Da Chief's Thlog

Holy shit, this is my second to last thlog. You know what they say, time flies when you're having fun. Right? We have now passed the hump of group presentations and are now diving right into our FINAL portfolios! Since this week was mainly focused on group presentations, that is what this thlog will cover.

Starting with my presentation on hedged language and qualified claims, I'd like to think we thoroughly explained the topic through relevant examples and keeping an interactive audience. Personally, I did not know what the hell hedged language was when we got assigned the topic and was not looking forward to this presentation. However, after researching it for a little bit, I realized we had an easy topic. I enjoyed creating the game "Hedged or not" and I'm glad the class actually participated in it.

I thought all of the presentations were good and covered the crucial parts to their topics. I did realize that the groups who lacked audience participation tended to have more boring presentations than those who did include the audience. I found that I actually paid more attention when it was required for us to do something, which is a good technique all teachers should use when teaching (DP does it all of the time).

The presentation on transitions/flow was one of the most memorable, especially because they did the fill in the blank activity. Although I was getting frustrated when my guesses were incorrect, I learned that many different words can fit when you need to put in a transition. There is not only one correct answer, but it is encouraged to find the word with the best fit for the sentence. It's just like looking at the menu in your favorite restaurant, everything sounds so good but you have to pick the one that sounds the BEST.

See how I broke up this thlog into many smaller paragraphs? I would have never done that before this class, but I've been told that it is much easier to read when it is like this. I could not agree more. I will be forever thankful DP pointed this out to me, it's a lifestyle change. The Chief is signing out for now, but I hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving!

THLOG

After another week bites the dust, it kind of hit home that we only have 3 more classes left with DP. Although I am ecstatic to be done with Writing, I am really going to miss good ol' Zack. I thought this class was going to be the biggest drag of my first quarter, but I could not have been anymore wrong (it's definitely my favorite). Okay sounds like I'm already writing my reflection...

Did I just say reflection? Yes, that is one of the main topics we learned this week during lecture. After reading both Anna and Bella's reflection, I thought they both did certain things better than the other. After DP told us that they were both "A" material, I was very relieved because I thought it was going to be much harder than that. We went over the guidelines for our Portfolio and I must say that I am a bit overwhelmed. The fact that we have to look back literally on everything that we have done this quarter is a bit intimidating. But you know, that tends to happen to me with every big assignment in this class. I always seem to be fine after so I'm sure after I let all of my stress out my Portfolio will turn out just fine.

After completing my WP3, I learned that I have discovered a new skill that may change the rest of my life forever. I'm a rapper, it's my calling. Not really. But I did have fun with it so that is all that matters. On a serious note, I really learned how to put myself in different rhetorical situations. For example, when I was writing my Facebook posts I really had to think about what parents would say if they were announcing the death of their child. I think I did a pretty good job at doing this but it did take a lot of careful typing.

Now as we move on to our presentations, this week I have learned that I do not know a thing about hedged language so this should be interesting. Time to do some research!

it's thlog time

As we are headed toward the home stretch of this class, I can definitely say that I have accomplished many of things I hoped to after taking Writing 2. The main lesson that I learned this week was that hard work really does pay off. After reading DP's feedback on my WP2, I felt so proud of myself and really do believe that I am transforming into a better writer. I'm the type of person that will stare at my computer for hours before even writing anything, and then change my paper several times. I often get really frustrated when writing a 6 page paper, but I can definitely say that I put everything I have into. This technique is really important because I've realized that regardless of the task at hand, you can succeed in it as long as you put effort and hard work into it. 

I always hate this part of the writing process where you have to start a new project and are not sure how to do so. That is where I am at with WP3. Usually I stress out about each WP, but for this last one I am trying to stay relaxed. I've got my beats by Dre on and ready to make a gangsta rap song. I'm gonna mess around with Garage Band but I don't really know how to use it so we will see how that goes. 

Keeping this thlog pretty basic this week since we only had one lecture, but it is now time for me to go ham on WP3. Peace, love and happiness.

