link

If anyone wants to check out my portfolio the link is http://edwinner.weebly.com/

Thlog 9

It’s coming down to the final stretch of the quarter and this feels a little different from past quarters. As we finished up our last working project, I feel a little better about the coming days especially since there is no final for Writing 2.

This past week, we got to rebuild and peer review our WP3’s. I really am a big fan of these peer review sessions because I get a lot of feedback that’s crucial to my WP3 development. In addition to feedback, I also received suggestions for other possible genre transformations because I was still unsure of what to do originally. I ended up taking that suggestion and used it for my final WP3 so I am really grateful for that.

For my WP3, I made my scholarly article into a Wikihow article for a younger audience and first day lecture slides for my older audience. I ended up switching from my original proposal because I felt like both of my proposals did not fully grasp my article’s overall picture and was not obvious to the reader what I was trying to achieve. I also thought I would end up doing harder and unnecessary work. Again, I am really grateful for the peer review session because I ended up switching to genres that I had fun with. It was really challenging creating a Wikihow page but I still enjoyed the process. For almost every working project we are told to pick something that interests you because it will make things easier. I definitely saw this in WP3. Overall, I thought my WP3 turned out well I just wished we had a little more time.

Anyways, I really did enjoy WP3 as way to wrap things up the quarter – a quarter that’s rapidly ending. I can’t wait to develop our final portfolios and have some great writings.    

WP3

Summary: In Charles Bazerman’s article A Relationship between Reading and Writing: The Conversational Model, Bazerman introduces this connection between what a person reads and what he then writes and how that leads us to the conversational model. He believes that every reading should be looked as an ongoing conversation between the reader and writer. Bazerman also states that it is the teacher’s duty to implement techniques that helps students develop their writing and to make this connection clear. He emphasizes that students should have a deep understanding of what an author is trying to achieve and should know how to react to a reading as well as knowing how to evaluate a reading. Through techniques like paraphrasing, reading journals, and informal essays, Bazerman believes students can learn how to tap into their inner voice and become better writers. Bazerman concludes that if students are not taught the right skills teachers become “parrots of authority” and only offer students anecdotes of what a writer should look like rather than how to become one.

Younger Audience:

(link if its hard to read)

Older Audience: link 

Analysis: 

            For this assignment, I transformed Charles Bazerman’s article A Relationship between Reading and Writing: The Conversational Model into two different genres. Even though the new genres I made were completely different, they were actually very alike. The clear difference between the two was that one was for an older audience and the other was for a younger audience.

For my younger audience, I decided to construct a “Wikihow” article. From the Bazerman article, there was one sentence that stood out to me and served as my inspiration in creating this piece. Bazerman states, “By establishing the importance of the voice of the writer and the authority of personal perception, we have learned to give weight to what the student wants to say, to be patient with the complex process of writing, to offer sympathetic advice on how to rather than what not to, and to help the student discover the personal motivations to learn to write,” (Bazerman 576). Wikihow articles are all about the how to, like Bazerman suggests. Coming up through high school I feel like we are always told what not to do. With that in mind, I decided to target the age groups of high school students, specifically freshman.

There were many aspects from the Bazerman article that I could have included but I decided to focus on the “How to Respond to Reading” aspect part of the article. I did this because before any writing we should always focus on understanding the material first. I broke down my how to article into three parts - annotations, reading journals, and informal reaction essays. I did this because these three were the best to describe and show how to create them. These three parts were also in Bazerman’s main recommendations to teachers. He suggested that these techniques should be used to help students become better writers. For my moves in the genre transformation, I decided to use really calm and simple language. I was careful with the words I chose because I did not want to tell students what not to do. I made sure to address them in the second person point of view making it seem more personal. To keep the reader’s attention, I used simple pictures that were also a main convention in the “Wikihow” article genre. I feel like many students can find the article helpful. The topic I chose in my article will help students become better writers. I also feel like my article follows Bazerman’s main goal of wanting to help students.

For my older audience, I decided to transform Bazerman’s article into a college professors lecture slide - specifically the very first lecture. The main audience I decided to target undergraduate students in a writing course. For my inspiration in creating this piece, I looked at multiple professors’ first lecture slides and this is what I came up with. The first half of my slides were normal conventions that make up lecture slides on the first day. The slides may look plain but this was done on purpose. After looking at multiple power points from different professors, most were done with minimal effort and kept that same ‘plain’ look that I used. My first half of power point slides were these typical, normal slides. I named these slides as introduction, syllabus, and so on. I used these because these were the common slides I saw from previous professors. This also gave more a ‘classroom/lecture’ feel to the power point. The next half of power point slides were more content based slides from the Bazerman reading. Some slides that I used were “accurate understanding of prior comments”, “reacting to reading”, and “evaluating to reading.” These were direct concepts from the article Bazerman. I did my best to add talking points and not directly define them on the slide. I did this because a professor usually does not type out or read out from slides directly. This is why I kept my content on the slides shorter than longer.  

