February 2021

Claire Baskin

 

Post this “Letter to the Reader” (200+ words) to your blog before you come to the conference or you will be asked to reschedule the conference. Tell the reader what you intend for the research essay to do for its readers.

• Describe its purpose(s) and the effect(s) you want it to have on the readers. Say who you think the readers are.
• Describe your process of working on the essay.
• What kind of planning did you do?
• What steps did you go through, what changes did you make along the way, what decisions did you face, and how did you make the decisions?
• How did comments from your peers, in peer workshop, help you? How did any class activities on style, editing, etc., help you?

 

 

 

The purpose of my paper is to inform readers on what Junior Auxiliary is and the positive effects it has on underprivileged kids in the community. I want this paper to show readers that this discourse community is a great opportunity for women who want to take on leadership roles in their community and build character. I also want to show the huge difference that this organization has made on not only the kids in the community but also the women who choose to participate and join the cause. I believe that the readers of this essay are ones who are interested in learning more about different communities that they can possibly join in the future, and I hope to show them that Junior Auxiliary would be a great choice. Throughout working on this essay, I researched many different websites and social media platforms of the organization and excluded any previous bias I may have had while gathering information. Although I had already had knowledge of this community especially since it is in my hometown, I researched and wrote everything as if I was learning about it for the first time. I began planning this essay by asking members I know from the community if it would be okay if I could interview them in the future. This allowed me to make a schedule for upcoming due dates. I also learned basic information such as who the President and Vice President were. The only changes I made along the way in this paper were deciding not to interview my mom and sister who are members in this community. This decision was made to remove any accidental bias I may have had, so I decided I would interview people that I have never met before along with the President (who I also do not know). Comments and advice from my peers were a great way for me to look at my paper differently from an outsider’s point of view and make only a few small adjustments that would enhance my paper a bit. Class activities especially the readings on interview styles and discourse communities were a big help in writing my paper. It helped me understand more of what I should write about and how I should go about writing it.

Reading Journal

 

Copy + Paste this template into a different document (do not try to type directly on it). Then fill it out and post to your blog. 

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Kahn, Seth. Putting Ethnographic Writing in Context. wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces2/kahn–putting-ethnographic-writing.pdf.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	Kahn begins this article describing the way students might feel: why would we need to study ethnographic for our college writing? Kahn goes on to explain that any good writer is an ethnographer. Kahn says that it helps readers generate, collect, and analyze/synthesize more material. Good writers either write from experience or not directly from experience. To write from experience, one must learn from that experience. A personal essay would be a form of this because one is writing from lessons he or she learned from a personal experience. Not only is it important to write from one’s own personal experience but also others’ experiences. This is the task of an ethnographer.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	Ethnographers- study culture Ethnographic writing- writing from your own experience or the experience of others
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	This connects to Melzner’s article about discourse communities because he would not have been able to write about his guitar group community without having that experience himself.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	What is a time that you wrote ethnographic writing and did not even know it?

 

In a 200+ word blog post, explore these questions:

1. How did you decide what information was most important for the draft?
2. Why did you decide to “leave out” certain information? How did you make these rhetorical decisions?
3. What were the steps for your research in this draft?
4. What assumptions/biases did you bring to the research? How did you work to contextualize and check these assumptions/biases?
5. How did you work with facts, observations, and so on, in order to form an argument?
6. What information are you still searching for to help your research?

 

 

1. I made sure to follow the directions of the MP1 project that was given by the teacher which allowed me to know exactly what questions to answer in my draft. I also took advice from my peer reviews and recommendations from my teacher.

 

2. When I write, I know what feels right and authentic in my writing. If there is a piece of information that I feel is not necessary or too wordy, then I leave it out. I make sure to only include what is necessary and interesting for the reader to know. I make these decisions by asking myself, “Will this add essential information to my paper?” and “Will this make my paper better?” If my teacher believes it will, then I usually agree and add it.

 

3. I first began by researching my organization’s social media. I made sure to study the pages and read as much as I could about it. I also talked to my mother who used to be in this organization and asked her who the current head staff was (President, Vice President etc). Finally, I went to their main website and read about their motto, who they were, where they are located, and their background history. I then took all of this information and wrote my paper with the knowledge I had of it.

 

4. I honestly did not have any major assumptions or biases other than knowing this organization more personally since there is a branch in my hometown. I assume that my bias was that I believed that they were doing necessary work for underprivileged children, and their website proves that this is indeed their purpose.

 

5. I made sure to not include false information. I double checked everything that I wrote in this paper to make sure my information about this organization was true and correct. I did not add any extra stretched truths to make it sound better than it actually is and despite personally knowing people in this organization, I only formed my opinions about it after I fact checked everything. I also observed the social media pages which included pictures from events. This showed me that the women in this organization truly love what they do. This information allowed me to write my paper knowing that I was not misjudging this organization.

 

6. I am still researching all the types of events that they hold. I know of a few that are staples in their organization, but I know that there are many more things that they do. I also am still searching into how many members are involved in my local community and the age minimum and limit because I am still unaware. I believe this information will help me out a lot more with this project.

Reading Journal

 

Copy + Paste this template into a different document (do not try to type directly on it). Then fill it out and post to your blog. 

