Rakiem’s Writers Journal

September 25, 2021

Analysis

1. What I did:

• Read the Rhetorical Context text
• Read Occasion, Exigency, and Kairos text
• Read Rhetoric is Synonymous with Empty Speech text
• Looked into the podcast
• Read the Navigating Genres text

2. What went well:

• Able to look at what rhetoric is
• Able to see rhetoric can be used in many different situations
• Able to see Rhetoric can come off as helpful or harmful, depending on the situation
• Able to see Rhetoric can have a great impact on society

3. What was hard:

• Getting time to finish these assignments, this is the first week that was hectic.

4. To-Do List:

• Look at what will be given next week so that I don’t feel crammed for time to do these assignments.

5. Where I left off:

• I left off finishing the readings explaining rhetoric and its use in society.

6. How do I feel?

I feel a little stressed. This may be due to the time that was given to me this week. I will try to do better in planning out my times so I don’t feel stressed or crammed for time. This weeks’ assignments were simple and there should be no excuse for feeling crammed for time.

7. Roberts-Miller describes the extreme consequences of negative rhetoric or rhetoric that intentionally misleads an audience (11). Think of a time you have seen rhetoric in action. Was it positive or negative? Was it used to get at the truth or to mislead? What were the consequences?

A time I have seen rhetoric in action was in a YouTube video, in which a lawyer shows the people watching how to persuade the judge to sentence your client as not guilty, even if he has committed the crime. This kind of rhetoric can go both ways due to the fact that court cases are all different in a way. For example a person can be innocent of murder, and the lawyer can use rhetoric in order to persuade the judge to take the side of his client, which can be shown as positive due to the lawyer not misleading the judge, the only audience member, which leads it to be positive, since he is giving the truth. However, this situation can be in the exact opposite, where the defendant was charged for murder and actually did do it. But, the lawyer, would want his client to win, so he would use rhetoric in order to persuade the judge to be on the side of the defendant. This is an example of rhetoric being used to mislead the audience, letting a guilty man go free. This would be described as negative rhetoric because we see the lawyer as the manipulator, in which he has a big impact on if the defendant goes free or not, even if he is guilty of such crime. This would obviously lead to the consequence of the defendant continuously repeating the same crime again. However the consequence of letting a non-guilty man go free is not there because we see the lawyer using rhetoric to get to the truth. These situations, said similarly by Miller, show that rhetoric will be in most parts of society’s writing, society’s speech, and society’s reading, however, people can choose to either to mislead or give the truth with the type of rhetoric they use.

 

September 18, 2021

Literacy Narrative

1. What I did:

• Revised all of my Literacy Narrative

2. What went well:

• I was able to see where I could improve in my writing in order for it to be better and less like a “project”

3. What was hard:

• There wasn’t anything that was hard this week due to me only being needed to revise and read over the articles for week 4.

4. To-Do List:

• Look over my assignments for week 5 and see what I need to do so I can have a head start.

5. Where I left off:

• I left off with a revised Literacy Narrative that is finished. I also left off at the end of the reading, Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing

6. How do I feel?

I feel pretty relaxed. For the past couple of weeks the work has been pretty straight forward. I have had no problems completing it from the time I started college. I want to keep this going in the next weeks for this course.

7. Do you agree that these habits and experiences are essential? Why?

I agree that these habits and experiences are essential because these basic habits and experiences are basically what great writing has, due to it giving the writing life. When I say life, I mean that the writing that is given is not dead and robotic. It explains in the article that students should have the habit of flexibility, meaning that they should be able to adapt to the situations they are placed in. This is important to writing due to the fact that, as people, we wont be given the same question every single time, but different questions with different requirements. So, as writers, we will need to be able to manipulate our work so that it is given meaning and is easy for the audience, which could be anyone, to understand. Just as I gave the example of flexibility, other writing habits are important because they provide a more personal approach to writing rather than the dull robotic form of writing taught to us as being the form claim, evidence, and reasoning. Also, going on to experiences, the article names the experience of developing critical thinking in writing, reading, and research. This is an essential experience because if writers don’t have critical thinking, their work will lack a a deeper message and will be very plain and ordinary. Writers should step out of that boundary, in which critical thinking allows that, making the work exponentially better. And same situation as before, this one experience of developing critical thinking is just an example, in which all of the experiences are needed for your writing to not be plain but your own work with your own words, like you are kind of speaking in a way.

 

September 11, 2021

Literacy Narrative

1. What I did:

• Read texts from the Bad Ideas of Writing:
• “Leave Yourself Out of Your Writing”
• “Response, Never Use ‘I'”

2. What went well:

• Expanded my knowledge on writing
• Looked at common misconceptions in writing
• Thought about how leaving this misconception out could strengthen my writing

3. What was hard:

• Not much was hard for this week, I was able to do all the work in no rush or hurry

4. To-Do List:

• Keep Revising the Literacy Narrative Paper until publishing (September 18, 2021)

5. Where I left off:

• A partially revised narrative

6. How do I feel?

I feel for this week of writing this week was just for revising, and thinking about how I could make my writing better which I did. Looking more in debt to the “Bad Ideas of Writing” made me look at the what ifs. I looked at if my writing would be stronger without these misconceptions which was definitely true. This was also implemented into my Literacy Narratives because yes, moving away from these misconceptions made my writing have more of an impact.

