Day 17: Researching Stereotypes and Fake News (Damien Balchand)

INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCHING AND MAKING CLAIMS

Author Seth Graves discusses the idea of how applying research towards one’s argument will not only strengthen your piece significantly, but also bring about some emotional insight for both the reader and writer. It allows the reader to “think and feel things about the world with ever-greater depth”, which can be said also towards the author when they are conducting their work. Graves argues that all forms of writing contains some form of research paper, whether it comes from an outside source or even your own thoughts, it still provides research towards the main point of the paper. The most interesting sentence to me was “In each writing act, we’re trying to learn something more about ourselves and the worlds we inhabit”. I found this interesting because it is something that I would like to apply to my own writing in the future. I have come to realize that most of my writing assignments contain the bare minimum of what is required, and I would like to reform that about myself and be able to learn from my papers, not just forget about the assignment completely after I hand it in.

THE RESEARCH PROCESS

According to the authors Seth Graves, Lucas Corcoran, and Kamal Belmihoub, they agree that the definition of research is “the process of wanting to know more”. They describe the research process by simply comparing it to everyday life, how humans in our society encounter certain problems in their environment on a daily basis. For example, the authors use the NYC subway delays as a reference of how researching for a paper should be like. We all know that the subways are always delayed even though it shouldn’t be happening because we don’t want it to, but the real question is why is delayed? The author force us to use these questions when it comes writing not only just a research paper, but any form of writing that contains ideas that need to be further developed for the reader. We simply identify a problem and then apply research to solve that issue within a piece of work.

Day 15: Revisions (Damien Balchand)

Prior to this phrase, Brock Dethier states that “revision is a sign of failure”, ultimately arguing that some people say they have a negative feeling when they are given criticism or feedback on their work and told to do some revision. Some people want their first draft to be their last because they’ve put so much effort into simply getting the assignment done and receiving a grade, whereas they haven’t really taken the time to actually read over their work and look for ways to make their writing even better. When Brock states “For most of us revision is the only road to success”, he argues that not only professional writers, but ordinary people usually tend to spend more time on finding ways to improve their work rather than officially completing the work.
Revision can be compared to the process of doing any task for a certain period of time. You need to spend some time on working on your writing, but sometimes if you spend too much time, it can lead to repetitiveness and ultimately can make your writing bad.
“Good writing is essentially rewriting”: This statement by Donald Murray is very similar to what Dethier was arguing in his “Revising Attitudes”. Murray states that most writers tend to revise their own work many times even before realizing the fact that they are. As he states that the writers are revising every time they delete a phrase or sentence and edits a paragraph, they are essentially improving their own work as they go.

Day 12: Alexie and Tan (Damien Balchand)

SUPERMAN AND ME

Author Sherman Alexie describes himself when he was a 3 year old Indian boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. His father was a bit obsessive with his monster collection of books, varying from many different genres and pretty much anything he could get his hands on. When he began to start reading his father’s books, Alexie realized that the society around him was like a “paragraph”, a word he encountered when reading one of the books. This meaning that he started to view everyone and everything around him to be apart of something even better, similar to how a paragraph is apart of an entire book. However, the society around him doesn’t notice that, and ultimately becomes part of the stereotype that people living in the Indian Reservation are meant to be stupid and not pursue their goals/careers.

MOTHER TONGUE

Amy Tan discusses the fact that her own mother, who grew up in Asia, however learned a good amount of English and is very literate. As her experiences with her mother go by, she realizes that the impact her mother has with others, when she is speaking English, is significantly greater than her own native language. However, the debate remains to be settled of whether the people can truly understand what she is genuinely speaking about. Amy realizes that the people her mother is encountering are simply understanding the words she is saying, but not necessarily comprehending the ideas she is trying to make, mainly due to the fact that she is not speaking “proper English”.

Day 11: Literacy Narrative (Damien Balchand)

Introduction to (re)Making Language:

Author Seth Graves discusses in his article how during the Enlightenment Era, the literacy rates of people all across United States had begun to increase rapidly. Citizens of the colonies had seen successful revolutions in the French colony of Haiti based on enlightenment ideas, which would ultimately become the foundation for the American Revolution. He uses the monster in the gothic novel Frankenstein to depict how language can have such a dramatic effect on both our knowledge and thoughts.

Language, Discourse, and Literacy:

Graves explains how language is “referred to an interaction recognized by a specific community” and how it can be represented by a symbolic form of communication. A set of multiple languages used by the writer ultimately creates a discourse (ways of being in the world). This specific knowledge of a discourse community is what describes a literacy, which has developed from being defined as the ability to read and write to include “using language within a specific discursive space”.

Damien Balchand

What’s the Point?

