I HAVE A DREAM

There is no individual who used rhetoric better than Martin Luther King, Jr. He changed the world and started a revolution, all from behind a podium. Im sure we are all familiar with his speech, so I am going to pick out a few points where he kills the rhetorical game :)

Firstly, King uses alliterations often. At times in his speech, his words sound like a poem or a song, and those are the quotes people don't forget. Example: Rise from the dark and desolate…the marvelous new militancy…trials and tribulations…"

He also uses allusions, referencing common themes in American's pasts. These are things we all share and can relate to. For example, in I Have A Dream, King said "Five score years ago, a great American…signed the Emancipation Proclamation."

Finally, King states a lot of his points twice in a row. This also makes it stick in the mind of listeners, and it also makes the statement more intense. "America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” 

What do you guys think about rhetoric in King's famous speech? Can you find other examples of the techniques I presented above? 

Mediating Language at Home

I live in an apartment with two of my friends.  Most of the time, everything is great.  We have a lot in common, so we do a lot of things together.  We do projects together (our latest project is building a wood lathe), and we generally get along really well.  However, living with anybody can cause animosity.  One of my roommates is a very opinionated person.  He’s a great guy, but he is very stubborn. Sometimes I wish he would compromise more.  One of the things that gets on my nerves the most is when he doesn’t clean his dirty dishes.  Whenever he uses a dish, he just throws it in the sink, claiming it needs to “soak” before it can be washed.  In reality, he could just rinse it off and put it in the dishwasher.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t see it this way.  When confronted about them, he claims that he will do them later, but invariably, either my roommate or I end up loading the dishwasher.  The problem is, the sink gets so full we can’t load all of the dishes in the dishwasher, so the sink is only half empty, and it quickly fills up again.  These situations are very trying, and it very important to use mediating language when dealing with them.  If not, angry roommates can make life difficult and not enjoyable.  Mediating language is there to make sure that we’re still friends when we move out.  I’ll be happy when that is the case, but I also wish that he would do the dishes more often.

If I Taught This Class

This class was a lot different than I was expecting.  If I taught it, I would do some things different, but all in all, I enjoyed the class.  I really liked how the class was structured overall.  We started out very small, just figuring out some problems in our community, and we ended up writing a research paper aimed at proposing a solution to one of those problems that we originally came up with.  I really liked how the assignments, for the most part, were aimed at getting us to explore different rhetorical ideas, and building on those ideas up to the final paper.  The most helpful assignments were the presentation and Assignment 2.1, where we had to argue both sides of our argument.  The presentation helped with the organization of my arguments.  I was able to group arguments and find sources that pertained to each group.  Assignment 2.1 was helpful because it is easy to forget that there are two sides to an argument, and that if you don’t address the other viewpoints, you won’t be very convincing in your argument.  It is easy to list all of the reasons why you think you are right.  It is much harder to formulate arguments for why someone else is wrong.  The biggest thing that I would change about the class is the structure of the blog.  I feel like part of the reason that there are so many people posting on the blog so late is that there was a lot of ambiguity as to what we should write about.  We didn’t know what to write about, so we just didn’t write.  If the blog was given more direction, or specific prompts for some of the posts, I think that we would be much more compelled to do the posts.  In addition, I think that this would allow for much more discussion in the comments. All in all, I’m glad that I took this class, and I think I am a better writer for it.

Movie Trailers

Have you ever watched a movie trailer and been really excited to see the movie, but then you go to the theater and walk out wishing you had your $15 back?  If it was a comedy, they put every joke in the trailer, and the rest was filled with awkward dialogue and little plot.  If it was a horror movie, they put every jump scare and blood curdling scream in the trailer, but overall the movie was underwhelming.  Too often this is the case.  You know why this happens?  Because the directors of the movie trailers got an A in their college rhetoric class.  They are intimately aware of who their audience is and what makes them tick.  They know how to sell movies.  They can make any movie, no matter how mediocre it is a whole, shine in a trailer.  It’s all about knowing your audience and using that information to carefully edit and string together scenes that will get people interested.  It is quite analogous to the introduction to a paper.  That’s where you catch the attention of the reader, and make them want to continue reading.  If the rest of the paper is not well written, they will have the same feeling as you did when you walk out of the movie theater after a bad movie. The most important part of your paper is the introduction, because even if you have a good argument, nobody is going to read it if the intro is not interesting.  However, make sure you don’t have a good intro with no meat in the rest of the paper.

