Thlogging 5

PB 2B was intense, long, and dull, however it has made me waaaaay more comfortable in being able to identify moves. I definitely was confused on how to format the PB without being too monotonous and  lengthy, even though I don't think I did a great job on either of those things. My goal for the WP Numero Dos is to separate the work into everyday of the weekend instead of just doing it all in one suuuuuper long sitting, and hopefully that will result into a much better WP.

I thought "How to Read Like a Writer" by Mike Bunn was helpful in starting to question what I'm reading. At the end, I reaaaaallllllyy liked how he went back to the beginning of the essay and started revealing all the thoughts, moves, and questions we should be recognizing and experiencing from now on to Read Like a Writer. 

Legit how I felt...

The activity where we all came up with verbs that weren't "says" was really great because I know I definitely overuse "reveals, states, and writes." It was good to learn new vocabulary for the same word because I plan to put them to use for the WP. The brackets activity was also aaaaamazing because I'm pretty sure I have never even used brackets in my writing. I never even realized when, where, and how other writers used them until now. Both of these tips are going to be well-used in my WP.  

I'm gunna be honest and say I'm not super excited to start this WP, but I do want to do well on it.

PB 2B: Making a move

Do I have moves? I'd like to have moves when I write. I wonder if my moves are obvious to everyone but me? Moves in writing can be really small, for example, using the phrase "such as" to start an example, or they can be large and visual, for instance using block quotations instead of adding a regular quote within the text. In the articles we have read, the authors have used numerous amounts of moves, because they are great writers trying to help others become great writers. Even though some of the moves that I chose are kind of obvious, I really liked that I had a reaction to the move, and I would like for my writing to produce reactions or emotions.

In the They Say, I Say appendix, some of the templates were common because we see and use them in most writing and some are slightly less familiar, at least for me. For instance, in "Navigating Genres" by Kerry Dirk, to explain a quote, Dirk starts the first sentence after the quote with, "In other words..." Dirk uses the same phrase at least four other times and uses similar phrases even more in his twelve page essay. Using this move and ones similar to it, allows the author to be very specific about what the reader should have concluded from the quote, especially because it is followed by another sentence that analyzes the meaning of the quote even more. In "Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing," Peter Elbow uses phrases to introduce ongoing debates, "When I celebrate freewriting and fast exploratory writing...it seems to many listeners as though I'm celebrating holidays from thinking." Elbow's decision to use these phrases informs the reader of the positions other academics might have on freewriting and why Elbow's opinion is contradictory but valid. He further explains how his position is advantageous because it includes two kinds of thinking. Some of the less familiar templates, are phrases that I very rarely use in my writing but I take notice when I see them in readings.

In "So What? Who Cares?" the author uses two templates in one sentence, "When pressed, for instance, most academics will tell you that their lectures and articles matter...Yet many academics fail to identify...." The author uses this template to identify exactly who has an opposing opinion on this subject and how it is not accurate. Similarly, another move the author made was using questions to introduce objections to his own opinion informally, for example, "Isn't it obvious that everyone cares about such problems? Does it really need to be spelled out?" The use of asking questions-a reader might have-in writing, enables the author to clearly identify why it is important to follow their position. Finally, in "Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)" by Janet Boyd, she uses a template to add an explanation about what she just wrote, "More importantly, you can now see that when I told you at the beginning that you are already in possession...I wasn't feeding you a bunch of bull." Boyd sums up her essay without using the unoriginal, In conclusion, a phrase that I very much still use. These three moves aren't phrases that I include in my writing, but should definitely be incorporated.

These next moves are ones that I really felt strongly about, whether is was with dislike or appreciation. Right off the bat, Spaces for Writing has a very clear visual move, which I'm calling The Comic Book. The authors use a comic book format to allow their audience-college students-to understand concepts in an unusual format by not only reading a text but also seeing visual graphics. Even though, the visuals are helpful, they sort of distract from the text and are kind of excessive. Personally, the comic book format was more annoying than helpful, because all I wanted to do was look at the images and not read the bubbles. Kerry Dirk's "Navigating Genres" used moves that I loved. Dirk started off his essay with a joke, even though it wasn't necessarily the funniest joke I've heard, it caught my attention right away because it was unexpected in my usual college readings. His joke effectively hooked, me into the essay and made me wonder what his point was going to be. Then, Dirk wrote out a ransom letter scenario that was another really funny move. This scenario truly allowed me to understand his point of genres and conventions without being extremely academic and monotonous. Both of Dirk's moves were plainly successful because he knows his audience is going be young college students who are tired of reading dull essays and want to obtain information in entertaining ways. In "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis," Laura Bolin Carroll starts off by telling the reader to imagine a scenario of the first day of class. Carroll's move is great in capturing my attention because I did experience that exact scenario and can easily relate. Her move is successful in gaining my interest and eagerly continuing to read the rest of her essay to learn the purpose of the scenario. I recognized both Dirk and Carroll's use of hooks as moves because in my personal writing my hooks are awful, and I deeply appreciate when other people include great hooks.  Finally, Anne Lamott's move is in the title of the chapter, "Shitty First Drafts." Lamott's move of using a curse word gives the reader an impression they will be reading something that isn't formal and can be relatable. She continues her writing by adding more examples that anyone who was ever written anything can connect to because they've experienced it.

