Genres and Audiences

 Entry 46:

Reflection

Topic: Quote from Understanding Rhetoric, Issue 8, "Going Public"

"Audiences expect different things from different genres."

    When writing, it is important to know which genre you are writing about and what is required of that genre (in previous blogs I have talked about genre conventions and types of genres). Also, what is the purpose of what you are writing? Are you writing for fun or to inform? Once a topic and genre has been picked then the writer can create a checklist of things that they need to do. 

    If I were to go to a bookstore and buy a book in the nonfiction section, I am expecting informational texts and facts. If I buy a crime and mystery book, I do not expect it to have poetry in it. That is what I take this quote as, getting exactly what is expected. Audiences know what to expect by genres when they go into it. 

Guided Question Week 8, (Question Part 3)

 Entry 36:

Reflection

Topic: In what ways has working from proposal 1 to the start of project 2 been useful?

From writing the proposal to writing half of a draft for project 2 made it easier to write. The proposal gave me time to gather research and we already started building and practicing ideas and writing for project 2. I think I could have written all 10 pages easily because of the set up the proposal helped me with. I have collected so much research and I could easily interview friends and maybe a professor, or send out a survey to people within the age group I have made my focus group. Proposal 1 was basically collecting research and project 2 is the writing of the research collected- our class is all connected and it makes it easy to do the work. I could write my paper in a day, if I wanted, because the set up and ideas have been developed in other assignments and research has already been done and I just need to form it all into words now. Working from that to starting project 2 has been insanely easy and I appreciate the set up of the class to help me with my research paper, I have never felt so confident in my writing!

Primary Research

 Entry 26:

Reflection

Topic: Primary Research

    Why is primary research important? You can write papers by only doing secondary research but secondary research needs to be within specific time frames, a bit biased, and it is something that others have already talked about and addressed. Primary research, what you collect from people without using books or the internet (secondary research), helps to eliminate biases you hold towards the topic and also allows you to get more information on your topic. 

    Surveys are probably a bit easier to create as you can email them out to a mass group of people and people can keep their names off of it, I feel like a lot of people answer what they think the person wants to hear if they think that someone will know that they answered.

Guided Question (Week 6, Question 2)

 Entry 24: 

Research

Topic: How does a thesis work?

    As we work on project 2, we need to find our argument, create a thesis to build our paper around. In order to understand how a thesis works, we need to know what a thesis statement is. A thesis is a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved. 

A thesis works by clearly identifying the topic being discussed, the thesis statement belongs in the first paragraph (introductory paragraph). 

    It is important to note that a thesis statement does not state a facts, but rather an opinion for you to prove. It always takes a stand to be justified later. 

    A thesis works when you can present a topic and be able to debate it. If you cannot take a stand, you will struggle to answer questions and debate- therefore you have no thesis. 

Guided Question (Week 5, Question 2)

 Entry 21:

Reflection:

Topic: What kinds of writing, collecting, and annotating do we need to do while we are conducting research?

    While writing you should always annotate your sources, take notes on your sources and make sure they fit what you are writing about. Try to incorporate some into your writing to make sure that your source and what you are saying in your writing make sense, if your research goes against what you are saying, it is probably not the resource for you and you should continue with conducting research. It is important to try and have ideas of what you need to find before going into your research. I found tips that said that writing summaries about your research can help you write your paper more fluently. 

    While conducting research it is important to do all these things to make the best paper possible. You should be able to talk about what you just read to make sure that the ideas stuck. I gave tips in another blog talking about how to do these things if you would like to check out my others! 

Guided Question (Week 5, Question 1; Part 2)

 Entry 20:

Reflection

Topic: Why do we need to know how to access, read, analyze, evaluate, and use secondary resources in our own research writing and everyday lives?

    Knowing how to research anything, especially in society today, is crucial. How often people go to the internet for solutions to any type of problem is almost daily. I know that my search history is long in just dumb questions that I had mid-conversation or for school, or something I needed to figure out for my house. 

    For those who do not know where to go for secondary resources, you can refer to entry 19 or I can tell you here. Secondary resources can be found in books, journals or online. I think in society today, most of us choose the internet- which there is no problem with that at all- because it is always within reach via phone, computer, tablet and so on. 

    So now we know how to access it, reading it should be fairly simple as long as you know exactly what you are looking for. I would say evaluating its usefulness would be easy given that you would know if it helped you or not when you tried to use it, and if it did not help you within your writing or life, it is a lot easier to find than primary research! 

Rising Mental Health Issues (Adolescents,Young Adults)

Entry 17:

Reflection

Topic: Rising Mental Health Issues

    For my project one proposal, I decided to talk about social media being linked to rising cases in mental health issues. However, I feel it is important to note the relevance and factors going into rising mental health issues within adolescents and young adults. So I found this article: ajmc, which explains the topic; I will summarize it. (I did not use this article in my research, I just typed it into google.)

