of a team. And all of the sudden I was part of it, I was part of a team, and I also was part of a new discourse community. Gee would describe it as a Secondary Discourse since my club was one of the non-home-based social institutions with which I interacted.
Along with learning how to play, I learned new words, new definitions, new uses for words that I already knew. I also learned values and acquire a new way of thinking. I started to think for the team and not just for myself.
Project 3: topic proposal
For my project 3 I would like to study the discourse community of a field hockey team. I think it would be really interesting to analyze it from my perspective since I've belong to this community since I was ten years old. I intend to analyzing by comparing my experience during my time playing field hockey in Argentina and the last few months as part member of a team in the USA. I plan on interview Rosario Villagra who is my closest friend and is living the same experience at Old Dominion University. Also I’m thinking about interviewing my coaches to compare their ways of belonging to the discourse community.
Just like Branick explains that american football is a discourse community, I also think that field hockey is a discourse community because I can identify Swales’ six necessary characteristics. 1. Field hockey teams have goals that go from doing a certain number of shots on goal per practice to win the national championship.
2. The team has mechanism of intercommunication that includes emails, group text messages, facebook groups, meetings with the coach, conversations during practice, etc.
3. The team uses a participatory mechanism to provide information and feedback. When you are part of a team, saying that you are is not enough. You have to show up to every practice, meeting or game and do your best.
4. and 5. Field hockey possesses a specific genre and it’s own lexis. People who know nothing about this sport most likely won’t know the meaning of terms like drag flick or short corner.
6. Field hockey has a threshold specially at college level, you have to know how to play field hockey to belong to this community.
Just like Branick explains that american football is a discourse community, I also think that field hockey is a discourse community because I can identify Swales’ six necessary characteristics. 1. Field hockey teams have goals that go from doing a certain number of shots on goal per practice to win the national championship.
2. The team has mechanism of intercommunication that includes emails, group text messages, facebook groups, meetings with the coach, conversations during practice, etc.
3. The team uses a participatory mechanism to provide information and feedback. When you are part of a team, saying that you are is not enough. You have to show up to every practice, meeting or game and do your best.
4. and 5. Field hockey possesses a specific genre and it’s own lexis. People who know nothing about this sport most likely won’t know the meaning of terms like drag flick or short corner.
6. Field hockey has a threshold specially at college level, you have to know how to play field hockey to belong to this community.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Reading Response (Devitt et al.)
In their article, "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities," Amy J. Devitt, Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff explain how genres determine the exclusivity of the discourse community and how they can sometimes restrict access to these communities. They argue that members and nonmembers of certain community have "different beliefs, interests, and purposes as well as levels of knowledge" (99). To support this idea they use examples of legal practice, medical practice and classrooms to show, among other things, that the difficulty lies in technical language.
Genres is one of the indispensable characteristics that a discourse community must have according to John Swales. He also explains how discourse communities acquire some specific lexis which means that they have their specific lexical items, and as Devitt, Bawashi and Reiff argue, the most difficult barrier is the technical language.
I liked this article because as I was reading it, it reminded me of how I pretend to understand the legal terminology every time I read a book written by John Grisham or how I need doctors to explain their technical terms with metaphors when I watch shows like Dr. House or Grey's Anatomy on TV.
Reading Response (Branick)
In his article, "Coaches Can Read, Too: An Ethnographic Study of a Football Coaching Discourse Community," Sean Branick explains how sports, more specifically football is an unexplored discourse communitity in which coaches and players not only have to read play books, scouting reports and play-calling sheets but they also need to read people. To support his theory he presents the characteristics explained by Swales in "The Concept of Discourse Community, like goals, lexis and genres, among others.
Branick also support the idea that literacy in not only about reading and writing. He argues that football literacy is formed by interpersonal literacy like reading players and knowing how to deal with them, and situational literacy like reading the game in the moment so they know how to react.
I like this reading because I was able to relate it with the sport that I play and as I was reading it, I was analyzing my own sport and comparing what I though with what Branick thinks.
Reading Response (Wardle)
In her article, "Identity, Authority, Learning to write in New Workplaces," Elizabeth Wardle explains the struggle that people face and have to adapt to a different way of communication She argues that this process of enculturation depends on how much authority the new worker possesses and in their issues of identity and values. Wardle thinks that both identity and authority are dynamic, they are continually negotiated within communities of practice. She illustrates that learning to communicate in new communities consists in a "process of involvement in communities, of identifying with certain groups and choosing certain practices over others" (533).
This piece reminded me of Gee's idea about joining new Discourses and the process of apprenticeship that it takes, how new workers need to learn not only to write in a specific way but also they learn and acquire new values, manners, etc.
I didn't find this reading attractive. Instead of that, I found it confusing at some points but the example she sets with her story of "Alan" helped me understand what she was saying.
Reading Response (Gee)
In his article, "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction," James Paul Gee introduces the term Discourse (with capital D) in which "what is important is not language, but saying-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations" (484). From his point of view, discourse is just "connected stretches of language that make sense" (484).
Unlike others authors like Swales and Porter who focus their attention of interpreting discourse communities in a sense of membership, Gee consider Discourse as people's identity, specially when he talks about our "primary Discourse"(845).
Reading this piece I was able to analyze my current situation living in a different country, speaking a different language and doing different activities. I realized that I'm constantly apprenticing social practices but I haven't mastered this Discourse. For me it's a "mushfake Discourse".
Reading Response (Swales)
John Swales feels the need to clarify what discourse community means and how it is different from the speech community. In his article, "The Concept of Discourse Community," he explains that, unlike the speech community, which is a "community sharing knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech" (470), the discourse community is defined by six characteristics. These characteristics make his concept of discourse community broader than Porter's who argues that a discourse community is a "group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated" (91).
I didn't find this reading interesting but I did like that I was able to identify the different discourse communities that I belong to while I was reading the characteristics that Swales describes.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Reading Response 13
In her article, "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty,"Anne Frances Wysocki discuss the subject of beauty and the human perception of it. She argues that we can find a visual layout both pleasure and unpleasure. This is because people is used to see beauty as a real thing, something present and familiar, but beauty can also be abstract. So maybe we can find an advertisement with a picture in it that we don't find beautiful and yet its "consistency" achieved by "contrast," "repetition," "alignment," and "proximity" makes us take pleasure from it.
I think we can relate this article to Stephen Bernhardt's "Seen the text" where he explains how the visual organization of the text can contribute to the rhetorical aspect of it. So what Bernhardt attributes to size and font of the text, graphics, and distribution of it; is what Wysocki attributes to contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.
Personally, I didn't like this text so much because even though the topic is interesting, I found it really hard to follow and understand it. The author takes for granted that the reader has already certain knowledge about the subject in discussion-which I don't- and her vocabulary is really complex for me.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
2. I believe it is a low visual text because, other than the picture of the ad and a couple of graphics there's no visual organization and it looks just like the rest of the scholarly articles we've been reading for this class.
3. Actually, it didn't interested me at all. I didn't even realize that it was about a bookstore until I read this question and went back to the ad picture to read what was written in it. I guess it didn't really caught my attention.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I believe beauty is in the eye on the beholder. Maybe there's is a picture that I find incredibly beautiful and other people won't like it. Of course there are some social preconceptions about what is or not beautiful but I think that the final say about it it's always in the beholder.