PB3A-the last real PB

            Do you remember when marijuana used to be the most popular and main drug used among teens? Well, according to the scholarly article, “Teen Prescription Drug Use” more youth initiate drug use with prescription pain relievers than with marijuana. In two recent studies displayed by the article, “5.2 million respondents 12 or older had used prescription pain relievers nonmedically in the previous month—a 10% increase since 2005.” As you can see, this is becoming a huge problem. Many teens crave prescription drugs such as Xanax, Adderall, Valium and Vicodin, and unfortunately these days it is not hard to get a hold of these narcotics if they aren’t prescribed to you.

            Abusing prescription drugs can lead to serious health risks and addiction problems, in which many people have unintentionally overdosed. I’m sure you all have heard of stories of families losing their innocent child due to an “accidental” or maybe even purposeful overdose of prescription medication. This can be traced back to the physicians who prescribe these drugs, who often times misdiagnose patients or give them too large of a dose of the medication. Many patients are then prompted to sell the drugs or just give them to their friends who do not need it. Obviously, doctors are not the only ones at fault here and are not the only reason why this problem exists. No matter what, teens are still going to have the option and gateway into misusing prescription drugs.

            The best technique that can be used to prevent teens from abusing prescription drugs is to persuade them to not want too. If a teen does not have any motivation to pop a Xanax when feeling stressed out, then the prevalence of this issue would decrease. Teens must be exposed to the negative side of these harmful narcotics, instead of only hearing about the relaxing and happy affects. This is why I want to create a rap song directed toward a younger audience—anywhere from the ages of 10-16—to expose the dangerous side of abusing prescription drugs.

            Ironically, drug use is a common topic used among rappers in their songs. For example, Lil Wayne always talks about how much he loves mixing Codeine and sprite, which can only influence his audience to want to do the same. Hip hop is such a popular genre of music for teens, so I think it would only be right to create a song they can relate to. In my song, I want to to tell a story. First, I will explain a story about a teen who started taking Adderall for concentration which led to the teen experimenting with other narcotics such as Vicodin and Xanax. I will make it clear that him and his friends just did it for fun and to feel the “high” but soon enough he found it impossible to stop. Then, I will say one day he was found dead and show how devastated his family and friends were. I also want to include all of the symptoms teens face during withdrawals to persuade the younger audience to not want to get involved with prescription drugs.

            As for an older audience, I was thinking about creating a series of Facebook posts from different parents who have lost their children. These posts would be geared to the parent’s friends/extended family and include the date/time of the memorial. I would include how the death was unexpected, and some cases the child would be prescribed the drugs and in other cases not. Aside from the Facebook posts, I was thinking of writing an email from a parent who lost their teen to overdose when she (the teen) wasn't even prescribed any drugs. The email would be to the teens friend's doctor who prescribed the drugs to the teen who sold the drugs to her friend (the one who died). Instead of attacking the physician, the email would serve as an eye opener to prevent cases like this from happening again. There would definitely be information in the email to make the doctor feel extremely guilty and want to reevaluate the amount of medication he is dispersing and the reasoning for dispersing. I just don't know if the email would fit the criteria, so please let me know what you think!

thlogggg

I'm so happy this week is over because we have finally turned in our dreadful WP2. One of the main things I struggled with was keeping my paper within the required page numbers, but after class on Monday it all clicked. From the activity of counting our longest and shortest sentence, I realized that it's good to have a variation. Also, the peer review helped me figure out ways to make my paper shorter, such as not reciting the article titles every five seconds. After completing WP2, I feel like I improved upon tying in examples and relating them to my thesis. I'm just soooo happy it is done. 

Wednesday's online class was interesting. I definitely feel like the Bob Ross video questions helped me learn more about author's moves. Aside from his creepiness, at least. However, I am still unsure of how this relates to WP3, but as Zack said, "we'll get there." Also, I enjoyed reading people's journal responses because I struggled with a lot of the same things that they struggled with. It makes me feel better when I know other people are in the same situation as me. 

The course reading on citing sources was mainly just a refresher for me, but I never would have thought to compare annoying ways to cite sources to annoying car drivers. The best way to cite sources is to do it nice and smoothly, while making it flow just like good drivers do. 