    In the article, they say that social media may be to blame for the rise in mental health issues when regarding adolescents and young adults. A survey that was conducted and mentioned in this article said that teens in the US are aware of the mental health issues, most reporting anxiety and depression as a major problem- saying it is "more prominent than bullying, drug addiction and poverty." They said that the cause for the rise in mental health issues could be "the concurrent rise in social media" and "being less likely to interact face-to-face" and those who use social media are more likely to "involved with cyber-bullying".
    When I originally started my research I felt that mental health issues had increased, and personally feeling that it is more common because of social media usage and cyber-bullying, I wanted to see if professionals saw a link as well. This article definitely backs up my thoughts and all I looked up was mental health and this was the first article to appear. I wanted to talk about my paper and connect it to this article, I was not expecting the article to almost completely back up everything I talked about in project one.

Genre Conventions

 Entry 16: 

Research, Reflections

Topic: Genre Conventions

What are genre conventions? 

    Genre conventions are story elements, all the little things that allow us to distinguish what the genre is. Each genre has specific story elements that allow the readers to distinguish what genre they are reading, this is a genre convention (the elements, structures, formulas). A way to figure out what the genre of something is, figure out the story (action), plot, character, and the setting- this should tell you the genre. 

    Each genre imposes certain conventions, the choice determines what is possible to do within the story. That means that there will be conventional settings, events and roles specific to the genre. Genre has visceral appeal to its readers/audience. 

This picture gives an example of genre conventions. 

In this link: writingstudio, they talk about conventional settings, events and roles in the crime genre.     Further explaining genre conventions: 

Conventional settings: the setting of the murder will have its particular characteristics.

Conventional events: there must be a crime

Conventional roles: there will be a detective character that discovers clues and suspects 

(Dercksen,Daniel).

This is important because if someone is writing they should know their audience and what genre they are writing about. Making sure to follow exactly what their genre typically contains. As writers there is a wide range of genres, knowing the differences and the characteristics of genres is a key factor to success. 

Breaking Barriers

Entry 15:

Research, Reflection

Topic: Breaking mental barriers

I     have used this article before but it talks about several different things, each are important in writing. According the article that I am using for this blog, it says that we need to break mental barriers to writing. 

Most important tips from article- blog.typeset

In order to break mental barriers: 

1. Practice every day, write 1,000 words a day about your topic. Each day you will find new and better ways to talk about your topic. 

2. Being resistant at first with your writing. 

3. Your writing should reflect your struggles 

4. Good writers are also typically good readers, just do not copy their writing style- make sure to keep your own voice. 

5. Let writing assist your thought process, the more you write the better quality you will produce. 

    I think it is important to note all of the ways to use our thoughts and writing into more effective and efficient work. We write and read every day in texts, emails, or schoolwork. So we should know how to get out of our heads to get writing done. These tips can be used for other classes or any type of writing. If you are unsure what to say, just start saying it and edit later. According to the article, in order to get out of your head and write good, you should struggle and be resistant. It is important to keep your mind active by writing every day about a specific topic or anything. 

Critical Thinking

 Entry 10:

Reflection 

Topic: Critical Thinking

Quote: “You came into this world without opinions or judgements or values or viewpoints —and now your head is brimming with them.” 

    Reading this in my philosophy class it made me think. My thoughts? As we grow older we are impacted by our society, by the people in our lives and the place where we grew up. We are not born with prejudices or beliefs. How we are raised, who influenced our minds as we were in our most influential stages. The reason for mentioning this is that our way of thinking, how we think, is no more right or wrong than the way others think. If we can back up our beliefs and truly believe them, present them with good arguments- then it is worth believing. 

    So while we research and go through our classes and assignments- we need to remember that there is no “right” or “wrong” if we truly believe in what we are saying and can provide good evidence and reason for our beliefs. I think that it is important to note because so many people can argue their beliefs with good reason, and others can grow angry in their differences. We have to take into account that not everyone needs to agree with you because how they were raised is different, their right can be wrong to you and vice versa.  

Book Review

 Entry 8:

Reflection 

Topic: Last sentence of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

"Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate;—and among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, producing coolness between their husbands." 

    I have never read this book, but I wanted to see if with a little research into this last lines meaning and trying to see if I can get the gist of the book before I start reading it. 

    By just reading this line alone it seems as though there was a conflict build up throughout the book between Barton and Delaford, Elinor and Marianne; this line makes it appear as they got over it and realized family and friendship is more important than petty disagreements. Seems like a happy ending.

