This class has provided me with writing skills that I will use for the rest of my life. Having projects that require active research allowed me to broaden my research tools and habits. Also, this helped me check the validity of a source. Learning the difference between primary and secondary research also helped me. Doing the peer reviews made it easier in finding the arguments in different writing. Each person wrote differently and about different things except the people who wrote about active minds. This allowed me to not only learn about different organizations and genres but analyze them as well. This was a great experience.

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages. Seth Kahn. “Putting Ethnographic Writing in Context”,2011, 175-191
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	It basically is telling what to do in an ethnographic paper.  There are a lot of steps to it and they are very tedious. It also talks about learning from experiences. Both someone else’s and yours. It talks about risk and benefits like how you could offend someone by saying certain things. It also talks about putting in historical context.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	None
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	It will help with mp2
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages.  Understanding Discourse Communities. wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/writingspaces3/melzer.pdf.
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	The author first starts off talking about how this teacher wanted to learn to play the guitar and when he found a group, he was having a lot of trouble because no one had taken time to teach him. He then discusses six features that John Swales says discourse communities have and elaborates on them. An example of one would be, “ A broadly agreed upon a set of common goals,” It then talks about how to analyze material and construct an essay. He then ends the essay with a list of questions to ask when joining a new discourse community.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	None
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	It discusses the discourse that has been a topic of our discussion
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	What is one discourse community you have joined

 

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages.  Kenny Dirk, “ Navigating Genres,” 2010
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	He starts off with a joke that gets into his main topic, genres. He basically talks about how genres are categories that are specific. In his opening, he gives the joke that would only register if you listened to country music. He goes on to quote Devitt. “genres have the power to help or hurt human interaction, to ease communication or to deceive, to enable someone to speak or to discourage someone from saying something different.” He talks about how specific characteristics determine genres.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.	none
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	Because it helps to distinguish and categorize genres. This is a writing class so we will deal with many different genres.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	What is your favorite genre?

 

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages.  Gita DasBender. “Critical Thinking in College Writing: From the Personal to the Academic.” 2011, 37-51
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	I feel like the article is explaining how to think critically and analyze a piece of work and turn it into writing. I felt like it was a good analysis and I really liked the story of how we as humans should be the weasel and live instinctively in the moment. The story alone kept me intrigued and made me keep wanting to get further into the breakdown. It gave steps like, listing important ideas, notices key terms and summarizing important quotes, writing a personal response: looking inward, and so on. It was really intriguing and gave me a new insight.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	It connects because it gives us writing tips.
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	List an important idea on something we read.

Ann M Johns, ” Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice,” discusses the different ways you can be in discourse communities. Her first topic is “Communities and Membership.” Here she talks about the social, political, and recreational communities.  As we are born, we may be put into communities involuntarily. With this, you have to learn to the discourse within these communities This includes religious, tribal, social, and economic. To me, this is saying how we are put into many clubs and organizations because of who we are and where we are born. The next topic she talks about is professional communities. Within professional communities, there are modes of discourse that must be learned. There are both formal and informal means of communication. For example, small talk during conventions or emails won’t be the same discourse you use in a meeting with your boss. Although in some instances, it can be intertwined. She uses written discourse as an example. Musicians are the example she uses. Academic communities are examples that are used. This is a discourse between students. Students have many ways of discourse from text messages to class discussion. They analyze how different they talk between the two. She then talks about Language, text, and values. It discusses how text must be explicit and word choice should be chosen carefully, and citation must be cited carefully. They then discuss how the topic should be introduced early on in the introduction. Next writers should in a way predict what comes next by relating their content. This provides a sort of roadmap for their writing. They next talk about how it shouldn’t be in the first person and create a distance between the writer and the text. Next, they talk about how you should detach feelings and emotions from the writing to decrease bias.

 

 

Club Basketball

Men of Excellence

BSU

Fortnite

Christian/Church

Basketball Player

Student

Male

Black

Group Leader at work

How do I define myself as a writer? I feel like style defines my writing. I try to imagine myself as the audience and attempt to make the writing something that I would want to read. I try to do this by not making my writing so serious. Essentially, I try to have a conversation with myself while simultaneously stating what I need to say in a way where it flows naturally. I feel like this class has helped me develop my writing skills by challenging me to think outside the box while also making it fun. Having to write about different subjects and become more creative by the podcast script was something that was fun and didn’t really feel like work. It was fun to pretend to be a radio host, and basically mimic those who I listen to. It made the work engaging and creative. I really enjoyed this class and how it developed my writing.

 

When promoting or advertising, the advertiser’s goal is to grab the audience’s attention and make them want to buy what they are advertising. Rhetorical devices can be used to make things more appealing and memorable. While advertising by means of commercials, rhetoric is especially needed to make the audience want to pay attention. One commercial that uses rhetoric is Amazon advertising Alexa.

Amazon is a major company that wears many hats. E-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence are some of those. The CEO of the company, Jeff Bezos, generates an annual salary of $81,840 and is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of today. Within Amazon, Bezos invented an echo dot, better known as an Alexa.

In the previously stated commercial, the amazon writers used rhetoric to make the commercial more appealing. In the said commercial, Alexa lost her well-known voice. Bezos and his assistant converse and decide to use the replacements. The replacements happen to be a variety of famous people such as famous chef Gordon Ramsey, or famous female rapper Cardi B. This creates ethos or credibility within the product because it makes the audience feel like if famous people think the product is worth using, then it should be. They also chose celebrities that make you laugh. Making the commercial funny makes the commercial more memorable. They use funnier celebrities to try to persuade people into purchasing Alexa. 

In the commercial, the writers also used the rhetorical device, repetition. To alert the device that it has been summoned, you say, “Alexa,” and proceed to your request. Since this is so, the phrase, “Alexa,” is repeated. This creates repetition within the commercial. This makes the phrase more likely to remember or recall. It also makes the brand more familiar. By using repetition, the writers are trying to persuade you to purchase Alexa by keeping the phrase fresh on your brain. Smallbusiness.chron stated that “Repetition is used in advertising as a way to keep a brand or product in the forefront of consumer’s minds.” This creates a connection to the product and to mass culture. It creates a universal phrase that makes the consumer think about the product. 

In closing, Amazon’s writers used rhetorical devices to make their product more appealing in order to persuade consumers to purchase their product. The ethos created a feeling of want because seeing celebrities use things makes them more appealing, while repetition used a repeated phrase to make the product more memorable and created a connection to it.

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page	Author(s). “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, Volume, Issue, Year, pages. Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” Vol 15, Spring 1997, pp 264-279
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words	“Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” by Keith Davie talks about why we need rhetoric discourse. He also challenges us to look at things through different and deeper lenses. He starts with exigence, the rhetors’ sense that a situation calls for and might be resolved by discourse. He then goes on to discuss the Rhetors, audiences, and restraints. Rhetors are the people, real or imaginary, responsible for discourse in its authoritative voice. The audience is those with whom rhetors negotiate through discourse to achieve rhetorical goals. Constraints are things that may be affecting the achievement of rhetorical goals. He challenges you to look deeper by analyzing each main point.
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?	By discussing rhetors and discourse
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.	How does he challenge us to look at the broader picture.

Brainstorming/ Introductory paragraph

 

 My dream is to be a physical therapist. This has been my dream for a while and I hope to turn my dreams into reality. Being in the healthcare field comes with many ethical dilemmas. Dr. Mona faced many dilemmas in What the Eyes Don’t See. She worked hard to expose the corruption in the government, people who are supposed to protect us. A physical therapist can face dilemmas such as not being able to offer service to those who can’t afford it but really need it. This is a hard situation because it isn’t black and white.