This week wasn't too crazy with learning new material, but I know I will learn a lot more next week as we prepare for presentations/WP3! 

Bob Ross is a boss

Family Guy:
Bob uses a comical move to tell the audience to disregard the bush he painted by saying that he will "cut you" if you say anything, when in reality the bush is clearly painted for everyone to see. Ross describes that he is using a fan brush to paint and provides a demonstration of it. The artist is referring directly to the person watching the video because of use of "you." This directs our attention toward the little bush that he painted.

Distant trees:
The artist talks in a very monotone/boring tone of voice, and often sounds very creepy. He goes in depth about his usage of "planes" in order to give depth to the painting. Ross also uses a move of giving the painting a reflection by dragging the brush straight down. He also gives lots of reassurance throughout the video by saying "you can do it," to make the audience believe that doing such complicated artwork is actually easy. The artist often talks about the size/type of paintbrush being used and what kind of strokes need to be done in order for the painting to look a certain way. Here, the direction is pointed towards the preciseness of the painting and creating a 3-D figure.

Painting Mountains:
The artist uses a method of mixing colors to create a mountain. He directs our attention toward the exact method of getting just the right amount of paint on the straight-edge, by showing us the exact angle the straight edge needs to approach the paint. He uses the move of pressing very hard down on the canvas, in order to create the perfect mountain. The artist is often focused on not using too much paint, because that would mess up the painting.

Painting An Evergreen Tree:
Ross begins with showing the audience that a lot of paint is needed on the fan brush, but when painting an Evergreen, you start of with just using the tip of the brush. He explains to push harder on the painting as you work your way down the tree. Our direction is focused towards the creativity and freedom of paining, for example, the artist made it clear that it was up to the painter to create as many branches as he/she wants.

JOURNAL

In the end, I think my WP2 turned out pretty well. I was happy with the way I revised my thesis and incorporated quotes to relate back to it. I was not happy with the fact that I couldn’t answer a lot of the questions to the prompt because I literally ran out of space. Also, I was both happy and not happy about how much time I put into this paper (a lot).

The comment that helped me the most was when somebody said my last sentence could actually be my thesis, because in the end, it ended up being really similar. Also, I found the pointers on how to shorten my paper (not including the article titles every 5 seconds) very useful.

Thlog #5

Before I begin to drown myself writing my WP2, it is time to share my favorite subjects of learning from this weeks lectures. Wednesday's lecture was a bit different than most lectures, since DP was actually lecturing for a majority of the time. He gave us many important punctuation/grammar tips that were similar to the previous readings. I thought I knew everything about parallelism, the use of brackets and transition words, however, DP pointed out some strategies that I will use in my WP2.

I found the list of terms (in replacement of the word "says") the class composed very helpful because when writing, I often struggle with finding a variety of words to make my paper sound more effective. Now instead of using the online thesaurus, I can refer back to that list. In addition, the lesson about parallelism opened my eyes to how important it is to have properly structured sentences. I already knew that sentences needed to be parallel, for example, you need to be consistent with your verb tense (swimming in the ocean, fighting the waves, sinking to the bottom). However, after looking at the different resumes, I realized that parallelism does not only exist in sentences. In order to have a decent/readable resume, it is important to always follow the same structures throughout. For instance, the dates of jobs must follow the same format each time and be spaced aligned with each other and the color/size of the font must be consistent.

The article "As A Result" in the course reader contained a lot of basic information that college students should already be aware of. However, it really outlined the importance of sentence flow and I realized that choppy/short sentences are just as bad as having random sentences that do not relate to each other. I also learned that transitions do not only connect the parts of your writing, but also add to the strength of your argument. Lastly, in "Style in Arguments" I learned that slang and colloquial terms may bring life to an argument, but they can also confuse the reader. Therefore, it is important to be careful when using slang because you do not want to lead your audience in the wrong direction.
Hopefully after this weeks extensive review of grammar, my WP2 will be flawless.