    However the "coolness" between husbands also makes me suspect that not everyone is happy. It seems as though this last line shows that not all relationships can be perfect all the time, that there will be ups and downs in their lives. I still think that no matter what though the last lines shows how true happiness and friendship should overcome all obstacles.

    After doing a bit of research on the ending there are a lot of questions on it there is actually a happy ending to the book. Wondering if Marianne really loves him? Or if she only married this man because it made "sense" to others. Saying that the narrator keeps telling us how much she truly does but the readers have still questioned her feelings. 

    There is no for sure way to tell by reading articles what the true meaning of the last line is but I figured I would give it a try. I guess I will have to read the book to figure out the true ending and the complete story. 

Addiction

 Entry 7:

Research/Experience

Topic: Addiction

Definition: the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.

• Similar: dependency, craving, habit
  
  

  

    Addiction is a serious problem that every country has to deal with. Addiction is not always drinking or drugs. Addiction can be anything in the world that you feel you NEED. There are different types of addicts. I know a lot of people with a shopping addiction. These people will spend money on things that they don't need, even spend money that they don't have.     

    I think that the cause of many addictions can be started by society or their own troubles in life. People can use their addictions to escape from their reality. I see so many addictions currently going on in this society that no one even realizes is a problem. People just focus on the "bad" ones. Aren't most addictions bad though? There are so many like shopping, eating, gambling, phones, gaming, and more. 

 

    Things that cause you to lose a lot of money, shopping and gambling. Loss of motivation in their daily lives, gaming and phones. I have gone to family events, hung out with friends and almost everyone seems to be on their phones. It is truly upsetting how much technology has taken over our lives. Eating is a problem because it can cost a lot of money and obesity consumes 42.4 percent of the US adults. An eating addiction is only a problem if people are overeating and eating unhealthy foods all the time as obesity can lead to major health issues. While people think that only drugs and drinking are major addictions in the world. I see the other addictions that are equally bad, if not worse. 

Breaking Bad Habits, Creating Good Habits

Entry 5:

Reflection/Experience/Research

Topic: "Breaking out of habits that limit intellectual inquiry." -writingspaces.org

    Students are limited in showcasing their talents with the 5 paragraph method taught throughout their middle/high school. However, breaking old habits has always been hard.

    Having taken Advanced placement and honors English all throughout high school, we were taught to write our essays with 5 paragraphs. The format should have been paragraph one: Introduction, paragraph two to four: body, paragraph five: conclusion. A lot of students who did the five paragraph methods in my class often did worse on the essays than the students who made their essays sound good and only put in what they thought was necessary. 

    I noticed fellow classmates getting anywhere from a 7-9 and only writing 3-4 paragraphs especially with the time limit we had to write while everyone who was squeezing in 5 paragraphs would get like a 4-6. Now the teacher definitely told us to write what sounds like a 9 paper (I think they changed the grading scale since), it was hard for us to break habits. 

    "Through learning critical reading, freewriting, and outlining techniques," new writing strategies to help stimulate students writing. They say that these strategies can have new college students writing in multiple genres. What about these strategies helps to break students old habits taught to them and instilled in their minds? 

    When you read a document, reflect on what you exactly just read and then review. Ask yourself what the key points are; the "who","what","why","how", "so what". This is all a part of critical reading. When you figure out how to get good with this, you can really improve your writing tremendously. 

    Freewriting allows you to come up with topics and get you started a bit faster as you develop ideas while doing something productive with your time. Freewriting provides writers with providing structure, ideas, and more. Sometimes you may write 2 paragraphs out of an entire page while freewriting. The you can fix them up and now you are done with more than you thought you would be. 

    Outlining helps you plan out and organize how you want the thing you are writing to look. Outlines make your writing more successful towards achieving your writing goals.

Reading Reflections

 Entry 4:

Reflection practices

Topic: Have you used assigned readings in your other classes?

    Personally, if I read something I like, I will continue to bring it up in other conversations. If the reading stimulates my mind enough then I will talk about it with so many people. I have used assigned readings from my sociology, crime and justice, interior design (last semester), and a couple other classes to spark conversations with family, friends or even other people in my classes. Articles are definitely a lot easier to use as they are normally short and easy, however other forms are also easy to mention. 

    I have used topics from other classes to start doing further research and build on a discussion we held in that classroom as a research paper. I have asked people I know their opinions and almost conducted surveys because the reading sparked my interest in other peoples reactions to what I read. Readings definitely help to put things into perspective and go further into research. They also can spark ideas on things to mention, bring light to issues we did not even know existed. 

    The answer to the topic? Yes, readings can be used to connect ideas from other classes or be used in everyday life. Readings can help the reader(s) understand their own life troubles, other peoples struggles or just understand society. -I formulated almost this entire entry off a reading I did in another class to connect the ideas in order to answer the question asked.