META MOMENT
I'm not sure if it applies to her article because it's not that much visually-structured but I think it certainly applies to every visual art. Art has a skill, beauty and a meaning. Beauty and meaning can be achieved by the author's skill to use tools like color, line, and shape to push against the conventions and make their own sense.
I think we can relate this article to Stephen Bernhardt's "Seen the text" where he explains how the visual organization of the text can contribute to the rhetorical aspect of it. So what Bernhardt attributes to size and font of the text, graphics, and distribution of it; is what Wysocki attributes to contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.
Personally, I didn't like this text so much because even though the topic is interesting, I found it really hard to follow and understand it. The author takes for granted that the reader has already certain knowledge about the subject in discussion-which I don't- and her vocabulary is really complex for me.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
2. I believe it is a low visual text because, other than the picture of the ad and a couple of graphics there's no visual organization and it looks just like the rest of the scholarly articles we've been reading for this class.
3. Actually, it didn't interested me at all. I didn't even realize that it was about a bookstore until I read this question and went back to the ad picture to read what was written in it. I guess it didn't really caught my attention.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I believe beauty is in the eye on the beholder. Maybe there's is a picture that I find incredibly beautiful and other people won't like it. Of course there are some social preconceptions about what is or not beautiful but I think that the final say about it it's always in the beholder.
META MOMENT
I'm not sure if it applies to her article because it's not that much visually-structured but I think it certainly applies to every visual art. Art has a skill, beauty and a meaning. Beauty and meaning can be achieved by the author's skill to use tools like color, line, and shape to push against the conventions and make their own sense.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Reading Response 12
In his article, "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies," Dennis Baron illustrates how literacy technologies have been developing through time. He argues that new technologies have always been rejected at first because they were unknown by people and that even writing itself was rejected too. People also had to adjust to these technologies. For instance, they had to learn how to talk the phone. These technologies become, as Deborah Brant would call them, literacy sponsors because they influence the way people communicate. He also explains how literacy has changed due to the new technologies, starting with the invention of writing itself which "was once an innovation strongly resisted by traditionalists because it was unnatural and untrustworthy" (426).
GETTING READY TO READ
1. Technology is everything people create to satisfy their needs and improve his well-being. For example, a house is a kind of technology created to protect people from the environment.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I think it would be really helpful to improve grammar checking in writing technology. I don't even know if that exists but, being a ESL student, I know it would help me a lot in my writing processes.
I believe the article was interesting until certain point. The topic is good and well developed but I think that there's no need to spend that much time to explain the history of pencils. On the other hand I like the way he explains that we never know what technology is going to come out with in the future just like years ago people didn't know computers would ever exist.
GETTING READY TO READ
1. Technology is everything people create to satisfy their needs and improve his well-being. For example, a house is a kind of technology created to protect people from the environment.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I think it would be really helpful to improve grammar checking in writing technology. I don't even know if that exists but, being a ESL student, I know it would help me a lot in my writing processes.
I believe the article was interesting until certain point. The topic is good and well developed but I think that there's no need to spend that much time to explain the history of pencils. On the other hand I like the way he explains that we never know what technology is going to come out with in the future just like years ago people didn't know computers would ever exist.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Reading Response 11
Deborah Brandt defines the sponsors of literacy as "any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy- and gain advantage by it in some way" (334). Based on her study on 100 different people, in her article "Sponsors of literacy," she explains how everybody's literacy is influenced by different economies, which supply different access routes, different degrees of sponsoring power and different scales of monetary worth of practice in use.
I totally agree with what she states in her article. I'm sure that coming from another country, I don't have the same literature as the rest of my classmates in my English class, as I'm sure that they also have differences in their literacies too because they all come from different families, schools, towns or religions.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
1. I was born and raised in Salta, Argentina. I'm the youngest of four kids, daughter of an accountant father and an English teacher mother. My primary literacy sponsors were my family and my school. I went to the same school from kindergarden till I graduated from high school. We had the basic subjects and everybody took the same classes. We didn't have extracurricular activities to do at school like you do in the USA. So I went to an English institute to learn the language and to a Sports Club to play field hockey. My mother, being an English teacher taught me songs and poems in English when I was little and I think that is what made me like the language in the first place.
I'm a theatre major at Ohio University. As I explained before, we didn't have extracurricular activities at school so we didn't have a drama club I could join. I know most of my current classmates have dad that and I wish I had too. Also, we often talk in class about broadway shows or particular American things that I've never had access to.
I totally agree with what she states in her article. I'm sure that coming from another country, I don't have the same literature as the rest of my classmates in my English class, as I'm sure that they also have differences in their literacies too because they all come from different families, schools, towns or religions.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
1. I was born and raised in Salta, Argentina. I'm the youngest of four kids, daughter of an accountant father and an English teacher mother. My primary literacy sponsors were my family and my school. I went to the same school from kindergarden till I graduated from high school. We had the basic subjects and everybody took the same classes. We didn't have extracurricular activities to do at school like you do in the USA. So I went to an English institute to learn the language and to a Sports Club to play field hockey. My mother, being an English teacher taught me songs and poems in English when I was little and I think that is what made me like the language in the first place.
I'm a theatre major at Ohio University. As I explained before, we didn't have extracurricular activities at school so we didn't have a drama club I could join. I know most of my current classmates have dad that and I wish I had too. Also, we often talk in class about broadway shows or particular American things that I've never had access to.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Reading Response 10
In his article "Good English and Bad," Bill Bryson explains the complexity of the English language and how can confusing it gets sometimes because of it's 'rules'. He argues that these rules have little bases to support them because "considerations of what makes for good English or bad English are to an uncomfortably large extent matters of prejudice and conditioning" (65). This basically means that the way we write in English is due to someone's idea of how it should be done.
This article reminded me of Stuart Greene's "Argument as a Conversation" because it explains the conversation that's being going on for years about grammar and it's rules, how they've been changing along the years and how writers have adapted to them.
BEFORE YOU READ
I spent six years studying English as a second language. During this period of time, I learnt about English grammar and the rules of English. It's is different than Spanish which is my first language because it's simpler in many ways. However, that simplicity may sometimes make it more confusing and complex than I thought I would be, specially when it comes to formulate conditional sentences.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. Bryson is challenging the construct of grammar by pointing out examples of how it makes writing more complicated than it should be. For example, "the belief that we must say different from rather than different to or different than" (64).
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I think that what he means by saying that English is a fluid and democratic language is that you can say different things using the same words. For instance "a noun is generally said to be a word that denotes a person, place, thing action, or quality" (61).
META MOMENT
Noun. Verb. Adjetive. Adverb. Pronoun. I learnt how to use them for Spanish when I was in primary school and in high school. In high school I also learnt how to use them in English. When I write, I don't think about them. I think we do it automatically because language is a part of who we are so it comes naturally.
When I was reading the article I started to think about how I was told by a few people that my English was better than theirs. Although they say it as a compliment or a joke, I think it's because since I learnt it as a second language, my English was always well-grammarly-structured and not influenced by the social context.
