Final Project (Lorraine Guintu)

Summary

When we hear about gender and ethnic stereotypes, we immediately think about adults. But what about the children? For my research paper, I chose to see if these stereotypes had any effect on the children’s education and future. For the most part, I found that if an educator believes in ethnic stereotypes, then he or she will expect his or her students to live up to those stereotypes, and this tends to happen quite a lot. For example, the Asians are expected to do well because of ethnic stereotypes, so the educator may choose pay more attention to them instead of someone who is believed to do poorly. With gender stereotypes, I found out that kids become susceptible to them when they become five years old. Then as time goes on, girls are expected to obtain a job in humanities while boys should get a job in the STEM field, which is unfair because jobs in STEM give higher salaries.

Response

Before doing the research for this paper, I didn’t realize how bad this issue was. I was surprised to find out that from such an early age, being exposed to certain stereotypes can really affect who we become in the future. Hearing stereotypes about your ethnicity and/or gender can really persuade you to either fit into that stereotypical box or go completely against it, but oftentimes, it’s the prior choice.

Meme

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Day 26: Style Imitation (Lorraine Guintu)

Every two weeks, on the third floor of a certain high school in Queens, a small group of people meet in the school’s cave (before becoming what it is today, it used to be a janitor’s closet), and they are simply known as the S.M.I.L.E. (Something More in Life’s Experiences) Monday group. Upon entering the dimly lit cave for the first time, I met Mr. Dougherty (Doc), and I found myself staring at Star Wars figurines of different sizes (Doc is a huge Star Wars fan and now has a considerable large Darth Vader statue at the corner of the cave) before finding a seat next to a fellow student, wondering if we really were just going to “talk about our feelings”. After spending several Mondays there, I realized that with the group’s mix of highly quirky students, such as the boy who wouldn’t stop talking, the girl who always said yes to people’s requests, and another boy who was a huge fan of Taylor Swift, we were all able to get along pretty well, and despite our differences in personality and age, we formed strong connections with one another.

Excerpt from Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See + Style Imitation

“Deep love — true-heart love — must grow. Back then I didn’t yet understand the burning kind of love, so instead I thought about the rice paddies I used to see on my daily walks down to the rive with my brother when I still had all my milk teeth. Maybe I could make our love grow like a farmer made his crop to grow — through hard work, unwavering will, and the blessings of nature. How funny that I can remember that even now! Waaa! I knew so little about life, but I know enough to think like a farmer.”

Thanks to watching numerous horror movies at quite a young age, I’ve always disliked the color red — the color of blood. Some people say that the color is lucky and wards off bad spirits, but I never believed them and often chose to avoid the color as much as possible. I stayed away from it for years, but my hatred for it dissipated after having an unusual occurrence. I was walking past the park on one chilly morning, and I couldn’t help but stop and stare at something magnificent. Amongst the small array of dreary trees within the park, there was one tree — a red tree — that stood out. I was captivated by its pure beauty, and I now have a slight admiration for the color.

Day 21: Using Sources / Writing Style (Lorraine Guintu)

Using Sources

While doing research, we are exposed to an enormous amount of information that may or may not be useful to us. When this happens, we must have “infotention,” which was coined by Howard Rheingold and describes how we must filter out any information that isn’t related to our topic. When it comes to finding sources that would give the best support, one must build a critical mass that doesn’t include any circumstantial evidence before information synthesis can occur. During information synthesis, one can organize their sources in a way that makes the most logical sense. Once the writing process begins, the writer can choose to paraphrase, summarize, or directly quote from sources to help support his or her claim. When sources are used, it is important to avoid “patchwriting,” which is a situation where information from a source has little to no proper citations. In essence, knowing how to effectively pick sources and how to strategically place them in a paper is essential to writing a strong, argumentative piece of work.

In my opinion, this article gave really great tips on how to use sources for our papers. For written works I’ve done in the past, I’ve just used my intuition to figure out how I should use different sources. After reading this, I now have a better understanding about how to effectively use and cite sources. However, I still have one question about paraphrasing: Say you’ve written a small paragraph where you paraphrased information from single source. How would you properly use citations if you decide to not use signal phrases? Would you place the source at the very end of the paragraph, or after every sentence within that paragraph?

Intro to Refining Your Writing Style

We all have our own writing styles, but when it comes to writing for a discourse community, we must adapt to that discourse community’s specific writing style to effectively get your point across. This also includes changing the way you cite sources. For example, one wouldn’t want to use a biologists’ style of writing and citations to write an persuasive essay about how great pizza is. When it comes to writing, we must be mindful of who our audience is so we can come across as credible when presenting our claims to them. As we write papers for different classes, I find it interesting how, whether we realize it or not, we change our writing styles to sound credible.

