...Technical writing is something that is learned. In school everyone was taught how to format an essay or different types of writing like poems or stories. Anything that I did in class I was always given a template of how the instructor wanted the paper to be written. This would have word count, the format, and what the paper should be about. All throughout school we learned the fundamentals of writing starting with letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, to structures of writing like essays and poems. The thing that is learned from writing is technical. As my English education grows the technical side is less focused on while the content is the most important thing. Content is the writing that I am doing now. The content portion of writing is not learned but influenced by others. My writing becomes influenced through examples like essays. In this English class, I believe that that’s how these three previous essays worked out. The Scholarly Discourse Unit paper was a paper that had us synthesize how we thought the writers Gee, Swales, and Porter connected to each other. I used transferability to apply the knowledge that I got from each of the three sources and created an argument that I could synthesize with each other. This paper gave me the opportunity to express my ideas but what I had to write about was more about the three sources rather than using those three sources too support my ideas. Writing may be learned at first but...
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...So what is a discourse community? When you google discourse community, you read, “It is a group of people sharing a common goal using communication to reach that common goal.”Getting more into detail what exactly is a discourse community, we have John Swales’ academic essay, ‘The Concept of Discourse Community’, which breaks it down into six characteristics: “1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. 2. A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. 3. A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. 4. A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims. 5. In addition...
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...87 .,~. Peer Tutoring and the "Conversation of Mankind" by Kenneth A. Bruffee The beginnings of peer tutoring lie in practice, not in theory. A decade or so ago, faculty and administrators in a few institutions around the country became aware that, increasingly, students entering college had difficulty doing as well in academic studies as their abilities suggested they should be able to do. Some of these students were in many ways poorly prepared academically. Many more of them, however, had on paper excellent secondary preparation. The common denominator among the poorly prepared and the apparently well prepared seemed to be that, for cultural reasons we may not yet fully under stand, all these students had difficulty adapting to the traditional or "normal" conventions of the college classroom. One symptom of the difficulty was that many of these students refuSed .help when it was offered. Mainly, colleges offered ancillary programs staffed by professionals. Students avoided them in droves. Many solutions to this problem were suggested and tried, from mandated programs to sink-or-swim. One idea that seemed at the time among the most exotic and unlikely (that is, in the jargon of the Sixties, among the most "radical") turned out to work rather well. Some of us had guessed that students were refusing the help we were providing because it seemed to them merely an extension of the work, the expectations, and above all the social structure of traditional classroom learning. And...
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...Preface/Unit Reflection I had many thoughts about my audience and the format of this essay before I started, but as I haven’t done essays in a long time (business majors usually focus on projects, not essays), I decided that I wanted to write my first project in a straightforward fashion. I feel that I need to get the rust off my writing, so to speak I chose to write to the rest of the class because 1) They will be peer reviewing it, so it’s convenient for them that they are the target audience and 2) I could express my thoughts in a straightforward fashion that my audience can relate to very well, as they are in the same position as I am. I wrote this essay as if I was writing to an intellectual friend who is also taking this class, is very interested in English and entrepreneurship, and wanted to see how the two topics coincided through the lens of genre analysis. I assumed that the reader knew the definitions of materiality, genre and genre analysis, and discourse community, as the intended reader is in this class and has done the readings. Surprisingly, I learned a lot about my field through reading and writing for this unit. I really loved the challenging readings, as it seemed as if I were “getting smarter” reading them. Pushing my brain processing abilities is great for my brain’s capabilities, which I value. As I wrote, I would constantly think of new ideas about my field, such as the materiality of online articles in an entrepreneur’s life, and think hard. I appreciate...
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...When beginning Higher Education, students at University face some unique clashes. According to Bizzell (1986) those three clashes are Clashes of Dialect, Clashes of Discourse and Clashes of worldwide views. For new students who have never encountered University life before, it is said to be a completely different environment, one which can be very intimidating. Students find themselves out of their comfort zone and facing new challenges which can be very overwhelming. Angela Thomas-Jones (2012) stated “beginning your own studies at university requires a culture adjustment in order to succeed. It is a new culture that needs to be given time to adapt to. Becoming familiar with the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values and practices of the university culture is the key to successful acculturation”. Some of the reasons why these clashes may have meaning to many students is due to the pressure individual students put on themselves to achieve good grades, be successful and be accepted amongst peers. Throughout my essay I will discuss in detail each of the three clashes outlined by Bizzell (1986). The first clash mentioned by Bizzell (1986) was the Clash of Dialect. This refers to the language being used by students within the university community. The basic writers are those students who experience the greatest distance between their home dialects and Standard English, the preferred dialect in school (Bizzell 1986). The dialect within university is something that students need to adapt...