I like to move it, move it

Moves can be used in a variety of different ways in writing, dancing, singing, playing sports etc. Who would have known that Michael Jackson’s different dance moves such as the moonwalk, would be related to the moves that we are studying in Writing 2? Throughout the articles that we have read so far in our course reader, the authors use many different moves to affect the audience in certain ways. One can find many examples of moves from “They Say, I Say” demonstrated in the course reader, as well as many other moves not included in the appendix.

For example, in the article “So What? Who Cares?” the identified move of “signaling who is saying what” is used many times to help establish its credibility. The author uses phrases such as “What Grady implicitly says here is…” and “Notice that Grady’s phrase…” to portray the point of the article and give examples of affective and non affective writing.

In Navigating Genres, Dirk adds metacommentary by using phrases such as “In other words” and “By this point you might realize”. He often uses this move after quoting long explanations from leading professors/professionals to summarize what was quoted, to provide clarity for the audience.

Dirk also captures authorial action by using the terms “Carolyn Miller argues” multiple times throughout the reading. This move also adds to the ethos of the article by showing the point of view from a respectable figure, and also gives an introduction to the upcoming quote. The diction of the word “argues” has a stronger impact than if Dirk were to replace it with “says,” which also adds to the effectiveness of the move.

 In “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis,” Carroll begins the article very informal using the “introducing standard views” move. I found the introduction to this article extremely interesting, because I was able to relate when she brought up the fact that we are constantly judging the people around us by their hairstyle, clothing, jewelry etc. Carroll states that “daily we find ourselves in situations where we are forced to make snap judgments” which proves that these days everyone develops stereotypes without even realizing it. This move is effective because it shows how real life situations are similar to rhetoric and helps give a realistic introduction to the topic.

It is only obvious that in the article “Why Blog? Searching for Writing on the Web,” Reid uses the move of “establishing why your claims matter”. Reid believes that “a blog is an excellent opportunity for exploring and developing intrinsic motivations for writing.” This move is crucial because the purpose of the article is to persuade students to believe blogging is a great way of demonstrating their work. Therefore, if Reid doesn’t establish why his claims matter, then the audience will consider the article irrelevant.

In Straub’s “Responding—Really Responding—to Other Students’ Writing,” there are many two-word sentence blasters that have a strong impact on the text. An example of the two-word sentence blasters is “She writes. You read.” The author may have used this move to get his point across in a short and concise way, so the audience clearly understands how to properly respond to other people’s writings. I believe this move was very effective because instead of using long/complicated sentences, I was easily able to understand the rights and wrongs.

In “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” Boyd uses a unique move, one that I would like to call the “stop and visualize”. After giving all of the information about the alleged murder, Boyd assigned the reader a task in the middle of the article to write as if they were a detective. Boyd’s intentions were to get the reader involved and to ultimately help the reader obtain a better understanding of rhetoric, which was very effective. Later on in the article, Boyd used a move titled “predicting the report.” Boyd claimed that the writer was “probably thinking hard about jargon” and that he/she “began it much like you did your detective report”. I believe this move was very affective because it helps the writer understand that even though every student has a different approach, most of the information that each student includes is very similar. Boyd included this because it is important to note that everyone approaches rhetorical situations in similar ways.

In “How to Read Like a Writer” Bunn uses the move I would like to call, the “question digger”. Bunn devoted an entire paragraph to asking rhetorical questions about starting an essay with a quote, which I do not believe is very effective. I think rhetorical questions are good to use every once and a while to get the reader thinking, but too many just gets annoying. I understand that the point of all of the questions was to get the reader thinking about the many advantages/disadvantages of starting with a quote and maybe even taking a stance on the topic, but I do not like this “question digger” move.

Lastly, going back to Dirk’s, Navigating Genres, he uses a move named “the isolated bullet point examples”. Dirk uses bullet points to list the names of newspaper headlines, which separates them from the text. I believe this is effective because it would be confusing for the reader if the headlines were separated by commas. The headlines stand out, which make the different genres easily identifiable.

