Reading Activity 3 on Intertexuality

In my Women's Studies class we had to read an article and write an essay about how it referred to a certain question that was assigned in class. The process I took to assemble my essay was to read first the article. Then, I went on the Internet to find quotes, because I always like to start my essays off with quotes that relate to my paper, I always feel like it gives out a stronger message. While I am using the Internet I background research my thesis question. Then I begin to write. I write my first draft without re-reading. After I have completed my essay that is when I go back and check for the mechanical errors.
I guess I really never thought about about how much my words stand out. It's like the quote in the text "you are as strong as your weakest link." It is funny that when I use quotes to start my paper that I am using intertexuality, because its a source of meaning and its a background and support for my essay. Now, that I am thinking about what words I choose to complete my sentences that turn into paragraphs that makes up my papers I typically put my beliefs and statements into each word. I always strive for better vocabulary so that is why I thesaurus abuse my words.

Graffiti Video

Observation:

• Discussing using brainstormed pictures
• Collaborating together while facing one another in front of the wall they are about to spray paint
• Wearing gloves and "casual" attire
• Looks like its in the morning or the beginning of the start of evening
• One person at a time doing the work. Others maybe standing off to the side giving their opinions as the process of spray painting is being done.
• Each time something is spray painted the artists step back and observe and discuss
• Collaborating ideas before/while spray painting
• Talked about having around 100 outlines
• Talks about needing a first outline.
• Then you fill it then that replaces the first outline and then you add color and that takes then replaces the last outline- so there is a "process" that the artists follow in order to create/produce their designs/work
• The further along the process becomes the more collaborating and discussion about what to do next
• Discussing colors/ arguing and persuading one another about which color would look the "best"
• Uses hand motions to express and form ideas

in class observation activity

My first observation of the picture is that its a very small and active classroom. The atmosphere seems very relaxed and comfortable allowing the students to feel and express their opinions. The time of the day is either early morning or mid-afternoon. The time of day definitely affects the moods of students who are willing to learn. These students look very attentive. The students have laptops to maybe blog questions and/or answers or they could just be taking notes. Now, its almost easier for students to type faster than writing allowing more time to tentatively listen to the teacher and interact more in the classroom discussions.

When observing for the free write in-class asignment I did not take notes right away. I wanted to listen in how the two writers talked and collobrated their work together. They at first asked each other if they were in the PWE major. One said yes the other said no. The one that said no then said to the the student majoring in PWE if she could fill her in for what is required for a PWE major. The intial process of their paragraph was to brainstorm and talk amounst themselves then type. They would re-evaluate their sentence and discuss questions like how this would help them in a career after college. They also took what they are doing in this class and discussed how its relevent to the PWE major.

Reflection on Observating:
What i notice myself doing was thinking of ways that I would go about the writing process. This then prosed new theories and questions of my own when observing somebody else in their working atmosphere. As I kept observing I looked more and more for the verbal revisions amoung the writers. I observed how the writers were feeding off of one anothers ideas and then collaborating on a sentence. What I was doing while just observing was inferencing my observations on the spot. I wanted to ask questions like why did you choose to talk about a particular class versus another class. I observed that the writer/typer was creating more ideas than the other writer who was not typing. I think its because its the "mindset" if you will say that I am in charge of writing/typing, even thought the writers are in the same playing/collaborating process.

Class update again

This was a very long and complicated couple of classes. I think Im pretty clear on taking the comments on the 1st drafts of things and analysising them for my final draft. Im still not clear on the whole idea of observing and critcially understanding the work. I feel like I just can't write and be myself when communicating to the person I want to observe in the techincal/ critcial writing field.

Rhetorical Activites 3

DA’s Opinion section of Tuesday, September 9, 2008
“University text alert system fails to deliver”
This article was written after the shooting on high street that occurred on the past Sunday morning. The main point in the article was the text message alert that West Virginia University has for emergencies and how the emergency text alert system was not used during the shooting.

I thought the writer accomplished all stasis arguments in the article. The writer uses “hateful speech” by pointing out that the conjecture of the article was describing how city police officials did not use the emergency text message alert system. The police officials thought it was not necessary to spread panic when they already had the violators in custody and the shooting was not on campus property.

The definition of stasis in the article is about what police officials think of when the word “emergency” is used to send out an alert text message for the safety of WVU’s students.

The quality of stasis in the article is the body of it all. The shooting not only affects the students, but the local community. A student, comparative questions of quality is the state of no other alternatives for their protection if police officials keep continuing to say that each incident was un-necessary to “create panic when there’s no reason for panic.” Students may look at the issue of they have a right to be texted, whether they police feels it is necessary not to send a campus wide panic.

The writer does not support the police officials. It is clearly stated in the text, “Just because a dangerous crime is committed outside an invisible boundary between campus and off-campus does not mean it won’t affect our lives or how safe we feel in our community.” In the article the writer states a specific argument and has a fact that WVU is ranked one of the safest schools in the Big East. If we have such a strong safety policy then why reject the text message alert system, whether or not it seems plausible.

letter of inquiry stuff

What research questions guide your study?
Why is this question important to ask?
How did this text come to look the way that it does?
Why does the text achieve some goals & not others?
How could the text be improved?