7. Write about a previous writing assignment that was a challenge for you. What strategies did you use at the time? After reading the chapter, what other strategies do you think might have been useful?

A previous writing assignment that was a challenging for me was my year long research project in high school. I feel that basically I believed I was confined to a certain set of rules when it came to research writing. The strategies I used at the time would usually be mostly speaking in third person, and mostly being very descriptive by looking at different texts corresponding to my research project I had at the time. I think I opened my eyes once I asked the teacher for help on my assignment in which she did see I was struggling with formulating my words. She then talked about including my own opinion of what data I was collecting, meaning how did I analyze the data I collected. This opened my mind up more, making me get more words on the paper getting to that word count I needed. This made me incorporate the idea of first person into my writing because I could talk about how I see the data and what trends I see, which would connect back to my claim for the research question I had. Yes, this strategy was a good strategy back in those times, but after reading the chapters, I believe I should incorporate myself more in my writing, going beyond “I” usage. This is because when being able to talk from my point of view I am able to be more descriptive and accurate on my account, making my writing stronger. This week definitely showed me that going from a robotic style of writing to a more self oriented style of writing, would take my writing to the next level.

 September 2, 2021

Literacy Narrative

1. What I did:

• Finished the rough draft of my Literacy Narrative
• Read the Bad Ideas of Writing
• Looked back on the past experiences of my academic career

2. What went well:

• The text, “Bad Ideas About Writing” was helpful for me to look back at old experiences and see what my past instructors told me that were misconceptions
• Given such a prompt, I felt I had freedom to express my journey in writing

3. What was hard:

• Not much was hard this week, I had a lot of time to plan and complete the assignment
• The only that could be posed as difficult was probably looking back on all 13 years of my learning and see what previous instructors told me

4. To-Do List:

• Keep Revising the Literacy Narrative Paper until publishing (September 18, 2021)

5. Where I left off:

• A finished rough draft of my Literacy Narrative

6. How do I feel?

I feel for my first week of writing, I think I did well. I didn’t feel frustrated with any of the work assigned to me, I thought it was pretty straight forward. While writing, I didn’t feel I didn’t know something, due to it asking me personally about my writing journey and how it has impacted me, in which I show the bad ideas given to me throughout the years and how I went away from those bad ideas.

7. Maxwell and Dickman believe that “a story is a fact, wrapped in an emotion that compels us to take an action that transforms our world.” How would you define the term story? What do you think are the most important elements of a good story? What examples help support your thoughts?

A story in my eyes is when an author draws the readers attention to a certain problem, in which overtime the author writes in order to show the solution to that said problem. Good stories compared to other stories are different due to the fact that they display messages, in which the author places for the reader to find. This is probably the most important element of making a good story because, yes, stories are suppose to engage the audience, but I feel as though stories should go towards saying something after drawing the readers attention. Basically what I’m saying is the story should persuade an audience to thinking a certain way or doing something. Say for instance I talk about the wise man story. The wise man talks about you cant laugh at the same joke over and over, so why cry over the same problem. The message that comes from this story is that worrying on problems just wastes time. Seeing this this is a good story, in which we see a problem, solution, and a message that can be implemented into the real world for many other different situations. Maxwell and Dickman have a similar definition, in which they describes stories as “facts”. They are not facts literally but between the lines lays facts that should be implemented into life, basically a life lesson.

August 24th, 2021

Introducing Myself

1. Hello my name is Rakiem Byfield. My pronouns are he/him/his.
2. I have a lot of goals for this course. I want to improve my writing as a person so I can use it in the world if I need to. Also, another goal for this course is that I want to also earn an A in this class because I want to start off my freshman year strong. My final goal in this class is to basically learn something new whether its about the class or something about the world.
3. A question I have about the course is how will assignments be graded and what will you look for in my work for a good grade?

One rule that I have learned from my past years of writing is that I should always indent my paragraph at the start. I learned this rule in the 4th Grade, in which it was easy to remember. The impact of having this rule engrained in my memory is that it allows for me to see how much paragraphs I have in a piece of writing I am doing.

My relationship to writing is that I have been writing for most of my whole life. I have been writing on notebooks, notepads, posters, walls etc. I think of writing as being another work of art, in which words are used to express many different things. I do writing in both my personal and academic life, in which I sometimes enjoy it but sometimes find it frustrating. This is because making your writing near perfection is hard in itself, but its a challenge that I have had for a long time. I hope to improve it over this semester.