This article reminded me of Stuart Greene's "Argument as a Conversation" because it explains the conversation that's being going on for years about grammar and it's rules, how they've been changing along the years and how writers have adapted to them.
BEFORE YOU READ
I spent six years studying English as a second language. During this period of time, I learnt about English grammar and the rules of English. It's is different than Spanish which is my first language because it's simpler in many ways. However, that simplicity may sometimes make it more confusing and complex than I thought I would be, specially when it comes to formulate conditional sentences.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. Bryson is challenging the construct of grammar by pointing out examples of how it makes writing more complicated than it should be. For example, "the belief that we must say different from rather than different to or different than" (64).
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I think that what he means by saying that English is a fluid and democratic language is that you can say different things using the same words. For instance "a noun is generally said to be a word that denotes a person, place, thing action, or quality" (61).
META MOMENT
Noun. Verb. Adjetive. Adverb. Pronoun. I learnt how to use them for Spanish when I was in primary school and in high school. In high school I also learnt how to use them in English. When I write, I don't think about them. I think we do it automatically because language is a part of who we are so it comes naturally.
When I was reading the article I started to think about how I was told by a few people that my English was better than theirs. Although they say it as a compliment or a joke, I think it's because since I learnt it as a second language, my English was always well-grammarly-structured and not influenced by the social context.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Project 1: Intro and Conversation
What is plagiarism? What can we do to prevent from falling into it when we write research papers? This questions haunt me every time I have to write an 'original' paper. Popular conceptions are that writing has to be original and that if you use someone else's ideas without acknowledging that, you are plagiarizing. Even though it might seem simple to prevent it, people keep falling, consciously or unconsciously into plagiarism over and over again. Why does this happen?
I am from Argentina and my first language is Spanish. Even though I studied English as a second language for 7 years, my lack of vocabulary has been 'blocking' me since I got to the United States a month ago. When read articles, I understand what they are saying and yet I can't explaining using my own word because of this blocking so I'm forced to use most of the original writer's words. I think this is one of the many causes for plagiarism to be found.
In his article "ESL Student Plagiarism: Ignorance of the Rules or Authorial Identity Problem?," Robert Lankamp explains that the principal causes for students plagiarism are ignorance of the conventions , "absence of one's own voice to express the ideas that one is writing about" (1) The first one happens because students don't receive the necessary practical information to know how to what needs or not to be cited. Rebecca Moore Howard and Laura J. Davis argues that student plagiarism can be prevented by discussing with them about intellectual property, and teaching them how to evaluate and understand their sources.
Internet is also 'blamed' for causing plagiarism. Nowadays, internet has become the first place students turn into to do their research because it's easier and fast. But "the immense amount of information available on the web from legitimate postings by reputable sources and from intentionally fraudulent paper mills has made electronic plagiarism a new problem facing social work educators" (Robert F. Vernon, Plagiarism and the Web, page 193).
On the other hand, James Porter presents us that plagiarism is, in a way, inevitable. In his article "Intertextuality and the discourse community" he shows how all text are interdependent because texts contain "traces" or ideas from other texts. He argues that consciously or unconsciously, writers include other people's thoughts or ideas into their text because writing is not an isolated creation and the writer is constantly influenced by his context. That is also what Stuart Green says in his article "Argument as a Conversation."
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Reading Response 9
In his article, "Seeing the text," Stephen A. Bernhardt analyzes the benefits of a well-organized physical fact of text. He explains how visually informative texts gain their rhetorical sense by using different sizes and fonts of letters, evenly distributing the content, and using images o charts. He believes that "if we encourage students to experiment with visible features of written texts, we would increase their ability to understand and use hierarchical and classificatory arrangements" (35)
This article reminded me of Mc Cloud's "Vocabulary of Comics" when he explains how by simplifying the text, the writer makes it easier for the reader to comprehend it. This is what Mc Cloud calls "amplification through simplification" (8). The same thing happens in visually-organized texts when they reduce syntax from full sentences to phrases without taking away their meaning.
BEFORE YOU READ
I analysed this article from http://thepost.ohiou.edu
Field Hockey: Bobcats fight to find the net as Ohio enters MAC play
This article reminded me of Mc Cloud's "Vocabulary of Comics" when he explains how by simplifying the text, the writer makes it easier for the reader to comprehend it. This is what Mc Cloud calls "amplification through simplification" (8). The same thing happens in visually-organized texts when they reduce syntax from full sentences to phrases without taking away their meaning.
BEFORE YOU READ
I analysed this article from http://thepost.ohiou.edu
Field Hockey: Bobcats fight to find the net as Ohio enters MAC play
Taylor Brown watches her pass travel downfield during the game against Ohio State on Wednesday at Pruitt Field. (Michael PronzatoI | For The Post)
Throughout the Bobcats’ last four games, they have amassed 66 shots, half of which were on goal, 37 corners and only four regulation goals. The number of times the ball is blasted to the twine is Ohio’s chief focus as it enters Mid-American Conference play Friday.
The Bobcats’ play, for the most part, has been acceptable, said Ohio (4-3) coach Neil Macmillan. Ohio has moved the ball well and has put itself in situations to score. But the Bobcats’ focus is improving the quality of their opportunities and turning them into goals.
Ohio’s shots per game (16.3) have improved by almost two shots from last season’s 19-5 team. The difference is that, with the exception of a nine-goal performance against Radford, this season’s squad is averaging only 1.33 points per game, as opposed to last season’s 2.67.
The team’s shooting percentage is .37 points fewer than the 2011 team.
“The one key that we need to address is finishing,” Macmillan said. “We don’t have enough opportunities from the possessions we have at (the other team’s) end.”
Another abnormality facing the Bobcats has been their sudden abundance of overtime appearances. Ohio has gone to two penalty shootouts (Indiana and Ohio State) in its past three games, which, Macmillan said, is unheard of in the field hockey world.
“In my 13 years before these two games … there’s three or four (penalty shootouts) that I’ve seen — not only been a part of, but seen across Division I hockey,” he said. “So I told the team, ‘It never happens. Don’t worry about it. It never happens.’ Then we get two in a row.”
But it’s not like the team isn’t prepared to play in strenuous situations. Macmillan stressed conditioning early in the year, a decision that has paid dividends so far this season.
“We rely on our fitness a lot,” he said. “And I think at the end of the game that starts to show. So we don’t mind getting into overtime games.”
The team is 1-1 in overtime situations and and senior Taylor Brown is proud of how the team has soldiered through games despite the extra pressure.
“We leave everything out on the field,” she said. “It’s just the fact that we put everything that we have in the game. We got really unlucky going into shootouts again, but I think the fact that we put all of our effort into it is good.”
Sophomore goalie Brittany Walker, who has logged 340 minutes in the past four games, has thrived as of late. She’s allowed only three goals in regulation over the four-game stretch and has stood her ground in the shootouts.
“We really practice them a lot even though Neil says that he never sees it come down to a shootout,” Walker said.