My Favorite Part of the Class

My favorite part of the class was the different medium presentations. It really let me delve into different research aspects of my topic without doing an entire research presentation. For my medium, I chose to write a blog. My favorite part of the blog was interviewing one of the students from a nearby, low income school that I tutor. Even though it was not in my community, I feel that I gained perspective on what it feel like to go to school in a low income school, and be a minority. (I am a minority and did go to a low income school, but it wasn't the same). But it was enriching experience hearing from another person about how they felt about their school and how they felt about being in a primarily minority school. It tied well into the school district I was focusing on where almost 96% of the district is minorities. I feel that research and overall statistics are important, but  behind those statistics are real people, an aspect that people tend to forget about. I feel that having the interview in my blog strengthened the pathos, and provided a first hand student perspective of being in a disadvantaged school situation. After that interview, I felt more than ever there was a definite inequality in education.

Language is Weird

My friend and roommate recently told me about an exchange that he had with a teacher of his and his academic adviser.  He has a Co-Op this semester, so he is not taking any classes.  He works 9 to 5 every day, so it was difficult for him to meet with his academic adviser to discuss his registration for next semester.  Most of his contact, he did via email with his adviser and the chair of the aero department.  In one such email, he was complaining to the both of them that the schedule for his classes didn’t make sense.  Somehow, two of his classes were scheduled at the same time, and they were supposed to be taught by the same teacher.  In the email, he made it very clear that he needed advice as soon as possible.  In the subject of the email, he put “PLEASE RESPOND” in all caps.  In the body, he included something to the effect of “the schedule is whacked.” He received a quick response from his professor, however his academic adviser was not very happy with his email.  She felt that his email was not professional enough for the setting.  This is a great example of how your audience determines how your writing will be interpreted.  She also did not appreciate the use of caps in his subject.  She thought that it was too demanding.  Audience is everything in your writing.  My friend had to write a very carefully worded email to apologize to his adviser.  This is a very real example of what we learned in class.

Comedians: Master of Rhetoric

The 2013 White House Correspondents' Dinner was a wild success that year. A comedian is a person who job it is to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh with through jokes, slapstick, or amusing situations. Being a comedian is very different as they need to make funny and do stand-up face of a large audience. Jokes can be anything from word play, gags, subtle or humorous intention. A comedian need to be a master of rhetoric because their stand-up act and jokes require it. Presidents Obama made jokes about the government and have a good time. Conan O'Brien took the stage that Saturday night and was the comedian who spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner. He gave about thirty minute speech to close the annual dinner attended by celebrities and politicians. He made funny the politicians, news networks, and several other current events. They could easily get into serious trouble if they make wrong jokes about certain issues or events. O’Brien uses satire, but he mainly used anodyne, not to offend anyone. O’Brien used comedy to touch on several issues and events occurring in the media and the government doing that time period. The some of the people in the crowd do not react that strongly because some of them take it too seriously.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJvS4aTcUyQ

My Thoughts on the Class

As you may or may not know, I am a junior taking this class meant for freshmen.  Going into the class, I thought it was going to be a breeze.  I thought I was going to walk in, write a few papers, and walk out with an A.  That was not the case at all.  I was a bit discouraged at the beginning of the class when I got my first papers back.  The grades were not where I thought they were going to be.  I think a little of that was because it was a new teacher, with new expectations.  However, looking back at the papers, they were not well written.  I wasn’t putting enough effort into the class, and once I did, my grades improved.  I learned a lot from this class: something I wasn’t expecting.  Perhaps the most important idea that I am taking away is that not all writing is created equal.  What I mean is that all writing should be geared toward your specific audience. This may seem obvious, but it wasn’t something that I consciously considered before this class. The paper that I write for one of my engineering class presenting a product as a viable solution to a problem is going to be different that the paper that we wrote for this class, as the first has a different audience than the second. The first might be written for a committee reviewing the product for safety, while our papers were written for lawmakers.  It’s extremely important to consider this when writing anything, as it could be the difference between convincing your audience or not. 