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...Brianna Hicks Debbie Weaver ENC 1102- Section BW64 07.15.15 Discourse is in the Stars I am one of those people that looks to the stars for answers. I crave my daily horoscope and knowing where my moon and star align. I love knowing who or what I would be based on the characteristics of my zodiac sign. One of my favorite zodiac blogs is zodiac signs by Crystal Melbourne, a professional astrologer. I look at her Tumblr blog daily and sometimes multiple times during the day. It wasn’t until two weeks ago when I joined this class that I thought about how it can be categorized as a discourse community. A discourse community is a group of people that share a set of beliefs and understandings. In this essay, that we all as a class are required to write, I will be dissecting the different parts of this Tumblr blog that make it a discourse community. Before going too far into the rhetorical situation of this blog, I will give a little bit of background for those newbies out there who have no clue what astrology or a horoscope is. I will also give you some of the important language that will be found throughout this essay. First off, astrology is the study of the positions and relationships of the sun, moon, stars, and planets in order to judge their influence on human actions. A horoscope is a diagram of the heavens, showing the relative position of planets and the signs of the zodiac, for use in calculating births, foretelling events in a person’s life, etc. Zodiac is an imaginary...
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...In this article, I will be introducing what a discourse community is and how I’m a part of one. A discourse community is a group of people who share common interest and common goals. In the article, we have been reading over the past couple of weeks John swales stated “A speech community typically inherits its membership by birth, accident or adoption; a discourse community recruits its members by persuasion, training or relevant qualification”. (Swales, 220). Swales also defines discourse community as a group that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals. A discourse community consist of a genre, intercommunication, and lexis. In a discourse community Members of a discourse community generally communicate to provide information and feedback to one another and discourse communities need at least one genre of communication intended to further their goals. The discourse community I feel I belong to is the track community. In the track community, I belong to we show every aspect of being a discourse community. Throughout the rest of my essay I will show how I belong to...
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...English 1301: Rhetoric and Composition I Fall 2014 Instructor: Cathy Corder, Ph.D. Course Information: Section 043, TH 119, TTh 8 – 9:20am Office/Hours: Carlisle Hall 523, M 1 – 2pm, Tues 10am – 12noon, and by appointment Email: ccorder@uta.edu ENGL 1301 RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION I: This course satisfies the University of Texas at Arlington core curriculum requirement in communication. This course will require students to read rhetorically and analyze scholarly texts on a variety of subjects. The course emphasizes writing to specific audiences and understanding how information is context dependent and audience specific. Students must engage with a variety of ideas and learn how to synthesize those in college level essays. Core Objectives • Critical Thinking Skills: To include creative thinking, innovation, inquiry, and analysis, evaluation and synthesis of information • Communication Skills: To include effective development and expression of ideas through written, oral, and visual communication • Teamwork: To include the ability to consider different points of view and to work effectively with others to support a shared purpose or goal • Personal Responsibility: To include the ability to connect choices, actions and consequences to ethical decision-making ENGL 1301 Expected Learning Outcomes. By the end of ENGL 1301, you should be able to demonstrate the following: Rhetorical Knowledge • Use knowledge of the rhetorical situation—author...
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...As I was picking my freshman courses during the summer, I had to enroll in a required ENG 105 course. Immediately, I thought that this course would be easy because all we will do is write essays. I thought I would be fully prepared by just going over Grammar rules and standardized test tips. In retrospect, after I have attended the class for almost the entire semester, I never expected to learn a new process of writing. During my time at high school, we never went over multiple stages of reflections, revisions, or writing skills. I usually just wrote for my enjoyment or for an assignment. I strongly believe that if I had learned these processes in high school, my papers would have benefitted greatly. As this semester comes to an end, I look back at everything I have accomplished in this class. I have acquired many writing techniques through annotations, in – class assignments, and multiple essays. Because of this, I have improved tremendously as a writer. Throughout the time I have spent in this writing course, I was reminded of how effective writing can be. As I further analyze my writing, I realized that I have learned how to become a real writer. The essays included will demonstrate the tremendous amount of strength I have gained in writing this semester. I believe that I am good organizing my writing in terms of placement and topics of each body paragraph. An example of this is in my first essay about my literacy sponsors. I organized the essay by beginning each body paragraph...