The article's title is in bigger letters than the rest of the text. There's an image from a previous game and the rest of the text is below it, in smaller letters.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. I do struggle reading this king of writing especially now that I'm not reading them in my native language. Sometimes I don't know the majority of the words that appear in these "full, declarative sentences" (36) so I have to translate them to Spanish. Also, there are times when the words used by the writer are so "big" that after I translate them I have to find out what their meaning too.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
3. The gestalt described by Bernhardt is the shape of the text. It's form by equilibrium or balance between the visual fields, good continuation, closure and similarity. I think that what help me understand the article was having the example of the wetlands sheet to identify what he was talking about.
AFTER YOU READ
I think Mc Cloud would have made a comic where a full, declarative text is screened leaving only key phrases.
META MOMENT
I consider visually text to be most appropriate in texts designed for public audiences like advertising texts. In the case of the formal writing assignments in this course, In think we can use visual thinking in every text we want to because it's not only about adding an image to the text but know how to organize it so it looks good to the readers eyes.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Reading Response 8
In his article, "Intertextuality and the discourse community," James Porter questions the conceptions in our culture about plagiarism arguing that all text are interdependent because "all texts contain 'traces' of other texts" (86). This principle known as intertextuality places the writer in a community of discourse or forum which is a "group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate trough approved channels and whose discourse is regulated"(91). As Greene in "Argument as a Conversation," Porter shows that a text is not an individual thing but a part of an ongoing conversation about a particular subject.
Porter also emphasize the rhetorical aspect of texts arguing that "the writer has freedom within immediate rhetorical context" (93) because every text that is admitted into a discourse community changes its constitution. He thinks that students need to learn to know what can be presupposed in the discourse community they choose to join.
From Porter's point of view, the writer's "success is measured by the writer's ability to know what can be presupposed and to borrow that community's traces effectively to create a text that contributes to the maintenance or, possibly, the definition of the community" (96).
I found this text really interesting because every time I had to do a writing assignment I was afraid of falling into plagiarism if I used to many traces from my sources.
GETTING READY TO READ
An Author is a person who creates something new. This could be a painting, a text, a piece of music, etcetera. A writer is the author of a text.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
4. In my experience, every time I wrote in my life, my writing was evaluated by my teachers. This means that my writing was looking for my audience acceptance because that would mean I would get a good grade in my writing assignment.
5. His work reflects the principles he's talking about because he uses both types of intertextuality: iterability and presupposition. He uses Iterability by means of quotations, explicit allusions and references to other writer's work. And he uses Presupposition by assuming that his audience is familiarized with concepts like rhetoric, heuristics, etcetera.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I think plagiarism is using someone else's work and taking credit for it. I thought that if I took to many traces from my sources into my text I would be falling in plagiarism and unoriginality but now I realize that creativity lies in know how to use those traces to contribute to the discourse community I'm writing for.
META MOMENT
I think my way of writing is changing influenced by the texts we've read in this class. Ideas like arguments as conversation, rhetorical meaning and the voice in writing have been really helpful. Porter's contribution is also important because it helped me solve my doubts about plagiarism.
Porter also emphasize the rhetorical aspect of texts arguing that "the writer has freedom within immediate rhetorical context" (93) because every text that is admitted into a discourse community changes its constitution. He thinks that students need to learn to know what can be presupposed in the discourse community they choose to join.
From Porter's point of view, the writer's "success is measured by the writer's ability to know what can be presupposed and to borrow that community's traces effectively to create a text that contributes to the maintenance or, possibly, the definition of the community" (96).
I found this text really interesting because every time I had to do a writing assignment I was afraid of falling into plagiarism if I used to many traces from my sources.
GETTING READY TO READ
An Author is a person who creates something new. This could be a painting, a text, a piece of music, etcetera. A writer is the author of a text.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
4. In my experience, every time I wrote in my life, my writing was evaluated by my teachers. This means that my writing was looking for my audience acceptance because that would mean I would get a good grade in my writing assignment.
5. His work reflects the principles he's talking about because he uses both types of intertextuality: iterability and presupposition. He uses Iterability by means of quotations, explicit allusions and references to other writer's work. And he uses Presupposition by assuming that his audience is familiarized with concepts like rhetoric, heuristics, etcetera.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. I think plagiarism is using someone else's work and taking credit for it. I thought that if I took to many traces from my sources into my text I would be falling in plagiarism and unoriginality but now I realize that creativity lies in know how to use those traces to contribute to the discourse community I'm writing for.
META MOMENT
I think my way of writing is changing influenced by the texts we've read in this class. Ideas like arguments as conversation, rhetorical meaning and the voice in writing have been really helpful. Porter's contribution is also important because it helped me solve my doubts about plagiarism.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Reading Response 7
In "Voice in writing again: Embracing contraries," Peter Elbow tries to explain the use of Voice in writing. Just as there are some writers who think that Voice is a very helpful as a writing tool, there are other who think the opposite way. Elbow, in a way, agrees with both sides.
He presents the use of voice topic as a Either/Or Battle. When contraries appear in theories, people tend to look for the right one, this means that one side has to be wrong for the other to be right. What Elbow suggests, regarding to the use of Voice in texts, is that both competing positions are valuable and necessary. They are different lenses through which we can think about writing.
Elbow suggests that we add a Both/And thinking to the Either/Or Battle by embracing contraries that are logically contradictory. He thinks that "we need the different and complementary insights we get from each kind of reading.
Personally, I agree with Elbow's Both/And thinking. I believe that there's not need for everything to be black or white and in this case, his theory is fairly applicable. I think that writers need to find how to use voice in texts to help us get a more rhetorical sense without forgetting about the content of their texts. It's all a matter of finding the perfect combination of both theories.
GETTING READY TO READ
When I construct my identity on Facebook, I get to choose what information I'm providing to the site and what I'm keeping for myself. In my case, I don't like having strange people knowing my stuff so I only "befriend" people who I actually know. My identity is constructed based not only on the personal information I provide to the site, but also through the pages I "like," the photos and videos I post and the updates of my status.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. I would define voice as the way writers express their own particular thoughts into their texts. Elbow defines it as the true self and the rhetorical power of writing because he believes that it helps writers to make contact with the readers.
2. Elbow thinks that it's necessary to play the believing game "because
it can show us good ideas or virtues in discredited ideas that we remain blind to it if we use only critical thinking or the doubting game."
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. When I read out loud and I hear myself saying those words, it doesn't only make it easier to understand what their saying but also it helps me remember them better. When I think about that passage I hear in my voice reproducing those words as opposed to getting an image of the words in the text.
META MOMENT
Elbow argues that both competing positions are valuable and necessary but instead of get them to agree in a middle point, we need them in all their strength, so we learn to think about written language through the lens of text as much as the lens of voice. I think it's a complicated process to learn how to play the "believing and doubting game" but the results you get from it make it worth trying it.
He presents the use of voice topic as a Either/Or Battle. When contraries appear in theories, people tend to look for the right one, this means that one side has to be wrong for the other to be right. What Elbow suggests, regarding to the use of Voice in texts, is that both competing positions are valuable and necessary. They are different lenses through which we can think about writing.
Elbow suggests that we add a Both/And thinking to the Either/Or Battle by embracing contraries that are logically contradictory. He thinks that "we need the different and complementary insights we get from each kind of reading.