RHETORIC IS EVERYWHERE!!! HELP!!!

No but really…this class has made me realize rhetoric is EVERYWHERE! Almost every time I have a conversation, I am using rhetoric to benefit from the conversation. Earlier today, I used emotional and logical appeal to convince my roommate to buy me lunch. I explained to him that I was out of meal swipes, so I would be starving if he didn't swipe me in (that was me exploiting his emotions to make him feel sorry for me, resulting in him buying me lunch). I also used logical appeal, reminding him that he drank all of my gatorade the previous week, so he owed me. In case you were wondering…I successfully exploited my roommate, and he bought me lunch. Lol

RHETORIC IS LITERALLY LIFE!!!! AHH!!! 

Emojis in texting…adding emotion!

Ms. Gibney's earlier post about mediating language in texting really made me think. Clearly, texting is incredibly useful because you can send messages to people without having to call them, and it is almost instant. Another benefit to texting is that people have time to think about their response, so they can make sure to say it in the best way possible. This is one problem that I sometimes find in face to face arguments with people- I just can't get my words together. As a result my argument is lacking and I leave feeling unsatisfied. In that sense, texting is a good medium to debate or argue with someone. But, is it worth it? Often times, emotion is lost in texting and people misinterpret the tone you are trying to convey. Texts with periods are often interpreted as serious, while texts with capital letters are interpreted as yelling…which may not even be the case. So, how can we improve texting to have more emotion? The answer is simple…use emojis!! By using emojis in texts more, people can send emotions along with a message. That way, people receiving the text will have more context and things will go more smoothly. I think emojis make texting more personal.
What do you guys think about emojis? Do you use them? Do you think emojis can be used to add emotion to otherwise emotionless messages?

The Crime of Swatting

Swatting is the act to trick an emergency service like 9-1-1 into dispatching an emergency response based on the false report. Depend on the how serious situation the fake report claims to be, the operators can send one police officer or SWAT unit.  "Sometimes swatting is done for revenge, sometimes as a prank. Either way, it is a serious crime, and one that has potentially dangerous consequences." Misusing 9-1-1 service can result in a misdemeanor or a felony in the U.S. Swatting cause massive disorder in public peace and potentially hurt or kill someone involved. Swatting has used in the home of celebrities like Tom Cruise, Taylor Swift, and Clint Eastwood as a prank and on several live-streamers as a prank. To swat someone, the callers need the victims’ personal information like their address and phone number, then use caller ID spoofing technology when calling 9-1-1. “Spoofing” technology which lets the callers to mask their own numbers. People who make these false calls seem to be credible and they have no trouble convincing 9-1-1 operators they are telling the truth. Swatting is a serious crime as the prank callers cause taxpayers’ money to be wasted and the emergency response units’ time is wasted. It is blame to place some the on the police as some believe that they are responding to strongly. Swatting do bring up an issue about America's militarization of the police.

Sources: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/september/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting  

Example of Swatting check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH-uRFIr3mA about 6:30 is when the police enter the picture.

Mediating Language in Texting

Since texting is the most popular means of communication in this generation, it is important to know how to mediate language behind the screen of your phone or computer. When conversing with someone via text message, it is next to impossible to know exactly what tone the other person has. Without the knowledge of mediation of language, you could unknowingly offend someone that you did not intend to offend. This is why mediating your language and making sure the other person understands your tone is important. This is also why word choice is so important. The same word could be said in excitement by one party and taken as annoyance by the other. I never realized how much I actually mediated the language I use every day. Up until recently, I had never thought about how effective mediating my language through texting could be. When having a dispute with someone, respectfully acknowledging their opinion and then giving your own works a lot better than just telling the other person they are wrong. Almost always when disputing with someone via text message, I think about how I would feel if I was the one receiving the message. This usually results in me deleting what I originally wanted to say and rewriting it to sound more respectful. Which is usually how it goes when trying to mediate your language in your papers too. By doing this I am also considering my audience (the person receiving the messages), which is an important part of mediating language. I find myself doing this more often than I would like to admit.