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...Molly Wilder Professor Barros FYS: Revised essay 1 October 5, 2011 Silence is Power It was a beautiful Sunday morning and the entire church of St. Louis in Batesville, Indiana, was full. There was nothing unusual about the Catholic mass that day—the congregation was alive, music echoed triumphantly, and the sermon was enthusiastic and thought provoking for all. Everything went as it typically does until the end when it was time for the weekly announcements. Instead of news about an upcoming fish fry or a congratulations message for a recently baptized newborn baby in the parish, one of our priests, Father Stephen, came out of the vestibule to the podium. He had recently been “demoted” in his role at the parish, but no one would have expected the extent to which his bitter words would be revealed to the congregation. Father Stephen stood at the podium on the altar while giving his speech of resignation from the parish. It was clear that he was frustrated and annoyed at his recent demotion, and he portrayed this dissatisfaction through a harsh speech. The purpose of this essay is to examine the discourse of the priest’s speech. I will discuss its passionate nature and its brevity--how the speaker conceals information from the listeners and what this means. We will use this evidence to argue how silence demonstrates more power than the actual power the priest possesses. * 1 2 3 1 2 3 “Over the past 25 years of my Priestly ordination and service, I have never...
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...text was written, identify the writer’s intended audience and rhetorical purpose, and consider how effective his or her strategies are for accomplishing that purpose. Text: “My View: Should Everyone Go to College?” by Mike Rose (Report due September 3rd) http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/09/my-view-should-everyone-go-to-college/ “What Value Really Means in Higher Education” by Karen R. Lawrence (Report due September 17th) http://hechingerreport.org/content/value-really-means-higher-education_15129/ Present your responses in the form of short answers to the questions below (not in essay form). Note: As you answer the questions, be guided by the information Rhetorical Choices: Analyzing and Writing Arguments provides in Chapters 3 and 4 to refresh your understanding of rhetorical situation, purpose, audience, kairos, the ethos, pathos, and logos appeals, and rhetorical analysis. 1. Where did this text originally appear? 2. What is the genre of the text? What are the common rhetorical purposes for texts in this genre? (See pp. 22-24 in Rhetorical Choices for examples) 3. What can you discern about the discourse community in which this text is operating? Who is part of the discourse community, what values are important to them, what do members of this discourse community consider credible evidence, and what genres do they typical use? 4. What was the exigency for this piece? What event, situation, or position within an ongoing debate is...
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...paper called “Starbucks: Friend or Foe.” The purpose of the assignment was to argue that whether the company’s decision was ethical when Starbucks fired employees for supporting unions and applied the four-component model of ethical decision making to this case. Discourse community is an essential factor when composing a paper. According to “Students Writing Handbook”, discourse community is a unique communication tool which people use to communicate with their readers within their fields (30). Since the paper was written for a required upper division major core course, the discourse community is all business majors. The genre was a general business paper with three sections: case summary, ethical analysis, and recommendations. We are college students are trained to become more professional in our careers. As a result, my group paper’s intended audiences were only Professor Thomas Shirley and classmates. My purpose of the paper was to convince my readers that Starbucks company was unethical when it fired employees for supporting unions and applied four-component model of ethical decision making to support my argument. Through the paper, I wanted people within this community to have broader perspectives after reading my point of view in response to the case. People may even...
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...will, an outcast looking in from the sidelines. However, now I am somebody. I use to look in the mirror and see a dysmorphic me. I was not like most of my peers. You see, they were white, but...
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...Assignment #2 – Critical Reading & Questions at Issue Step 1. Being a critical reader 1. Identify two questions at issue that Sontag addresses in her essay. Designate what type of questions at issue these are (definition, interpretation, consequence, value, or policy). * Sontag states that when people go on vacation and take photos that they are limiting the experience in the search to take a great picture to keep as a souvenir. (Value) * When someone is immobilized or cannot fully participate in an event, taking pictures is a way to still feel like you’ve been participating. 2. What are her claims/theses/arguments in response to these questions? Take passages directly from the text with page numbers next to them. * “A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience photograph, and move on.” 305 * “Being temporarily immobilized prevents him from acting on what he sees, and makes it even more important to take pictures. Even if incompatible with intervention in a physical sense, using a camera is still a form of participation.” 306 3. Now analyze each statement. How does she support her claims? Are her reasons sufficient/convincing/weak/absent? Why? * Her reason is pretty convincing. I know when I’ve went on vacation I was more concerned with taking really good pictures for everyone to see, rather than fully taking the full experience...
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...is implicated in their identities. I also explore the possible influence of the learners’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds on their language practices, and related to this, the expression of their identities. I look at how their language practices help them shift identities with space and purpose, and the contradictions therein. The study draws on poststructuralist theories of language and identity (Weedon, 1997; Zegeye, 2001), in considering how language constitutes identity (Pennycook, 2004) and self and other ‘positioning’ (Davies and Harre`, 1990) It also draws on Bourdieu’s (1991) theorizing of language and power and language as a form of cultural capital. I draw on two traditions in qualitative research: case study and ethnography. In my analysis of the data, I argue that...
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