Personally, I agree with Elbow's Both/And thinking. I believe that there's not need for everything to be black or white and in this case, his theory is fairly applicable. I think that writers need to find how to use voice in texts to help us get a more rhetorical sense without forgetting about the content of their texts. It's all a matter of finding the perfect combination of both theories.
GETTING READY TO READ
When I construct my identity on Facebook, I get to choose what information I'm providing to the site and what I'm keeping for myself. In my case, I don't like having strange people knowing my stuff so I only "befriend" people who I actually know. My identity is constructed based not only on the personal information I provide to the site, but also through the pages I "like," the photos and videos I post and the updates of my status.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. I would define voice as the way writers express their own particular thoughts into their texts. Elbow defines it as the true self and the rhetorical power of writing because he believes that it helps writers to make contact with the readers.
2. Elbow thinks that it's necessary to play the believing game "because
it can show us good ideas or virtues in discredited ideas that we remain blind to it if we use only critical thinking or the doubting game."
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
2. When I read out loud and I hear myself saying those words, it doesn't only make it easier to understand what their saying but also it helps me remember them better. When I think about that passage I hear in my voice reproducing those words as opposed to getting an image of the words in the text.
META MOMENT
Elbow argues that both competing positions are valuable and necessary but instead of get them to agree in a middle point, we need them in all their strength, so we learn to think about written language through the lens of text as much as the lens of voice. I think it's a complicated process to learn how to play the "believing and doubting game" but the results you get from it make it worth trying it.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Reading Response 6
In her article "Decisions and Revisions: The Planning strategies of a Publishing Writer," Carol Berkenkotter explains the research she did on the writer Donald M. Murray, using the technique of the think-aloud protocol. This technique consists on having the writer telling you everything that comes to their mind without previous analysis.
The project was done in three stages. In the first stage Murray recorded his aloud thoughts during 62 days. In the second stage he also recorded his aloud thoughts but this time in a laboratory setting where he only had an hour to write about a certain topic to a certain audience that was given to him. I the third stage, Berkenkotter visited Murray at his home for two days.
After coding the process she got lots a results. She discovered that as the writers interviewed by Michael Keine in "What is it that we do when we write articles like this one and how can we get students to join us?," Murray moved back and forth between planning, translating, and reviewing his work. Berkenkotter was really surprised about the percentage of time that he spent on planning as opposed to the time he dedicated to revising his work. She also found fascinating his efforts to create a rhetorical context.
BEFORE YOU READ
I don't really like writing because it's always been hard for me, so whenever I need to write something I like to be alone in a quiet room. I often have a glass of Coke while I'm writing because it helps me keep awake and focused. Before I start typing, I write down notes on a piece of paper to get an idea of how my text is going to be.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. I think that Murray's writing process was a lot similar to those we've already read about in this book. I think is really interesting how he goes back and forth looking for the best way to express his thoughts and always thinking in a rhetorical sense: his is always aware of his audience.
Compare to my writing process, I would say that I also go back and forth between planning, translating and reviewing my work but in a more superficial way. Also I realized that the only thing I'm looking for is to translate information and I never think about my audience.
3. Before this research, Berkenkotter had the idea that writers spent most of their time on revision, which means developing the ideas in a piece. After her study on Murray's writing process, she realized that time spent on it was too little and that what Murray really spent his time on was on planning and re-conceiving.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
1. I don't have a lot of experience in writing papers. All the writings I've ever done were for school and I think that when I wrote them I spent the majority of the time thinking about the content of it an how I was going to edit so I look "pretty," and I could get a good grade. I don't think I spend enough time on planning as I should do, instead I use that time for editing.
META MOMENT
I think that one of the most important things that they both agreed on, is to create a rhetorical context for the writing, always thinking about the audience and their needs.
The project was done in three stages. In the first stage Murray recorded his aloud thoughts during 62 days. In the second stage he also recorded his aloud thoughts but this time in a laboratory setting where he only had an hour to write about a certain topic to a certain audience that was given to him. I the third stage, Berkenkotter visited Murray at his home for two days.
After coding the process she got lots a results. She discovered that as the writers interviewed by Michael Keine in "What is it that we do when we write articles like this one and how can we get students to join us?," Murray moved back and forth between planning, translating, and reviewing his work. Berkenkotter was really surprised about the percentage of time that he spent on planning as opposed to the time he dedicated to revising his work. She also found fascinating his efforts to create a rhetorical context.
BEFORE YOU READ
I don't really like writing because it's always been hard for me, so whenever I need to write something I like to be alone in a quiet room. I often have a glass of Coke while I'm writing because it helps me keep awake and focused. Before I start typing, I write down notes on a piece of paper to get an idea of how my text is going to be.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND JOURNALING
1. I think that Murray's writing process was a lot similar to those we've already read about in this book. I think is really interesting how he goes back and forth looking for the best way to express his thoughts and always thinking in a rhetorical sense: his is always aware of his audience.
Compare to my writing process, I would say that I also go back and forth between planning, translating and reviewing my work but in a more superficial way. Also I realized that the only thing I'm looking for is to translate information and I never think about my audience.
3. Before this research, Berkenkotter had the idea that writers spent most of their time on revision, which means developing the ideas in a piece. After her study on Murray's writing process, she realized that time spent on it was too little and that what Murray really spent his time on was on planning and re-conceiving.
APPLYING AND EXPLORING IDEAS
1. I don't have a lot of experience in writing papers. All the writings I've ever done were for school and I think that when I wrote them I spent the majority of the time thinking about the content of it an how I was going to edit so I look "pretty," and I could get a good grade. I don't think I spend enough time on planning as I should do, instead I use that time for editing.
META MOMENT
I think that one of the most important things that they both agreed on, is to create a rhetorical context for the writing, always thinking about the audience and their needs.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Reading response 5: The vocabulary of comics
In "The vocabulary of comics," Scott McCloud explains the usage of comics and icons. Icon is "any image used to represent a person, place, thing or idea" (5). He argues that even though images are simplified in comics, they also amplify the most significant aspect of the thing their represent. McCloud thinks that the reason people like cartoons is because we identified with them. This happens because the further they are from the real object they represent, the closer the cartoons are to universality. Also, McCloud argues that "humans are a self-centered race" (10) and that's why we have the tendency to see ourselves in everything.
Questions for Discussion and Journaling
1. I don't think there should be a limited age in which people can watch cartoons or not. I believe that adults like cartoon because they feel kids again. There are cartoon that last for a long time so when adults see them, they bring them memories from their childhood. It's also a good way to relax and enjoy their free time.
2. I think Mc Cloud uses the comic book format because he's talking about it. So as he is describing his theory, he's demonstrating it while setting examples of what he's talking about. He could have done it with out the pictures but it would have taken a lot of words to describe something that he can just show us. This can relate to what he says about how the simpler the drawing the more interesting the message.
Applying and exploring ideas
1. I think visual imagery would be really useful to teaching strategies. If you think about it, when children begin their learning process, they start with images. Everything they learn is based on them. I think that it is easier to learn and to remember new knowledge if you have and image to relate it to.
2. McCloud contend that we are more likely to see ourselves in generic cartoon images because we are a self-centered race and we see ourselves in everything.