Reflection of the Class

Unfortunately, the time has come to part ways with this class. A lot has changed since the beginning of the semester. At the beginning of the semester, I was very confused on the assignments purpose, and why I continually received bad grades. As the semester progressed, I felt that I got better at knowing the purpose of the assignment and understanding the prompt better. However, I feel that I wish we talked about more during class. I feel that most of the class periods were taken up with explanation of the assignments, instead learning more about rhetoric and language and substantial work. I feel that I did not leave the class wanting to learn more or continue readings, but just to get by and do well on the class. I feel like grades were a big deal in the class, which inhibited us to be full engaged in learning, instead having us focus on trying to raise our grades. I agree that grades are important, but if the majority or some part of the class is constantly worried or failing an introductory English course, it might not be a reflection of the students in the class, but the instructor. I feel that it is a part of professor's job to  try and make sure that his/her students are doing well, or have more chances to improve. It shows an obvious problem if the grades in an introductory course are not at least above average. I feel that most of the grading was arbitrary, so it was hard for us to improve our writing throughout the semester.

Syllabus Switch

Today we talked about rearranging some of the assignments on the syllabus. It was suggested that the final paper be due two-thirds of the way through the semester. I like this idea because then we would be able to revise the final paper at the end of the semester if we needed to. I also like this idea because most, if not all, of the previous assignments would be more fresh in your mind. It was also suggested that their be an assignment devoted to an outline of your paper. But the question was posed, “What if writing an outline before isn’t effective for some people?’. I myself do not write outlines before, however, if there were an assignment that required me to, I could potentially benefit from that. If you get stuck at a point in your writing, you can refer back to your outline to help create more ideas. Also, you do not necessarily have to use that outline when writing your final paper. It could just be a helpful tool IF you needed it.

I also liked the idea of the multimedia assignments being due at the end because the final paper can be a helpful guide in figuring out what to include in the multimedia projects. Since the final paper poses your most important arguments, you know that those will be the most important arguments to discuss in the multimedia projects. When creating the multimedia projects, it was sometimes difficult to know what to include and what did not necessarily need to discussed. By having the final paper already done, these things will be easier to determine.

Rhetoric in Ambiguity

In one of the assigned readings, the author stated how politicians' words are filled ambiguity which is a not a useful method of rhetoric. I feel that I disagree with that statement. The purpose of an argument is to convince others of what you are saying, and sometimes by not giving a definitive answer it gives room to interperate, which is sometimes more convincing. Also, making an argument for something where the complete answer is not known is avoided, by giving more of an ambiguous answer. I feel that people are always on the search for a definitive answer, and I do not know why it is very wrong in saying that you do not necessarily know what the answer is to some problems. Politicians give straight answers, but then if it does not work out the public says that politicians are liars. If politicians say that they do not know exactly and give vague answers, the politicians are not doing their job properly. People are only able to predict so much about the future and reprimanding others for not trying to predict the future properly is not what the general public should do. I agree that if you are arguing for a certain law or policy than you should give the general facts and potential consequences, but to give definite answers for every aspects of the policy is very hard to do.

"Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post"

As the end is upon and I am scrambling to try and figure out what to write my blog posts about, I decided that I should learn how to write an effective blog post. I found the article "Anatomy of an Effective Blog Post" from the Huffington Post to be quite helpful in trying to discover how to even write a blog post. The author argues that the most important part of the blog post is the title. This is because if you do not have a compelling title, you will not persuade anyone to continue reading. He argues that the second most important part of the post is your lead paragraph. This is where you connect with your readers and keep them interested. It is important not to lose the reader here. The author argues that adding your personal experience can help you because readers can connect with personal stories. For your main paragraph (or part of the post), he argues that you should make it scannable. This can be done by using simple words and short sentences that the reader can easily skim over. You will not impress your readers with the use of “big words”.