Day 19: Research Process (Lorraine Guintu)

Finding Evidence

In order to properly argue your claim, you need to be aware of what type of sources you’re using for your research. Depending on what you’re trying to prove, Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz discuss the different types of sources that you can use for research and where they can be found. One way would be to use second hand materials, such as books and journals, which can be found in the library or online. Another way would be to use primary sources, which can be obtained by conducting your own interviews, surveys, experiments, or by giving your own personal experiences. Using a quick and simple Google search should not be the only method of obtaining sources. In order to gather the best sources, one must effectively utilize the library, search engines, and one’s own abilities to collect data to obtain information that would be most helpful in supporting a claim.

Under My Thumb

In Chelsea Booth’s essay, she discusses a range of issues that occur as a result of gender inequality in music. First, she brings up a moment where she lies about what her favorite song was. She admits to doing this so she’d be seen as an equal to her male classmate, as women are often falsely believed to have inferior opinions about music. Then she brings up how female musicians are rarely talked about in classrooms , yet she somehow wound up listening to about 27 minutes of John Cage’s 4’33”, where no actual instruments are being played. Next, she brings up stories and statistics about how she and other women have been sexually harassed at various musical festivals. It was shocking to hear her own personal story as well as the story of how a female reporter ended up being harassed as well after trying to interview other women about the issue. In the end, she admits that she is part of the reason as to why this is still a problem. Many of us can admit to this as well. We should support more women in the music industry, push to learn more about female musicians, and aim to make music festivals more safer for women.

Day 18: Manifesto (Lorraine Guintu)

Manifesto

With this piece, George Saunders talks about PRKA (People Reluctant to Kill for an Abstraction), and how its individual members avoid committing malicious acts towards other people based on an intangible belief. In reality, many of us are part of this organization, whether we realize it or not. He mentions that members of the group have chosen not to do terrible things, such as flying planes into buildings or bulldozing homes. Instead, members have done reasonable human acts, such as feeling admiration for small things after the sudden death of a kitten. Saunders writes this to make people realize that causing harm to other people based on some belief or idea is not the way to obtain a peaceful society. In today’s world, extreme, violent acts are done upon others simply because of various groups’ extreme beliefs, so Saunders is trying to argue against that idea. He does this by not explicitly naming any groups that we assume may choose to do these harmful acts in the beginning before suddenly associating individual people from different places with actions that are more human-like towards the end. In this way, he touches on human emotions to get his point across.

Day 17: Researching Stereotypes and “Fake News” (Lorraine Guintu)

Introduction to Researching and Making Claims

Seth Graves talks about what research is and how it effects us. When we do research, it allows us to learn more about ourselves and the world. Oftentimes, we often use primary and secondary sources to support our own claims. While doing research, it’s important to be aware of a source’s credibility, which involves how trustworthy your source is and what emotions are being used in that source to make a point. With research, it helps us to know more about the world around us, and we must always keep credibility in mind.

One sentence that I thought was interesting was, “Without ethos, a person may not have a valid reason to be believed, or may have trouble reaching their audience.” I was never really aware of this, and I can see some truth in it. The type of emotion that they use can affect their audiences as well. For example, if a news outlet gives their audience cold, hard facts about the president’s actions in a negative way, then the president’s supporters would feel attacked, leading them to immediately ignore those facts.

The Research Process

In this article, Seth Graces, Lucas Corcoran, and Kamal Belmihoub talk about how the research process is present in our daily lives. Aside from using it to do research papers, we are always using the research process to ask questions and find answers about the mysteries of everyday life. It begins with an inquiry, and if you feel that you want to find some answers to it, then you can do some research to find those answers, which may or may not surprise you. To prove their point, they provide us with a hypothetical situation, telling us that we can use research to find what may happen to our parents that work in retail if a “retail apocalypse” occurs. After doing research, then we can change parts of our lives based on what answers are found. Although we may think that we only do research when we do academic papers, we actually do it in our every day lives to help us see if changes in our lives need to be made to make it better.

One sentence that I thought was interesting was, “All of a sudden, an everyday situation can transform into a research question: Why are the trains so late?” This really made me realize that finding a research topic isn’t too hard and that a lot of us are doing research every day. By simply asking questions and trying to find answers about something, we are already in the process of doing research.

Day 15: Revision (Lorraine Guintu)

Revising Attitudes

When Brok Dethier writes, “…For most of us revision is the only road to success,” he is saying that we must go back and change parts of our work to make it better. This is true in many cases because our first draft is usually our worst, so we must write multiple drafts to get to our best work. While most of us think that the revision process is just for writing, we should be aware that we also go through the revision process in other aspects of our daily lives. By going through multiple revisions, we become better as writers and as people.

While Dethier compares the revision process to working on a car, I like to compare it to creating a piece of artwork. The first sketch is always messy and horrible, so most artists are always taking their time to revise it to make it more presentable. Sometimes, they have to erase and redraw a figure’s hand. Other times, they realize that using cool colors is better than warm colors for that particular piece of work. In the end, they create a beautiful piece of work after having it go through multiple changes. Similar to doing revisions in writing, creating artwork is a long process that results in something that was better than the initial product.