I don't know if I recognize myself with the subject in a photograph. What I do recognize is that there's someone from my own race, I recognize them as a human being. I also think that we do have a more detailed awareness of our own face because we do get a chance to look at them through mirrors or other reflecting objects.
Questions for Discussion and Journaling
1. I don't think there should be a limited age in which people can watch cartoons or not. I believe that adults like cartoon because they feel kids again. There are cartoon that last for a long time so when adults see them, they bring them memories from their childhood. It's also a good way to relax and enjoy their free time.
2. I think Mc Cloud uses the comic book format because he's talking about it. So as he is describing his theory, he's demonstrating it while setting examples of what he's talking about. He could have done it with out the pictures but it would have taken a lot of words to describe something that he can just show us. This can relate to what he says about how the simpler the drawing the more interesting the message.
Applying and exploring ideas
1. I think visual imagery would be really useful to teaching strategies. If you think about it, when children begin their learning process, they start with images. Everything they learn is based on them. I think that it is easier to learn and to remember new knowledge if you have and image to relate it to.
2. McCloud contend that we are more likely to see ourselves in generic cartoon images because we are a self-centered race and we see ourselves in everything.
I don't know if I recognize myself with the subject in a photograph. What I do recognize is that there's someone from my own race, I recognize them as a human being. I also think that we do have a more detailed awareness of our own face because we do get a chance to look at them through mirrors or other reflecting objects.
Reading response 4: Ways of seeing
In his article "Ways of seen," John Berger explains how women's social presence is different from the men's. He argues that men presence is based on the power he embodies. By contrasts, he says that a woman's presence shows her her attitude to herself. Berger thinks that women are constantly thinking about how they appear in front of others, specially to men, because how a woman appears to a man will determine how she will be treated.
To explain his theory, Berger refers to the European nudes where women were the principal subject. Berger explains that in average European oil painting the protagonist is the spectator who is presumed to be a man. In this paintings women's sexual passion has to be minimized so that the man who's watching it may fell that he has the monopoly os such passion.
This reading reminded me of how writers direct their work to a determined audience. A nude has the purpose to generate a certain impression on the man who's watching it, if a woman watched it she wouldn't get the impression the painter wanted to because she is not part of his intended audience. This would be a gap like the ones we can find in writings.
Questions for discussion and Journaling
2. I think that it hasn't change too much. Women are still used as an object to attract men. When they are posing for make-up or clothes advertising, if it those are things designed for them to wear, they wear them to look good in front of others and generate a good impression of themselves, specially in front of men.
3. I believe that the assumptions about culture are not different now. In most advertisements, men's presence show power. By contrast women's presence varies all the time depending on what she's wearing, where she's standing or whose is she with.
Applying and exploring ideas
2. I think that the relation between the author of an article or the main character and the reader is very important. I believe it's different to read a book a your favorite actor when you already know the way he thinks and what he's trying to say that when you read a book written by someone new. The same thing happens with the main character in a work of fiction. The more you know about him, the more you can get into the story and understand it.
3. I think that both women and men can be humorous. In my experience, I like making jokes and being funny just to be funny, but I'm very conscious that sometimes when I want to cause a good impression or to get people to like me. I think the same thing happens with men.
Meta moment
I think that painting and writing are both works of arts. Art is not art until it is seen, read and interpreted by an audience. Writers, like painters want to share a message with their audience.
To explain his theory, Berger refers to the European nudes where women were the principal subject. Berger explains that in average European oil painting the protagonist is the spectator who is presumed to be a man. In this paintings women's sexual passion has to be minimized so that the man who's watching it may fell that he has the monopoly os such passion.
This reading reminded me of how writers direct their work to a determined audience. A nude has the purpose to generate a certain impression on the man who's watching it, if a woman watched it she wouldn't get the impression the painter wanted to because she is not part of his intended audience. This would be a gap like the ones we can find in writings.
Questions for discussion and Journaling
2. I think that it hasn't change too much. Women are still used as an object to attract men. When they are posing for make-up or clothes advertising, if it those are things designed for them to wear, they wear them to look good in front of others and generate a good impression of themselves, specially in front of men.
3. I believe that the assumptions about culture are not different now. In most advertisements, men's presence show power. By contrast women's presence varies all the time depending on what she's wearing, where she's standing or whose is she with.
Applying and exploring ideas
2. I think that the relation between the author of an article or the main character and the reader is very important. I believe it's different to read a book a your favorite actor when you already know the way he thinks and what he's trying to say that when you read a book written by someone new. The same thing happens with the main character in a work of fiction. The more you know about him, the more you can get into the story and understand it.
3. I think that both women and men can be humorous. In my experience, I like making jokes and being funny just to be funny, but I'm very conscious that sometimes when I want to cause a good impression or to get people to like me. I think the same thing happens with men.
Meta moment
I think that painting and writing are both works of arts. Art is not art until it is seen, read and interpreted by an audience. Writers, like painters want to share a message with their audience.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Research Tools: Summary
ArticlesPlus - Finding Scholarship
ArticlesPlus is one of the options you have to do research on academic articles. This kind of articles always include the title, the authors, the abstract, the introduction, the article text, the conclusion, and the references or the work cited.
When you look for scholarly articles using ArticlesPlus, you can find them in PDF to print them, email them or save them into your local drive. If the article you are looking for is not available in PDF, ArticlesPlus will tell you if it is anywhere else on the library database.
Find the full text of an article from the citation
If you have a citation and you want to get the full text for that citation, ALICE Catalog is the choice for you. The first thing you need to do is identify the author, the publication date and the title of the journal. After that you need to go into the library home page and type the journal title under "periodical title" search. The results will tell you if the article you need is available in paper or electronically.
If you don't find the article you are looking for, go back to the library home page. Click on Services, Borrowing, Interlibrary loan and Document Express. Fill a request and they look for the article you need. They will scan it and send it to you for free.
How to get a book from OhioLINK
If the article you are looking for is not available at Alden Library you can use OhioLINK to search it. This is a service that help you find the articles you need around the state of Ohio. All you need to do is fill an application with your information and choose a pickup location. You'll get an email when the book arrives in three business days approximately.
ArticlesPlus is one of the options you have to do research on academic articles. This kind of articles always include the title, the authors, the abstract, the introduction, the article text, the conclusion, and the references or the work cited.
When you look for scholarly articles using ArticlesPlus, you can find them in PDF to print them, email them or save them into your local drive. If the article you are looking for is not available in PDF, ArticlesPlus will tell you if it is anywhere else on the library database.
Find the full text of an article from the citation
If you have a citation and you want to get the full text for that citation, ALICE Catalog is the choice for you. The first thing you need to do is identify the author, the publication date and the title of the journal. After that you need to go into the library home page and type the journal title under "periodical title" search. The results will tell you if the article you need is available in paper or electronically.
If you don't find the article you are looking for, go back to the library home page. Click on Services, Borrowing, Interlibrary loan and Document Express. Fill a request and they look for the article you need. They will scan it and send it to you for free.