Although the article was short and in the form of a numbered list, I still found it helpful in determining how to write blog posts. I also found it helpful that the author gave suggestions for word choice and sentence length. By following these few suggestions, it will be easier to compose blog posts.

http://michaelhyatt.com/anatomy-of-an-effective-blog-post.html

Tone in our PowerPoint Presentation

For one of the assignments during class, we were assigned to make a presentation and perform it during class. In our rough draft we were given feedback, based off of what we had in our PowerPoint. For our final grade, I feel that we were predominantly graded on the PowerPoint presentation instead of what we were saying. I feel that in order to grade based on rhetoric in this instance, we should have been graded predominantly on what we were saying instead of how well our PowerPoint was done. The main argument of rhetoric in this presentation was what we were saying and how the words were delivered. I felt that someone could have had a great PowerPoint, but not have delivered their message well. I feel that I am a stronger speaker than writer, so I avoided writing much on my PowerPoint, so that people would pay more attention to me. The most important part of the presentation is the tone and way the words are delivered to convince your audience to care about the issue. I  feel that since it was our first presentation this entire semester it was also nerve-racking to be up there which played a major part of the delivery of the message. Because of this, I feel that we should have had some practice and pointers with our tone, alongside other rhetoric devices, so that we felt more prepared for the PowerPoint. I was very surprised at how well our class presented, and thought they for the most part did well in engaging the audience.

Mediating Language

As I wrote my last blog post my friend was next to me critiquing my writing. I thought to myself how he has not learned the art of mediating language, and how harsh tone and words can be. Because of the lack of mediating language, I felt like I wanted to listen to him less. I now understand the usefulness and necessity of mediating language. In order to formulate a strong argument or point against another person, the use of condescending words and rude tone creates a negative environment for both parties involved. In order to have proper communication with other people and give a constructive criticism, an individual should point out both the good along with the bad, so that the individual is inclined to listen more. I thought back to the time where we talked about different methods of communication like stated in the they say, I say article. If something is given a more approach in the "they say" it is more credible that personal opinion. If a person argues against an idea or decision you have made in your writing they should not only disapprove what you have to say, but give a solid reason to why they think another way is more effective. I am glad we learned about mediating language, so I could calmly respond to him effectively and write this blog post instead to execute my anger.

Rhetorical reflection

We are being persuaded all the time. Sometimes we don't even think through what we are being told. This is especially crucial at our age…soon, I will be voting in elections. It is important that I am an educated voter. Media runs wild during election time, which is why its important to not be persuaded and to form our own educated opinions. Thats why its important to under stand how and why we are persuaded. Politicians utilize ethos, pathos, and logos to win over the votes from all over the country. They use ethos to appeal to fundamental rights that all Americans share. They use "buzz words" to sound more factual. These are normally words that mean nothing but sound smart. They use pathos to play on our fears and our worries, but also on our nostalgia and humor.

By being conscious of these techniques, we can look past the blaring advertisements and look at the facts. Once we have the facts straight we can make the best decision for us. This is one of the best things this class gave me. Besides becoming a better writer, it made me more conscious of the rhetoric that is constantly being thrown at me. I never viewed things like this through an analytical lens like this before this class. For that, I am grateful. It definitely slightly changed the way I view the world and the decisions I make.

Rhetoric in a Novel

In class, I remember a time when I talked about the difference in rhetoric in novels compared to the rhetoric used by politicians. We read an assigned reading that stated a lot of rules to use in order to be a convincing writer. The author of the reading proceeded to state how rhetoric and the art of persuasive writing is dying suggesting there must be a change. I thought about how all of his rules did not apply to novels. When I asked that question, Mr. Strickland said that there is a distinct difference between novels and informative writing. I pondered this question more, and came to the conclusion that this mindset is wrong. Isn't a novel trying to persuade you of an idea? Isn't it using the same ethos, pathos, and logos we have spent many class periods talking about? I feel that more than anything the purpose of a novel is to convince individuals. It is meant to convince people who are reading that they are taken to a different world where they are side by side the character, and living and breathing the lives of the characters.  I feel that if there are any rules that should apply to convincing writing, it should apply to novels too. That is why I feel that the author of that article was completely wrong. Those rules the author stated might sound ideal on paper, but the foundation of his article was not applicable to the true meaning of conviction of writing persuasively.