Revising Your Own Manuscripts

In “Revising Your Own Manuscripts,” David Murray writes, “A piece of writing is never finished.” Oftentimes, this is true because one can do a numerous amount of drafts and change a million different things, but it will still never seem to be fully complete. There are always little parts of it that can be changed to make it a bit better. The revision process can go on and on, but there has to be a certain point where one has to stop and call his or her work “finished.”

Day 13: Anzaldúa and Naylor (Lorraine Guintu)

How to Tame a Wild Tongue

Here, Gloria Anzaldúa talks about her struggles with using Chicano Spanish. It was a language that was made for people who weren’t Spanish and didn’t live in an area where Spanish was the dominant language. Due to how it was never fully Spanish and seen as an “illegitimate language”, many Chicanos were often criticized for using it and were often told to use Spanish or English instead. As a result, she and many other Chicanos learned different languages to try and fit in different discourse groups. However, they were still able to keep Chicano Spanish alive by continuing to use it in their discourse group and in different forms of media. They soon gained recognition, but the fight for their identity still continues.

The Meanings of a Word

Like a picture, a single word can have different meanings. Gloria Naylor talks about how people can assign different definitions to a word by giving examples of how the word, “nigger” is perceived in different ways. To a non-African school boy, it was a derogatory term for Africans. However, within her own family, its meaning changed to fit the situation: “nigger” was used to describe a successful man; “my nigger” was used by females to show their affection towards their special one; and “niggers” was used in conversations that were about indecent groups of people. Therefore, it is important to know what certain words mean to different groups of people, as your own definitions may not be the same as someone else’s.

Day 12: Alexie and Tan (Lorraine Guintu)

Superman and Me

In this short story, Sherman Alexie talks about how he learned how to read and the struggles he faced as a young Indian boy. Growing up, Indians were expected to be unsuccessful in the non-Indian world, and by having a love for books, Alexie goes against this expectation, “breaking down the door” that prevents him from achieving his goals. He starts out early by reading his father’s books and Superman comics, quickly gaining an understanding of how paragraphs work. Despite knowing that most other capable Indians have given up on their education, he pushes through, reading nonstop to help himself advance. With his efforts, he soon became a writer and now inspires other Indian children to read and go against this stereotype.

Mother Tongue

In this reading, Amy Tan shares her experience of how she grew up with different “Englishes”: her mother’s “simple” English and her own “normal” English. Her mother, a Chinese immigrant, understood the language, but the way she spoke made other people think that she didn’t know anything. For a while, Tan believed this after viewing how poorly people treated her and how she often had to speak on behalf of mother. Later on, she realized that this was not the case, as her mother had a great mind. She then talks about how languages in a family can shape a child’s language, possibly affecting how well one does in certain subjects. She gives the example of scoring well on math exams instead of English due to how straightforward the subject is. Seeing that language may be why Asians tend to be geared towards math and science, she decides to go against that by majoring in English. Despite being told by others that her writing was bad and that she should do something else like account management, she worked harder and soon became a writer.

Response

In both of these readings, Alexie and Tan face ethnic stereotypes, which is something that all of us face. Although it was difficult, they chose to fight against those stereotypes, striving to do what they wanted to do instead of what they were expected to do. We also see how language plays a big role in their situations. With Alexie, he learns how to read to gain more knowledge and help himself advance. In Tan’s case, we see how the language used in her family shaped her to be the writer she is today.

Day 11: Literacy Narrative (Lorraine Guintu)

“Introduction to (re)Making Language”

Seth Graves argues that knowledge is acquired through language. As seen in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the creature first learns about what war is after overhearing a conversation. He then expresses his opinion of this and a realization of himself through language. By doing so, we learn how the creature feels, and the same thing occurs when we use language to communicate with one another. With language, we are able to acquire new knowledge and express our own opinions about it, just as the creature had done.

“Language, Discourse, and Literacy”

Language is an of exchange of symbols that allow both parties to effectively communicate their ideas to one another. In many cases, there are groups that use language in a certain way, and these groups are called discourse communities. Examples of this are your friends and your colleagues from work, and they way you casually communicate with your friends would most likely be different than the way you communicate with your colleagues. There is also literacy, and it refers to how we are able to use language within a certain discourse community. The way we use literacy can shape our ideas and change our understandings of things.

Response

Language is used everyday, so it is important to know that it is used to share and obtain knowledge about the world and ourselves. Without it, how would we be able to be aware of what’s going on? How would we be able to effectively express our own emotions? The way we use language can affect how we share and obtain knowledge as well. For example, the creature from Frankenstein was often called a “monster” or other horrible terms by people that he tried to help, which led him to believe that he was a monster when he really wasn’t.