How to get a book from OhioLINK
If the article you are looking for is not available at Alden Library you can use OhioLINK to search it. This is a service that help you find the articles you need around the state of Ohio. All you need to do is fill an application with your information and choose a pickup location. You'll get an email when the book arrives in three business days approximately.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Reading Response 3
In her article, "Helping students use textual sources persuasively," Margaret Kantz analyzes the way college students do their research writing compositions. To do that, she takes for example a typical college sophomore named Shirley who has to writes a research paper based on different sources. What Shirley does is what most of the students do. She selects the most important ideas about the topic and writes them as a story without commenting on the material in anyway. While she believes she's done a great job, her grade turns out to be a C.
Like Michael Kleine in his article "What is it we do when we write articles like this one--and how can we get students to join us?," Kantz argues that students need to read source texts as arguments and to think about the rhetorical contexts in which they were written. Kantz explains that writers uses rhetorical strategies to express their thoughts based on their purpose, the context in which they writing and the effect they want to cause on their audience.
Kantz also explains that whenever students read to do their research, they take everything they read as a fact. If they find contradictions between sources about the same topic they thinks there's an error but the truth is this "facts" are actually "claims". This also relates with Michael Greene's article "Argument as Conversation" in the way that different sources interact with each other expressing different points of view about the same topic.
Questions for discussion and journaling
1. Facts and opinions are the same kind of statement: they are claims. The only difference between them is how they are received by an audience. To refer to argument, Kantz quotes Toulmin who thinks that an argument consists on claims proved with data and backed by ethical claims called warrants.
2. Things students don't know, misunderstand or don't comprehend about how texts work:
I think she is correct in everything she says and after reading this article I believe that I understand what she's saying. Of course, like Shirley, it's going to take some time before I can use this information in the right way and write the research papers the way they are supposed to be done.
Applying and exploring ideas
Prior to this class, I never thought about research and creativity being connecting in any way. I thought of research as a process of finding sources about the same topic, finding the most important ideas and translating them into my paper. Kantz thinks that creativity is what research should be about. After reading this article I think that what she is talking about is that we need to be creative in the question or the problem we want to present as the topic of our research. According to Michael Greene, that is the way we enter a conversation that's being going on for a long time.
Meta Moment
Kantz is trying to analyze the construct of college students' research writing. She fights against the idea that research can't be creative and encourage teachers to do more theoretical work about research with their students to help them analyze their sources. I found this article really interesting, specially because when I do research I never stop to think about the author, his purpose and the context in which he wrote the article. After reading this article and the two others we read for past classes I realize how far I am from doing a real research.
Like Michael Kleine in his article "What is it we do when we write articles like this one--and how can we get students to join us?," Kantz argues that students need to read source texts as arguments and to think about the rhetorical contexts in which they were written. Kantz explains that writers uses rhetorical strategies to express their thoughts based on their purpose, the context in which they writing and the effect they want to cause on their audience.
Kantz also explains that whenever students read to do their research, they take everything they read as a fact. If they find contradictions between sources about the same topic they thinks there's an error but the truth is this "facts" are actually "claims". This also relates with Michael Greene's article "Argument as Conversation" in the way that different sources interact with each other expressing different points of view about the same topic.
Questions for discussion and journaling
1. Facts and opinions are the same kind of statement: they are claims. The only difference between them is how they are received by an audience. To refer to argument, Kantz quotes Toulmin who thinks that an argument consists on claims proved with data and backed by ethical claims called warrants.
2. Things students don't know, misunderstand or don't comprehend about how texts work:
- They read texts as stories.
- They think that when sources disagree there's a mistake instead of thinking about the rhetorical purpose of the writer.
- They don't question the material. They don't try to figure out who the writer is, what context he wrote the text in, why he wrote it or to whom he wrote it to.
- They look for the most important ideas about the topic and write them as a story without commenting on the material.
I think she is correct in everything she says and after reading this article I believe that I understand what she's saying. Of course, like Shirley, it's going to take some time before I can use this information in the right way and write the research papers the way they are supposed to be done.
Applying and exploring ideas
Prior to this class, I never thought about research and creativity being connecting in any way. I thought of research as a process of finding sources about the same topic, finding the most important ideas and translating them into my paper. Kantz thinks that creativity is what research should be about. After reading this article I think that what she is talking about is that we need to be creative in the question or the problem we want to present as the topic of our research. According to Michael Greene, that is the way we enter a conversation that's being going on for a long time.
Meta Moment
Kantz is trying to analyze the construct of college students' research writing. She fights against the idea that research can't be creative and encourage teachers to do more theoretical work about research with their students to help them analyze their sources. I found this article really interesting, specially because when I do research I never stop to think about the author, his purpose and the context in which he wrote the article. After reading this article and the two others we read for past classes I realize how far I am from doing a real research.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Reading Response 2
Michael Kleine decided to write this article after walking into the library and seeing a lot of high school and college students writing "research papers." While watching them, he realized that they were doing actual research as much as they were translating textual fragments from different books and encyclopedias. He decided to write an article about what college-level academics-teachers do when they engage in an academic research.
In his article, "What is it we do when we write articles like this one and how can we get students to join us?," Kleine defines writing as a process that includes research, data-gathering and reading from start to finish. He believes that writing that includes research of any kind must be strategic, since the writer has to collect data and with an established and focused sense on their goal; and heuristic because he has to accommodate and consider unexpected data and insights that are discovered in the process.
The author developed a metaphor for strategic and heuristic modes of work based on Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology. He distinguishes "hunters" and "gatherers." A hunter is the one who strategically finds what he's looking for, and the gatherer is the one that heuristically discovers that which might be useful. Kleine realizes that writers are both hunters and gatherers during different stages of their research.
Keeping with his research, Kleine segmented the process of writing into four stages according to what he thinks that researchers/writers need to do. The four stages are collecting data, sifting the data rhetorically, seeking patterns in the data and translating their findings into writing.
Based on his metaphor of the hunters and gatherers, and the four stage process of writing; Kleine interviewed eight professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Three of them were from the English department, two from the Natural Sciences department, two from the Social Sciences department, and one from the History department.
As he was interviewing them, he found a lot of similarities between the writers. Kleine found out that all of them wrote out of interest based on conversations, reading the work of a peer or listening to a paper by a peer. They all agree that writing is a complex academic process where they move freely and flexible between strategic hunting and heuristic gathering.
Kleine also found differences between the professors from different areas. He noticed that the scientists, the social scientists, and the composition theorist remembered more about the research process itself. They think of research as the process of gathering, observing and quantifying that is prior to writing. They only write to communicate the results of their research. Meanwhile the subjects in the humanities talked about the audience and purpose, problems of establishing authority, about the rhetorical dimension of their thinking and writing. They think of writing and reading as activities inseparable from the research process.
Kleine also analyzed the different disciplines using James Kinneavy's discourse triangulation. This means, classifying a discourse according to it's purpose, and by the element of the total discourse situation that it emphasizes. Hence, a discourse that emphasizes the encoder is expressive; a discourse that emphasizes the decoder is persuasive; a discourse that emphasizes the reality or the world is referential; and a discourse that emphasizes the signal or language itself is literary. Based on this definitions, he classifies the scientists' discourse as referential and the humanities professors' discourse as persuasive.