If I Could Do it All Again

   Throughout the course of this semester, I began to pick up on a few things that I probably could have changed to be more successful. In regards to English 1900, I can name a few areas in which I could have improved upon.
   The first is that I should not have judged the class by the grade I got on the first assignment. I will admit, the first grade that I got back freaked me out. The first thought in my head was, "Oh boy, looks like this is gonna be a toughie." So for the next couple of weeks I kind of gave up hope that I'll have a chance of getting a semi-decent grade in the class. However I learned later on that I could actually pull out a good grade on some of the assignments, and all of the sudden I was inspired to put more into the class.
   During that period where I gave up hope I acquired a bunch of nasty habits. The first was one of the biggest stigmas that students face, procrastination. I can honestly say that there were not too many papers that I did not write the night before. Also, I did not even take the time to read them over again to look for mistakes. So when the final paper came around the corner and I saw how many mistakes I made on that on the first draft, I realized quickly that my previous papers were probably infested with errors. Even this blog post that I'm writing at 11:30 at night will probably have a bunch of mistakes simply because my procrastination has not gotten much better.
   Those are just a few of the things that I would go back and change, but knowing me, I will probably struggle to get rid of these habits now that they're already in place. I'll say that I'll change, but I'm all talk and little game.

Beyond Rhetoric, What Makes Writing Powerful?

   Since this class was all about rhetoric and how to apply it to real life situations, I was thinking what else can be done to make a project or paper an exceptional piece of work. Of course there are the little things like formatting, grammar, and sentence structure, but there's probably a plethora of other elements to a piece of work that can make it stand out.
   Just to clarify, in my opinion a work that has good rhetoric has good ethos, pathos, and logos. So emotional appeal, credibility, and reasoning are all on the table right now. I guess what I am looking for is the sort of flair that makes certain pieces of work the best they can be. To be more clear, what is it that makes writing by George Orwell and Orson Scott Card better than other science fiction authors?
   Maybe it's just some unnameable quality that makes a larger audience appreciate the work more, but then again the reviewers of literary work or scholarly work are probably able to figure it out. But I ask you all, do you know of any other part of a piece of work that makes it that much better? Maybe I am just not that well versed in writing criticism, but it seems to me like there has to be some reason why people like some works better than others. The only other qualities that I can think of are writing style and voice. In my opinion those are pretty hard things to improve upon through taking classes, it seems to be something that some people inherently have. But then again, I'm not the expert.

Reflection of this class

When I first registered from this class, I was expecting this one to be my easiest class. But as the semester went on, I realized that it would be my hardest class.

Even though I thought this was going to be an easy class, I still worked hard on all my papers. However when I got my first assignments back, I didn't get the grade I thought I deserved. I was lost in communication with the professor and even though I wrote my paper following the prompt I received, I didn't have certain components that Mr. Strickland was hoping my paper would have. After this, I tried looking at the rest of the prompts from a different point of view and writing based on that.

My favorite project was the multimedia and presentation project. It was different from the other papers I had to write and but it still contained the same information, I was able to use my creativity and make my pages look appealing.

Now that this semester is over and this class is wrapping up, I can honestly say that I still wasn't able to communicate efficiently and get the grades I wanted to get on my papers. I can say that I am a better writer, and that something I can take away from this English class.

If I Actually Became an Eloquent Human Being This Semester

   When we got our papers back on Friday with our original demand for what we wanted out of the class, I had written that I wanted to become a more eloquent human being, like the course syllabus describes we would become more like. So I considered whether that goal was actually achieved and I would like to think that it has to an extent.
   If given the time and the resources (research, data, etc.) then I feel like I could come up with much more eloquent work than I could have made this January. Writing papers and doing presentations where evidence and a certain audience is required comes much more naturally to me now than it did months ago. I feel like the main thing that helped with that was the model that was shown in class a few weeks ago that helped visualize how a paragraph should be written. Also all of the other experiences in class and working on the assignments out of class have attributed to my growth as an eloquent human being.
   The only reason why I would say that I have not become a much more eloquent person is due to the fact we never really wrote too much on the "I say" of the "They say, I say" argument. Sure the first few assignments were pretty much the development of the I say part but in my opinion that was very far from the focus of what made the later papers complete. The thesis was the product of our own creation, and that is a sign of increasing eloquence, but the only thing that made that thesis valid was the they say part of the argument. I'm not entirely sure if using other people's arguments in our own is making us more eloquent, but if it is then I'll agree that I have become a much more eloquent human being at the least, I cannot speak for everyone in this class.