I hope to use more of these moves in my writing, except for in a comic book format, at least not anytime soon.

Thlogging 4

I feel like we did so much this week, I don't really even know what to write about. I found the Murder activity to be really interesting because many of us haven't had any training writing newspaper articles or dead body reports, but we still knew how to do it. Even if we didn't know the exact jargon, we knew enough to get the idea across. I also liked the definitions Janet Boyd provided-at the end of her article-for rhetoric, audience, rhetorical situation, genre, etc. Her definitions revealed how easily we have been using rhetoric since we started writing with out even knowing what it meant.

I enjoyed the introduction of writers' moves, but I'm still trying to figure out how to identify the different moves with a reading. While reading the Starting Lines piece and answering the questions, I was sort of stumped when it came to be specific about the moves she used as a writer.  I understood the moves in lesson, about how you can use hashtags for a specific audience and whatnot, but I still had trouble identifying the Starting Lines' writers' moves. I'm sure with a little bit more practice, I'll be able to understand it better. 

It was pretty cool identifying the different types of evidence used for the different types of disciplines. The Finding Evidence article was very in depth about all of the different ways to find evidence, and I'm sure it is going to be a good resource for future PBs and WPs.  

Great week, all.

PB 2A: Importance of Evidence

Science research papers aren't the world's most entertaining type of reading; however, they can be informative in a dull, academic way. Most people go their entire life without writing a scientific research paper but can still be able to identify one when they see it because of the conventions within the genre. The science research paper generator, SCIgen, and an actual science research paper, "Personality Characteristics and Choice of Academic Major: Are traditional stereotypes obsolete?", contain similar but varying conventions. The most important aspect of the scientific research paper is the main study/procedure because without it, the paper would have zero validation. 

The science research paper SCIgen produced contained many similar qualities of the actual paper, "Personality Characteristics and Choice of Academic Major: Are traditional stereotypes obsolete?". The authors for the papers know their audience are scholars, professors, etc, and present the information with academic language and a formal tone. Both of the papers contain titles, a summary at the beginning, references, writing that is broken up into sections, for instance, implications, results, conclusion, etc. 

These papers also have a specific study that was conducted, and the study's results to prove the thesis of the statement. Similarly, the papers use tables/figures to further support their evidence, for example, the SCIgen paper has five different figures throughout the paper to show a model of their study and the results. 

However, "Personality Characteristics and Choice of Academic Major: Are traditional stereotypes obsolete?", uses three tables at the end of the paper to verify the conclusion of the entire paper. 

In comparison, the SCIgen paper is a random mess that doesn't make sense because it is generated to be amusing and not educational. It's supposed to demonstrate how following conventions can result in an appropriate-looking paper that has no actual context. On the other hand, "Personality Characteristics and Choice of Academic Major: Are traditional stereotypes obsolete?", is a scientific research paper from an academic journal that actually is trying to demonstrate how students shouldn't choose a major based on job stereotypes.

Most importantly, scientific research papers include plenty of evidence and statements that are concluded from other research to support the main argument. Many individuals would say the thesis/argument is the most important part of the research paper but without the evidence and study, the thesis is nothing.

In "Personality Characteristics and Choice of Academic Major: Are traditional stereotypes obsolete?", the authors state, "College students select their major field of study for many reasons. One of those is the stereotypes that students hold of particular occupations (Noel, Michael & Levas, 2003; Schlee, Harich, Kiesler & Curren, 2007). " The authors can declare this statement as a fact because it has already been proven by another group of scholars and they can just cite that research. By using different types of evidence throughout the paper, the authors of "Personality Characteristics and Choice of Academic Major: Are traditional stereotypes obsolete?" validate their thesis not only with their own study but with the research of other knowledgable academics. The evidence within research papers also allows for the authors to expand on their thesis. In the case of this research paper, the authors use the findings of their research to advise educators how they can change students' perceptions about specific careers, "Given that many undergraduates do not have an accurate idea about exactly what major they would like to pursue, every effort should be made to inform them about their available choices as early as possible." Thesis statements are important factors in research papers but without good evidence and analysis the paper wouldn't be reliable or very scientific. 