Kleine concludes his article talking to the teaching community and giving advises about how to teach academic writing. He believes in creating genuine research communities in the classes and wants the classroom to become a place of researching, reading, writing and talking. He thinks that they need to encourage students to select, intelligently and critically, research procedures relevant to their own questions and problems. Kleine thinks that among academics, the research process is recursive, too complicated to code and incredibly rich that students must be a part of.
Pensonaly, I found myself described in the scene in the library when Kleine sees all those students copying information from books to their paper without doing an actual research process. Worst than that, my primary source is the internet and I'm sure I'm not the only one who does her research this way. After reading this article i totally agree with Kleine about the research process. It has not to be about translating information, but about selecting, analyzing, synthesizing, selecting and rejecting. It's a lot of hard work but I think it's worth doing it.
In his article, "What is it we do when we write articles like this one and how can we get students to join us?," Kleine defines writing as a process that includes research, data-gathering and reading from start to finish. He believes that writing that includes research of any kind must be strategic, since the writer has to collect data and with an established and focused sense on their goal; and heuristic because he has to accommodate and consider unexpected data and insights that are discovered in the process.
The author developed a metaphor for strategic and heuristic modes of work based on Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology. He distinguishes "hunters" and "gatherers." A hunter is the one who strategically finds what he's looking for, and the gatherer is the one that heuristically discovers that which might be useful. Kleine realizes that writers are both hunters and gatherers during different stages of their research.
Keeping with his research, Kleine segmented the process of writing into four stages according to what he thinks that researchers/writers need to do. The four stages are collecting data, sifting the data rhetorically, seeking patterns in the data and translating their findings into writing.
Based on his metaphor of the hunters and gatherers, and the four stage process of writing; Kleine interviewed eight professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Three of them were from the English department, two from the Natural Sciences department, two from the Social Sciences department, and one from the History department.
As he was interviewing them, he found a lot of similarities between the writers. Kleine found out that all of them wrote out of interest based on conversations, reading the work of a peer or listening to a paper by a peer. They all agree that writing is a complex academic process where they move freely and flexible between strategic hunting and heuristic gathering.
Kleine also found differences between the professors from different areas. He noticed that the scientists, the social scientists, and the composition theorist remembered more about the research process itself. They think of research as the process of gathering, observing and quantifying that is prior to writing. They only write to communicate the results of their research. Meanwhile the subjects in the humanities talked about the audience and purpose, problems of establishing authority, about the rhetorical dimension of their thinking and writing. They think of writing and reading as activities inseparable from the research process.
Kleine also analyzed the different disciplines using James Kinneavy's discourse triangulation. This means, classifying a discourse according to it's purpose, and by the element of the total discourse situation that it emphasizes. Hence, a discourse that emphasizes the encoder is expressive; a discourse that emphasizes the decoder is persuasive; a discourse that emphasizes the reality or the world is referential; and a discourse that emphasizes the signal or language itself is literary. Based on this definitions, he classifies the scientists' discourse as referential and the humanities professors' discourse as persuasive.
Kleine concludes his article talking to the teaching community and giving advises about how to teach academic writing. He believes in creating genuine research communities in the classes and wants the classroom to become a place of researching, reading, writing and talking. He thinks that they need to encourage students to select, intelligently and critically, research procedures relevant to their own questions and problems. Kleine thinks that among academics, the research process is recursive, too complicated to code and incredibly rich that students must be a part of.
Pensonaly, I found myself described in the scene in the library when Kleine sees all those students copying information from books to their paper without doing an actual research process. Worst than that, my primary source is the internet and I'm sure I'm not the only one who does her research this way. After reading this article i totally agree with Kleine about the research process. It has not to be about translating information, but about selecting, analyzing, synthesizing, selecting and rejecting. It's a lot of hard work but I think it's worth doing it.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Reading Response 1
In his article ´Argument as Conversation: The role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument´, Stuart Greene explains to college students how scholarly inquiry is a different kind of research and argument from the kinds we encounter in our everyday lives or earlier schooling. He introduces the idea of writing as a dialogue, not only between author and readers but between everything that has been said or written beforehand about the same issue.
Greene believes that whenever we write an argument, we join a conversation that has already began. In this conversation we'll find other people with different opinions that can agree or not with our point of view. That's why every time you write an argument, the way you position yourself will depend on three things: which previously stated arguments you share, which previously stated arguments you want to refute and which new opinions and supporting information you are going to bring to the conversation.
According to Greene when we develop an argument it is helpful to think of writing as a process of understanding conflicts and answering questions. In this process is really important to do three things. First, we need to identify an issue which the author defines as a fundamental tension that exists between two or more conflicting points of view. Second, we need to identify the situation to frame the issue in a specific context. Third, we need to frame a good question that can be answered with the tools you have. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
I've always thought of research as a process of collecting information for its own sake. After reading Stuart Greene's article I realized that it's much more complex. I totally agree with Greene's concept of argument as a conversation. It's not just about writing and gather information for its own sake; we need to understand ourselves what we are talking about before we explain it to someone else. The most important thing about information is the use we give to it and how we shape it to enter conversations.
QD:
2. Greene uses Burke metaphor to support he's idea of argument as a conversation. In this metaphor the parlor represents the topic of the research. When it says that you arrive late and other are engaged in a heated discussion, he is referring to how when you start a research, this already has been started by someone else before and there already exist different points of view about it. Some of these opinions may or may not agree with yours. When he says that after you leave the parlor, the discussion is still in progress; he means that even though you're done doing your research about this specific topic, other people will continue doing theirs.
3. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
Greene believes that whenever we write an argument, we join a conversation that has already began. In this conversation we'll find other people with different opinions that can agree or not with our point of view. That's why every time you write an argument, the way you position yourself will depend on three things: which previously stated arguments you share, which previously stated arguments you want to refute and which new opinions and supporting information you are going to bring to the conversation.
According to Greene when we develop an argument it is helpful to think of writing as a process of understanding conflicts and answering questions. In this process is really important to do three things. First, we need to identify an issue which the author defines as a fundamental tension that exists between two or more conflicting points of view. Second, we need to identify the situation to frame the issue in a specific context. Third, we need to frame a good question that can be answered with the tools you have. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
I've always thought of research as a process of collecting information for its own sake. After reading Stuart Greene's article I realized that it's much more complex. I totally agree with Greene's concept of argument as a conversation. It's not just about writing and gather information for its own sake; we need to understand ourselves what we are talking about before we explain it to someone else. The most important thing about information is the use we give to it and how we shape it to enter conversations.
QD:
2. Greene uses Burke metaphor to support he's idea of argument as a conversation. In this metaphor the parlor represents the topic of the research. When it says that you arrive late and other are engaged in a heated discussion, he is referring to how when you start a research, this already has been started by someone else before and there already exist different points of view about it. Some of these opinions may or may not agree with yours. When he says that after you leave the parlor, the discussion is still in progress; he means that even though you're done doing your research about this specific topic, other people will continue doing theirs.
3. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
AE
2. The article represents a conversation with the readers and also with others writers who have ever write about Arguments. I would say that Greene practices what he preaches in "Argument as Conversation". I thing he knows what he's talking about and explains it in a way that I was able to understand it. Also he quotes other writers to support his ideas and that's a way to show that there are other authors involved in this conversation.
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