Where to go from here

   After putting the finishing touches on the final paper, I asked myself a few days later what the next step should be in terms of english classes to take. So with that decision comes some deliberating over how well this class went overall and if I should continue doing more writing and such done in this class.
   I will say that the project that I look back on with the most fond memories is the multimedia project where we chose from a film, podcast, etc.. There was a lot of room for the creative juices to flow and I really enjoyed letting my inner designer let loose. Another aspect that helped was that the video I ended up making was pretty well received, if people did not appreciate my kind of humor than this blog post would be heading in a very different direction.
   All of the other projects just did not really resonate with me as well as the multimedia one. It's just once there's a bunch of criteria with very few ways to fulfill it then I start to lose the enjoyment in doing the work. To expand a little the article on templates addressed the issue that their templates may hinder creative thought, and the same goes for some of the assignments in this class. The powerpoint was nice because it made the transition from paper to presentation, but it limited the audience which narrowed the way it could be made. Now I probably do not know best when it comes to designing a class and I have nothing against doing assignments with certain rules in place, but it's just not something that I could see myself doing for fun or as an integral part of a job.
   With all of this being said, I do appreciate all of the things this class has taught me, even though it may have not been in the most ideal way for my personal tastes. As I'm writing this now I feel like maybe I'm complaining a little too much and whining that the class was not absolutely perfect in my eyes. The fact is I now know what I may want to take for my future english classes, and those are the ones that have less boundaries.

Rhetoric in Review

Similarly to some other class reviews I've read, I came into this class not fully certain of what to expect.  English courses have always been my favorite and as a result I've never worried too much about them but I found that with this class I really had to refocus my attention and really put a lot of work into succeeding.

I liked the format and structure of this class a lot and found it very helpful that all of our projects led into our final paper.  As a notorious procrastinator I found for probably the first time in my life how relieving it is to slowly work on bits of a project in small portions leading up to the big thing rather than saving it all for the last minute and suffering from it.  It probably wasn't enough to change my habits entirely, but I have seen a little change in how I handle coursework in other classes--bits at a time.  I think it was an especially good setup for this class as sort of an intro to college English courses at least for me, because it has given me the perspective to see that my usual work habits need to shift a little for me to succeed in college, because there is no way I could have completed this final paper in time had we not been working on it all year long.

I also thought that what we were learning in general will be key in the years to come.  As I mentioned previously, this was my first college English course and I think it has done a good job preparing me for really every class to come.  Writing papers and researching is a part of nearly every class we will take in college and it is helpful to know exactly what is expected of us and how to go about doing it.

All in all, while this class was a little difficult to get the hang of to start with, it worked out for the best.  I feel like I am further prepared to succeed at SLU.

Tone in different kinds of writing

When I first started writing my research paper, I started my introduction with a personal anecdote. It seemed fitting because we started this project with how a topic in our community affects us. My topic is related to illegal immigration in the community of Arizona. This topic affects me because I experienced a situation when I was working at a healthcare clinic. However, after review of my rough draft, the tone of the paper did not match the formality with the rest of it. It was unprofessional to discuss a personal story in terms of a research paper. This showed me how important it it to maintain tone through word choice. Tone is a crucial part of a paper in order to establish the appropriate meaning in the correct context.

This also made me think about tone in different areas of  writing and how it can be misunderstood. The most prominent example of this is through social media. It is extremely difficult to portray tone when texting or typing on social media. This is because there is no voice to accommodate for the words. Therefore, the meaning can lost in translation. People have used emojis or caps lock in order to help portray tone which can be used as an indicator of how someone is saying something. However, there can still be problems of miscommunication between people through texts or conversations on social media. It is important to establish tone in a paper in order to show intended meaning to the audience.