Scientific papers are supposed to be informative and persuasive even if they are boring, and they inform with their evidence, not with their thesis. They persuade with their analysis, not with their thesis. Theses are always going to be important parts of any essays, but the evidence and research is what gives scientific research papers their technical, analytical recognition.

Thlogging 3

The first Writing Project was due! The project builders were really helpful in knowing what to anticipate for the the writing project but it was still really intense. I wanted to choose a topic that would allow me to have a lot to describe and analyze, but I don't know if I did that with out getting off track. I don't really think my thesis was all that great and "debatable" enough. In the end, I think I could have spent a lot more time on the final draft and done a better job. I really enjoyed doing the highlighting activity with our rough drafts because it visually demonstrated all the components to my essay and what I needed more or less of. Similarly, the reverse outline was helpful in pointing out what was still missing in my writing project and reminding my how useful outlines in general can be for writing. In the future, I'm going to try to do both of these for more of my essays and not write an essay all in one sitting.

I attempted to incorporate the advice from Responding-Really Responding-to Other Students' Writing in my feedback to my peers' writing. I made sure to ask questions, offer as much criticism as praise, tried to specific, and give some advice. The comments that were given to me were really helpful in revealing to me where the reader might get confused among other things. Overall, these past couple of weeks have been extremely beneficial in improving my personal writing skills in numerous ways.

Thlogging 2

Because thought blogging is more of a free-writing(I used a hyphen), I'm not planning on writing in chronological order of what we have learned and will probably end up going backwards or something. I found the last two readings, Shitty First Drafts and Responding-Really Responding-to other Students' Writing(the title includes a dash) to be extremely helpful for moving forward in class. Shitty First Drafts allowed me to truly feel normal when I write really bad first drafts and when I start writing anything. This sentence basically sums up any time that I begin writing anything, "The right words and sentences do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time." Then, Responding-Really Responding-to other Students' Writing was really helpful in informing me what exactly should be my goals when commenting on my peers' writing because most of the time, I have no idea what I should be saying and what is probably too mean. Both of the readings included awesome tips for future drafts and peer comments. 

The hyphen and dash tip was a pretty cool grammar refresher and I would appreciate more of those once in a while. I liked when we got more specific on conventions and how they can be visual, quantitative, content-based, and written-language based. It will definitely help for dissecting the genre I choose in my writing project. Revisiting vocabulary from the beginning of class was useful in keeping all the words we have been learning from class and readings in my head. While writing the genre generators project builder, I struggled to start it but while writing it was easy to keep going. After class on Wednesday though, I realized I could have gone much deeper into conventions and what they mean. After the comic strip activity, I'd like to think I will be more thorough in my analyzation of genre conventions. 

PB 1B: GENREators

Memes, science research papers, and comic strips don't have much in common, except for having their own random generators and being individual genres. After spending some time with all of these generators, I found them highly amusing and amazed at how much randomness can appear. Even though each of these generators produced random science papers or comic strips, they all still had things in common, which I guess is where conventions in genres come in.

Meme images are a new concept in our culture, they have not been around for decades but are extremely popular. These hilarious captions pop up everywhere and anywhere, during award shows, political debates, etc. They could be about anything from politics to celebrities to world hunger, most of the time they are amazingly hilarious, even if they are about serious topics.

An ideal meme is about current cultural events, its witty, entertaining, hilarious (if it can make nearly anyone laugh, it is can up there on best memes). Memes usually contain one to two pictures (that are already known) and two to three short lines that are sort of related to the picture. While I would like to think most people know what a meme is, if you don't, the home page of the generator website gives you tons of examples where you can probably think of your own meme after just a couple of minutes exploring, and it allows you to make a meme with a few easy steps. On the meme generator website, you can choose an image that is commonly used in memes like the Willy Wonka image, the Dos Equis man, or you can upload your own picture of whatever you'd like.

 

Then, the generator instructs you to insert a top text and a bottom text and that completes your customized meme.

As a result, even if you aren't familiar with memes, this generator shows you some of the conventions in this genre that will allow you to make your own image like a professional.

The random comic generator is especially great because the user does not have to input any information, you can just click a button and read funny comic strips.

The generator produces three squares with drawings of the same two guys have some sort of funny conversation within thought bubbles.