Author Daniel Hengel begins his argument by simply stating what he believes is the legitimate way to analyze and interpret a text. The idea of “asking questions of the texts” and he stresses the importance of needing to have some sort of claim called the thesis. The questions he gives are very accurate pertaining to most people that are conducting a similar sort of analysis paper. The ideal question that everyone most likely has is “Where do You Start?”, in which he provides three steps to apply to this question in order to structure your essay. The thesis is arguably the most important part of the paper, basically because it states the claim that you are taking and will provide evidence for throughout the body of the essay. Hengel urges to ask yourself “What do you see?”, “What do you Make of It?”, and “Why does it Matter?” By completing this task, it will ultimately provide a simple, yet accurate foundation for you to develop a thesis.

Responding-Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing

According to Richard Straub, the idea of discussing ideas amongst peers and reading each others’ work can be very beneficial towards both yourself and the writer as well. The ultimate goal when reading someone else’s paper is to take ideas from their writing, give them tips on what they could possibly do better, and point out their strengths and weaknesses regarding structure of their essay. It is not always good to be “short and sweet” with your comments, sometimes the writer truly needs that criticism on their work in order to fully develop themselves to become an overall better writer and not simply for that specific paper.

Damien Balchand

My top choice for this paper would be analyzing the TV show “Game of Thrones” on HBO. It is a fantasy genre and it set during the Middle Ages time period. A pro about analyzing this show would be the length of the show, containing 7 ongoing seasons, with 10 one hour episodes in each means that there will be tons of information to analyze. However, that can also be a con because determine which specific content in the show can also be challenge.

My second choice would have to be the Pepsi Commercial aired in 2004 titled “We Will Rock You”. This commercial is very unique and original, which introduced the famous song “We Will Rock You”. One pro about using this commercial would be the fact that it accurately depicts the sexist stereotype perceiving that men are greater beings than women, which can ultimately be a good lens to analyze this commercial.

My third choice for this paper would be the Nike Commercial “Just Do It” featuring many celebrity athletes and mainly Colin Kaepernick. Everyone knows the incident with Colin and the bending of the knee during the national anthem, and he has inspired millions across the globe to stand up for what they believe in. This has many pros, including the fact that it is such a powerful and inspiring commercial, therefore having many different lens for me to discuss within my paper.

Damien Balchand

Introduction:

According to the author, Seth Graves, writing is not simply writing an essay for a certain class. The process of writing ultimately takes quite some time, including processes such as “exploring, planning, drafting, and revising”. Over the past five decades, authors have studied on the ways of perfecting their own writing, and they show us how it can help ourselves be able to understand new ideas as we are writing.

Shitty First Drafts:

Lamott begins her argument by stating how in order to be a successful writer, you ultimately need to have crappy drafts prior to your end result. She gives an example of herself when she would be writing something and lays out her process of developing certain ideas.

Freewriting:

Similar to Lamott’s statement, Peter Elbow argues that the best way for people to improve writing is through a process called freewriting. He explains that the idea of simply writing down ideas that pop up in your mind without thinking if it is a logical reason.

Damien Balchand

Dancing Around Objectification

In the setting of a Harlem performance, two women that were performing The Harlem Dancer and The Invisible Man that were both portrayed as an appeal to men sexually. They were overlooked of their talents of dancing and singer, rather to be become a simple idealized object. The Harlem dancer is forced not to retaliate against the men in the crowd, mainly due to the fact that being an African American within the time period had no equal rights as the other citizens of society.

Intersectionality 101

According to the article on Intersectionality, it is “a methodology of studying the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations”. It refers to the culture interactions that ultimately can result in racial and gender discrimination, particularly against people of color. They disagree with the Standpoint Theory, which refers to the different and unique living experiences that these certain minority groups lived in.

Damien Balchand

The idea of analyzing texts is ultimately the method of understanding the whole piece of a text by studying multiple parts of the text. Authors tend to initially find a specific claim, or thesis, and then use multiple different lenses to further analyze that claim. These lenses include audience, purpose, genre, and media. The authors tend to connect with a certain group of people when they are writing, which makes the audience one of the most widely used lenses today. The purpose is much different than the claim and argument, mainly because it states why the author is discussing or writing about a certain topic within their text. Arguably the most important lenses used by the authors are ethos (author’s credibility), pathos (emotion/values), and logos (logical reasoning).

Damien Balchand

Rhetoric is the idea of using the writing of other authors in order to benefit yourself and further develop your own skills. In order to form some sort of connection with the readers, the author uses specific “gestures, actions, signs, and symbols” to give readers a sense of what the writer is discussing. When contemplating about rhetorical writers, Aristotle is undoubtedly the “most important figure”. He created the main ideas when using rhetorical ideas that are known as “logos (logical), ethos (character), and pathos (emotional). Authors also tend to use certain conventions in order to possibly persuade the minds of the readers by using a specific “genre, style, or even purpose” when writing.