Reflection of this Class

With the semester almost over, English 1900 has been a much different experience than I thought it to be. Coming into this class, I thought it would be a piece of cake. My friends have told me that is very easy and even though there is a lot of writing it is very easy to get an A. However, this feeling soon changed when I received my grades back on my first few assignments. I realized I was going to have to put a lot more work in this than I originally thought. 

The different assignments in this class have led up to the final research paper. These different assignments have developed a greater knowledge and understanding for our particular topic to expand on the issue. This is one thing that I found particularly useful in the class because it allows for continuous research. However, many times it was difficult to improve upon various assignments because of the different feedback received on the assignments. For example, on my presentation to the class I received different feedback from the professor and my peers. This made it difficult to correct because it was hard to incorporate the different views of others and then being graded by only one person. 

From this class, I learned how to persevere and adapt to a different class. I've learned how to write a lot more straight forward writing compared to more fluent, flowy writing. Through reading different articles and group discussions, I've been able to get a new perspective of the English language in modern society. 

Use of Word Choice

From a recent mock interview, a particular question that stuck out to me when the interviewer asked me was what is the difference between sympathy and empathy. I was able to explain that the difference is primarily based upon how one feels for others. Sympathy is when you feel sorry or bad for another person. However, empathy is being able to relate and understand to the problems of someone else and connecting on a higher level.

When answering another question in a different, I referenced myself as being a future physician who is sympathetic toward others. At the end of this mock interview, the interviewer told me to use the word empathetic instead of sympathetic. Even though I had previously explained the difference between the two, I didn't realize how it had made such a huge difference when using it to describe yourself. The interview told me that saying you're sympathetic means that you're looking at others as "outsiders" and that isn't a quality a physician should use to describe themselves.

This experience showed me the importance of carefully choosing our words and how it greatly impacts the meaning of what you intend to say. We discussed in class of how using big or fancy words to replace mediocre ones is not always as effective. This is because it gets lost in translation and has a different meaning than what it is supposed to. Using the right set of words in speech and writing is crucial in order to accurately relay thoughts and ideas.

Grit in This Class

     As a part of my learning community, this past week we had our last TED Talk discussion. It was led by my History teacher from first semester. He began by telling us his biography and then related it to the TED Talk after we had all watched the talk. The talk was about this concept called “Grit”. Grit is the ability to be able to keep going and pick ourselves up, and work towards long term goals even when we fail. If we fail we simply need to re-attack and come back strong. Grit is what will eventually separate the marathoners from the sprinters. Every long term goal takes a marathon to achieve. There will be stumbles and you will fall, but having grit is to get back up and keep going.

               While listening to this and then reflecting on it afterwards, I thought of this class. Throughout this semester I have struggled with some of the assignments. At the very beginning I was greatly discouraged after receiving Fs on both of the first two assignments. I realized that in order to make it through this class successfully I was going to need to put everything in for the long haul. I reached for the grit inside of me and made it a goal to pick myself up from where I had fallen so early in the race and keep on going. I have now completed the semester, turned in my final paper, and only have one class left. I accomplished the marathon.

               I also believe that grit is inherent in rhetoric. When joining that boat, that is the vehicle of argument, especially in the middle, one must possess grit in order to keep up and push the conversation forward. Grit is a very important concept and one that everyone should figure out how to find in themselves.

Why take English classes?

I don't think I am the only one who throughout grade school and high school wondered why taking English class was required. I thought since I already was fluent in the language, what was the point? I have finally come to realize the importance of taking these classes.

First off, it's important to be able to write with correct grammar. In this post, you could nit-pick a few mistakes here and there, however for the most part I am able to convey a message clearly. This is due to the many English classes I have taken.  Being able to use correct grammar is important when looking for a job . If an employee turns in a resume, or has to show in writing why he/she should get the job, and the grammar is awful, it will look bad for the employee. I'm not claiming it will always be the difference from being hired or not, but it could change the employer's first impression of you.

Secondly, it is important to be able to convey ideas in writing. Many careers require communication in the form of writing. For example you could be required to  publishing a paper on research findings, or just write a email to a boss. It is important to be able to effectively convey your message in these instances.

These are just a few reasons why I am glad I have taken so many years of English classes (even if I wasn't given an option). Are there any other instances that English classes can benefit you in the future?