As you can see, the limit to how many different moves authors use in their writing does not exist. Now, it is up to the reader to solve the puzzle and figure out the purpose of these so-called “moves”.

Thloggin'

I know I say this at the beginning of every thlog, but the learning just never stops with DP. My favorite activity of the week was by far the group murder activity. Not only do I love working in groups with other people, but I also enjoyed writing the dramatic email to the tenant garage workers. After the reading in the course reader and performing the activity in class, I definitely have a better understanding of rhetoric now. I officially learned that rhetoric is how you make decisions on what words to use in a certain situation and how you go about presenting those words.

I just remembered the videos we watched in class on Wednesday, so that is currently taking the spot of my favorite activity this week. I like how the definition and idea of "moves" were presented in a non-academic way because it definitely helped me learn the concept better. It was fun to watch Michael Jordan do his signature move, the under and over bank into the basket. I learned that moves are supposed to impact (affect lol) the audience and people use different moves depending on their audience. I realized that we use moves in our every day lives, for example, when I'm dancing at a party I always do my signature moves. Everybody knows its my signature move when they see me and it may even be better than Michael Jackson's moves. Just kidding.

Another important thing to add was that I learned a lot from DP's comments on my WP1. I now know the areas I need to improve upon so I can kill WP2.

PB2A

When asked to compare a genre generating website to a scholarly article from a university’s database, somebody that has yet to take Writing 2 would probably be confused as to how these two sources have anything to do with each other. After comparing a scholarly article on fast food and its affects on childhood obesity in India to the SCIgen website, there are many similarities in their surface-level features. Both have bolded titles to grab the reader’s attention, with the components of the paper organized into categories below. Both begin with a section titled “Abstract” that gives a brief explanation of the source’s purpose followed by an introduction. Unlike SCIgen, the scholarly article “Fast foods and physical inactivity are risk factors for obesity and hypertension among adolescent school children in east district of Sikkim, India” was created by a legitimate author who is a professional in his field. This creates a sense of credibility among the source because the data is coming from a reliable source, adding to the ethos of the article.

In comparison to the SCIgen—a formulated scientific research paper that is extremely hard to understand—the scholarly article conducts an experiment, explains its materials and methods, gives the results and forms a discussion and conclusion concerning the study. The article also gives statistical analysis in the form of two tables, showing the prevalence of obesity and its risk factors. Instead of tables, the SCIgen website usually displays its evidence in the form of graphs. In contrast, the scholarly article performs a study on a topic that is relevant to society (usually a controversial topic), while the genre generating website lacks interesting/important topics, therefore it is almost impossible to relate to.

When taking a closer look at the scholarly article, it is crucial to find the aspects that strike you as most important. First, I think proving the ethos of the article is one of the most important aspects, since it is a scholarly article. Obviously since this article is generated from the library database and has an author with a PhD, one can agree that it is a credible source. The 45 references listed at the end also add to the credibility of the source, proving that the author did a lot of research prior and throughout the experiment. Another important aspect of the scholarly article is that it has a well-developed introduction, because the author needs to prove that there is a good reasoning for the experiment/study. Nobody would consider the article “scholarly” if the experiment seemed irrelevant or unimportant. Another important aspect and convention of the scholarly article is its use of strong diction. There are numerous highly-developed vocabulary words that prove the intelligence of the researcher and adds to the scholarly aspect of the article.

Since this article is based on child obesity, an aspect that I found important was the pathos created by the author. The author states that childhood obesity “increases the risk of subsequent morbidity,” which really hit home to me and made me realize how sad cases like that actually are. This furthered my interest in the study and helped me want to become more proactive with my personal health. I also liked how there was an explanation of the factors involved in calculating one’s BMI, and how it stated the percentiles in which a child was considered either overweight, or obese. Another important aspect of the article was that in the results, it included that boys are more likely to suffer from obesity rather than girls. This proves to the audience that the researcher conducted a wide variety of people for the experiment, so the results would not be biased.

At first, I was scared by the term “scholarly article” and believed that all of its content would be horrifically boring, but after browsing the library database the phrase, “never judge a book by its cover” proved to be true once again.