 From the random comic generator, I can recognize the conventions within this genre. Comics are separated by different rectangle shapes that contain drawings of characters that are partaking in some type of conversation. They are for people who want to read something that isn't really formal or studios, it's more for relaxing and passing time. The comic strips in the generator are mostly funny, but being amusing is only a convention for comics not a rule.

As someone who has never written or read an official scientific research paper, I found the science generator extremely enlightening. After generating a bunch of "scientific papers" with just imputing names and skimming through a few, I recognized some of the conventions and format for this genre.
Every paper started off with a centered, bold title and the names of the authors, then it is broken into specific sections: summary, introduction, model, etc.

These science papers include different types of graphs called figures with explanations to each and all end with many references.

The science research generator has allowed for someone who has never read a scientific paper because they aren't in a science field and wouldn't have a reason to write or read one, the ability to identify some of the common components within these papers, or the conventions.


Every one of these generators is helpful in revealing the conventions each genre can contain.

PB 1A: Movie Reviews

As someone who considers herself a movie enthusiast, I very deeply enjoy reading movie reviews mostly because I like hearing other people voice their thoughts on a movie that I liked or disliked. My favorite movie reviews are the ones that convince me to watch a movie that usually isn't a genre I would consider without revealing the entire plot.

For the most part, movie reviews can be found on different websites (Rotten Tomatoes) or newspapers (The New York Times) written by well known critics or bloggers for people that aren't sure whether a movie is worth watching or spending money on. Movie reviews can be brief, contain some sort of summary of the movie, and positive or negative adjectives depending on the opinion of the writer. Typically, and I say typically because we are talking about conventions here, movie reviews are brief because if they would include too much of the plot then the reader would know too much about the movie and not bother watching it. Brief reviews include a couple of sentences summarizing the film then ending their review by truly recommending or discouraging readers to watch the movie. This blogger on Rotten Tomatoes summarizes some of the film while using positive adjectives to demonstrate his enjoyment of the movie and ending by telling the readers to go see it. 

 In some reviews, the title will reveal whether the critic approves of the movie or doesn't. 

Using the title to quickly reveal whether the review will be positive or negative is the fastest way for a reader to decided if the review is worth reading. When I read reviews, I like reading one positive review of a movie then one negative review, and some reviews are slightly too long for me to bother with especially when they aren't firm on their opinion of the movie. 

Longer movie reviews will start off with a couple of paragraphs mentioning the star of the film or the director and some of their history in Hollywood, then go onto a detailed summary of the movie that uses specific quotes, all the while using adjectives that will hint at their opinion of the film. Jeff Labreque from Entertainment Weekly starts of his review by mentioning some of the protagonist's earlier films, "Why are people always risking their lives for Matt Damon? Okay, perhaps always is a bit much, but in Saving Private Ryan, a unit of brave G.I.s who barely survived the storming of Normandy in 1944 had to sacrifice their lives to rescue one average man whose brothers had been killed." By starting off his review with that broad question, a reader begins to be curious about whether the writer liked or disliked the movie therefore, must continue to finish reading the review until it is clear. ScreenRant writer Ben Kendrick waits until the last paragraph of his review to be very specific of his opinion of The Martian, "Regardless, Scott has produced an entertaining rescue-thriller film, that takes cue from classic man vs. nature stories to tell a unique tale of one person's day to day survival millions of miles away as an entire planet rallies to bring him home... it's hard to dismiss the stirring story of humanity and triumph that Scott has delivered." 

Regardless of short or long, movie reviews are a great way to be introduced to new movie genres that you aren't familiar with yet you might still enjoy very much. 

Thlogging 1

As student, I have always viewed writing classes as boring, formal, and focused on correct grammar and format. All of my high school teachers wanted my essays to contain a thesis, backed with three or more paragraphs of evidence and analysis supporting that thesis, and a conclusion. I hated writing those essays, and by the time I was half way into writing the essay, I would sort of forget what I was saying or defending. I one hundred percent never considered who I was writing for or what I was trying to accomplish. I was just writing an essay on the topic I was given and hoping that if I followed this specific format well enough I would receive an A.

As far as genres go, I only ever considered them in relation to music or movies, not ever in writing. However, after this week, I see genres in everything. I sort of recognize I have been following conventions in situations that I never considered. For example, this summer I had to write a statement for the Financial Aid office, and having never written one before, I Googled it. After some research, I found that most statements for schools are supposed to be short, to the point, and specific. These statements are a genre that has its own conventions, and I wrote one without even realizing they were in their own category.

For the rest of the quarter and my writing career, I am very excited to do more free-writing that will allow for my thoughts to wander instead of always following a strict outline or format.