These are the types of questions that would be the start of your specific questions.

What Prior talks about:
Initiating text: prompts the writer to compose another text
example: assignment descriptions
* this gets interpreted by the writer
* gets negotiated

How can we discover the answers towards the initiating text?
Interpreting:
Text- assignment, description, what goals were set/what purpose was established, words that give emphasis
Interviewing - stimulated elicitation interviewing "prop",
Negotiate:
Text: peer review questions, focus us on the specific moves the writer should try to make, teaching notes

Week Update

In the past few classes we have had I feel like Im running into the dark with the ideas and thoughts that are discussed during class. We look and talk about examples, but I don't understand what we are supposed to be looking for in the examples themselves. I understand the exploratory essay and the letter of inquiry, but in class when we are trying to relate that back to those assignments I find them irrelevant, and that is because I am lost in the explanations of the given in-class assignments. When we are paired up in partners to discuss the packet we have been looking at all last week, I have gained zero value in doing so, because its has been the same over and over ideas throughout the packet from the beginning and there is no more further questions and ideas to be dicussed with a partner. I feel that doing it as a class as a whole generates more discussions and ideas then individual partners. I also feel that we no longer blog during class, which gives me some time indvidually to take a minute and refelct what are class discussion was and raise some questions I had or just thought of, which is nice when we do our out of class assignments and readings.

Response to Exploratory Essay

The first thing I did to start my Exploratory Essay was to research on the Internet on someone who uses professional writing in their daily job. I wanted the field to be about something I was interested in and had relatively small connections with the field. This way when I wrote my essay and when I wrote my essay and when I would interview this person I could retrospectively account my writing.
After, I found the Big Brother & Big Sister organization and was interested in researching how the math support specialist professionally wrote their evaluations for the clients, families, and other employees & team members at the Big Brother Big Sister Organization.
Next, I took the reading that was assigned in class by Jack Stelzer. I used his research and finding on the engineer he observed to conduct questions of my own for when i observe the Match Support Specialist.

Class 9/2 notes/discussion

Define: discourse community? 

 - Discourse: "identity kit" comes w/an appropriate costume and instructions on how to act and talk as the member of a specific community

"Being trained as an engineer, one learns how to speak, think, and act like an engineer" - James G. 

Looking outside of the Professional Writing and Editing jobs and specifications of that particular "community" I am the treasurer as well as a member of them team for the Women's Club Volleyball Team at WVU. Each club forms sort of its own community. We hold specific events together or hold events among other club teams at WVU. The fellow officers and I have to write out reports at the end of the year. I have to read and balance the club check books and accounts. We have to e-mail and communicate with other university teams whom we want to travel too and play in their tournament. The officers and I also run practices and have to be a coach as well as a player. This is difficult, because of how we choose to communicate when we are a coach or the player. Being strict, having fun. 

• How does the social perspective apply to my work as a professional writer?
  
• What kinds of things do you need to know in order to be a member of that group? 
  
• How do group members' communicate w/ one another? Sanctioning. 
  
• What subjects are/ are not appropriate for discussion? How do we discuss them?

Specific genres become used as forms of communication.

Learning lingo- understanding concepts and expectations

Rhetorical Activites 1&4

1) The issue that I chose to talk about was whether cannabis should become illegal in the United States. This issue is quite interesting, because there are many views to recognize. On Wednesday of last week, Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced a bill that would remove federal penalties for personal use of marijuana. Ever since it was outlawed after the Prohibition in 1937, the U.S. federal government has kept a strict mind set on the issue.
The kairos of this issue is like the gun control/violence in the text’s example, because the government’s officials do not state clearly their position on whether cannabis should be illegal or not, they all just say the issue needs time for further discussion. Just like the government officials say they need more time on what to do with the gun-free zones throughout the United States. Now, that Congressman Frank posed this issue it has become urgent news.
The communities and pro-cannabis groups are favoring these times, because the issue is now openly up for discussion in the federal government. People who are for the issue of making cannabis legal have argument upon argument of why it is necessary for cannabis to be legal. Cannabis users argue, marijuana can be used to treat illnesses, including glaucoma, asthma, multiple sclerosis and H.I.V. /A.I.D.S. Talk show host Montel Williams who has multiple sclerosis and has to take over a 100 pills a day uses medical marijuana to help ease his pain agrees that cannabis should be legal in the U.S. for reasons like his own. People like John Walters, director of national drug control policy who is against cannabis being legal said in a press release that "Marijuana is the blindspot of drug policy....Baby Boomers have this perception that marijuana is about fun and freedom. It isn't. It's about dependency, disease, and dysfunction.”
The writers/ speakers defiantly write in their own interest for the issue. You can easily tell if they favor the issue or not, because in the articles there is a lot of “changing of the subject” that initially pulls toward a related issue such as the topic of medical marijuana or how the government spends around $10 billion dollars of taxpayers money to enforce cannabis laws.

4) Does the drinking age in the U.S. still need to be twenty-one? The United States is the only country in the world that has its legal drinking age be 21 years old. The argument that it pro longs the abuse of alcohol in the country is completely blindsided by the fact that if people want to do something they are going to do it even if there are possible repercussions. College students like me are influenced by alcohol everyday, because drinking has now become a social activity.