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Driscoll, Dana. Introduction to Primary Research: Observations, Surveys …wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces2/driscoll–introduction-to-primary-research.pdf.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	In Driscoll’s article, she discusses how to use observations, surveys, and interviews as methods for primary research. After developing research questions and forming a hypothesis, one can choose to use one of the three data collection methods. In the observation method, Driscoll talks about two approaches to this: participant observation and unobtrusive observation. Then she goes on to explain surveys and interviews and how to choose between them. Surveys are recommended if one wants to learn about a general trend in people’s opinions, behaviors, or experiences. The survey should be short and focused so the participant can fill it out in 5 to ten minutes. Interviews are recommended if one wants to learn specific, detailed information from a few specific people about their opinions. These interviews should be conducted in a quiet area. The article goes into detail about how writing good questions and choosing the right person is the key to one’s primary research. This means only one, clear question should be asked at a time, and one should avoid leading questions which cause participants to respond in a specific way. After collecting the data and writing the essay, one should include a works cited page. Since the data is collected by you, there is not a need to cite an external source, unless one used an interview. Then, that can be cited as “personal communication.”
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	Participant observation- “a common method within ethnographic research in sociology and anthropology where a researcher may interact with participants and become part of their community.”   Unobtrusive observation- “a method where one does not interact with participants but rather simply record their behavior.”
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	This reading connected with a project I had to do back in high school. In my Anatomy and Physiology class, we were required to conduct either interviews or surveys for a class project. This would be the first time I ever did primary research involving people other than myself. It was extremely interesting, and reading this article showed me that I have a lot to improve. Reading this will help with my upcoming interview for my MP project for this class.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	What research method would you prefer to use and why?

 

I would not describe myself as a writer at all. Many people are natural when it comes to writing papers, but I have always had to take extra time to do papers because I overthink everything. I am an artist so many people correlate that with being great at writing, but that is not necessarily the case for me. I will say though that because of my artistic abilities, I am better at creative writing where there are less rules about what to write about, and I can use my imagination to its full extent. One time that I truly felt successful as a writer was in my senior year of high school. We were allowed to pick a topic about something that we felt was an issue and write a research paper on it. I wrote about the NCAA gymnastics Larry Nassar scandal which was something that I was genuinely interested in. The situation made me angry which in a way helped my writing because I wrote as if I was responsible for telling the story. My teacher loved it, and that paper made me feel proud of my writing. Some writing aspects I would like to work on this semester are in-text citations and grammar. Some areas where my writing could use work are argumentative style writings and mainly analysis style writings. My learning is not specific. I can pretty much learn in any way, but I do like when I have a set of clear instructions of what to do and what questions to answer in a paper so that I do not have as many careless errors.

In “You Better Think Before You Spit”, there were many strengths with a few weaknesses I noticed as well. First off, one of the most obvious strengths I noticed was the writer’s ability to include a multitude of necessary information without overwhelming the paper. Readers will be able to find out almost everything they need to know about this student organization by just reading it. There was no confusing terminology or gobbledygook which made the paper extremely easy to read. Lastly, they included interviews with members of the organization which I liked because it gave more of a personal insight into what the organization is really about. The only weakness I really noticed was some issued with grammar,-commas and parallelism mainly- but other than that it was a good read. This paper was organized by headings for what topic they would be discussing underneath.

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing, vol.1, 2010, pp. 249- 262. Glatch, Sean. Personal interview. 29 Mar. 2019. Johns, Ann M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity.” Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies, 1997, pp. 498- 510. Project: Spit. “About.” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/pg/ProjectSPITUCF/about/?ref=page_internal. Accessed 8 Apr. 2019.

 

In the Puerto Rican Student Association paper, I found that the main strengths were that there was more detailed information about it being a discourse community than the S.P.I.T paper. The writer really added much in-depth information about this organization which makes it interesting for readers. There were also interviews included in this paper which I enjoyed. The pictures added of their intercommunication were a nice touch as well. The only weakness I have answers the next question about organization. I did not like how it was organized. I felt as if certain things were repeated in multiple paragraphs, and some it felt a bit disorganized actually. The S.P.I.T paper’s organization was much easier to read because of the headings which allows the reader to find information in the paper easily.

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 1, 2010, pp. 249- 262. Johns, Ann M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity.” Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. 1997, pp. 498- 510. Puerto Rican Student Association. “Constitution of Puerto Rican Student Association.” PRSA at UCF, 25 Oct. 2017. Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston, Cambridge: UP, 1990, pp. 466-473.

Reading Journal

 

Copy + Paste this template into a different document (do not try to type directly on it). Then fill it out and post to your blog. 

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Melzer, Dan. “Melzer-Understanding-Discourse-Communities.pdf – Understanding Discourse Communities Dan Melzer This Essay Is a Chapter in Writing Spaces Readings on: Course Hero.” Melzer-Understanding-Discourse-Communities.pdf – Understanding Discourse Communities Dan Melzer This Essay Is a Chapter in Writing Spaces Readings on | Course Hero, www.coursehero.com/file/65182523/melzer-understanding-discourse-communitiespdf/.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	In this article, Dan Melzer uses his story of him joining a beginner’s guitar group to help explain the six features of what a discourse community is. The first point on the list states that discourse communities have a common set of shared goals. This applies to his group because everyone is there to better their guitar skills. The second point states the community should have communication among members. In his guitar group, they communicated through their website to recruit new members. The third point is the use of that communication to provide feedback and other information. Through their website, they could talk about meeting places and what handouts were needed. The fourth point is different genres. His group would play multiple songs of different genres, but genres also apply to the website and music handouts they used. The fifth point, having a specific language, is shown by how they use specific guitar terminology that only they could understand. The sixth and last point, having expert members, is essential so that beginners can learn from someone with more experience.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	Genre- A category of composition Lexis- a specialized language
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	This article heavily relates to that of Johns. Both of these articles discuss what discourse communities are and how they work. Whereas Johns’ article is more academic in writing style, Melzer uses a more personal style of writing. He tells his own story which helped me understand a bit more in depth about discourse communities. I felt like I was able to relate more to Melzer.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	Out of the six points Melzer made about discourse communities, which point would you consider the most vital for the community to work best?