In Spaces for Writing by Losh and Alexander, they state, “Each writing situation has it owns demands…its own expectations…and its own sense of how writing is to be presented,” (Losh and Alexander, 9). Although each transformation had the same general idea, each demanded its own way of being presented. Thus, this lead to the creation of two different genres. This was because they each needed to reach a different audience. This can be seen first-handed by our WP3 and how we created one thing to another. Even though this specific WP required a more first-order approach to it, it cemented the idea of genre and wraps up the class nicely.

Pb3A

The article I chose to use was Charles Bazerman’s A Relationship between Reading and Writing: The Conversation Model published by the National Council of Teachers of English in February 1980. The main point of the article stressed this idea that reading is just a conversation with the writer and that it goes both ways. According to Bazerman, when a reader or student responds to a text, he or she is participating and building off that conversation. As the text goes on, new material will shift the discussion. Bazerman goes on to say it’s best to prepare students and help them develop their writing by incorporating techniques to help them. One way to talk back in a text would be responding and writing on the margins. Other exercises he included were reading journals and informal reaction essays (sound familiar?). Each of these would create places for students to make connections, to argue with the writer, to relate to an idea, to react, to disagree, and to think about the meaning of the text. All three techniques and exercises can serve as tools for heightening student understanding.

              For an older audience, I was thinking of creating a lesson plan that involved these ideas. Im not sure if that counts for an older audience but I think it does, since you know teachers are from an older audience. A lesson plan comes to mind because I took a linguistics/education course last year where we had to write our own lesson plan with a group. We even took it the next step and presented to our section class. So I can use that as guide and take that ‘expert’ role. Some topics that I can include in the lesson plan are ‘Paraphrasing’, ‘Summary’ or I can go more technical and use something like ‘Ways to Enter the Conversation’ and ‘Analysis of Technique’. If the lesson plan doesn’t work out I can try making blog specifically for Bazerman’s idea with the intended audience being an up and coming teachers.

              For the younger audience, I was thinking of making a SparkNotes page that incorporated these ideas from the reading. Throughout middle school and even high school, I relied on SparkNotes so I'm confident that the younger audience still uses this resource. For me, I used it for other things not just novels and books so I feel like the Bazerman reading can still be applied here. I can include a breakdown of Bazerman’s reading and really condense the information or go another route. If the SparkNotes page turns out short, I can even include a sample students notes on the page/reading. This would take Bazerman’s ideas of paraphrasing and summarizing and actually apply them.

              Overall, I think that both of these ideas need a little tweaking before I can start on them. I decided to use the genres of lesson plans and SparkNote postings because the Bazerman reading revolved around teaching and students. At first, I was really intimidated by this working project but I think it’s not as bad as it seems. 

Thlog 8

After an eventful week, there were various things that stood out to me. First off, we watched some videos of a fella named Bob Ross. He was an old school painter who I thought was not going to be much help to us at all – but I was wrong. By watching and listening to Bob Ross explain his own painting moves, we learned how to apply those same explanations to many things like our final working project. Some things he explained were the reasons for including it in his artwork and what each piece or drawing meant to him. The next video we watched involved four Disney painters who – like Bob Ross – took the time to explain their own moves. Each individual painted the same tree but each finished with a completely different product because they took their very own path/approach to painting the tree. Like Bob Ross, they also explained their painting moves, provided their personal choices, and included any reasoning behind their methods.

Another thing that stood out to me was the frame theory. By zooming on one specific part of the classroom, we all looked at the same thing but with a different frame and a different point of view. Likewise photographers and even authors do the same thing. With framing, there can be aspects that are intentionally left out and others that are emphasized.

The Bob Ross videos, the Disney videos, and the frame theory will help us create our WP3. We can use the frame theory to emphasize one specific aspect in our actual genre creation. By using the painters as guides, we can explain the moves we used in our genre creation in the analysis part of the working project. Overall, the creativity that goes along with this WP is a pleasant change to what we have been doing all this time. I look forward to next class.  

thlog 7

Why is it week 8? Is it just me or is this quarter going by faster than usual. Even if it’s it true there was still a lot of valuable information thrown around in our one class this past week.

 To start things off, we were introduced to two helpful tips. One being “Know what you write” and the other being “Attack the page”. “Know what you write” to me sounds like the very first rule of writing. I really don’t think anyone completely b.s. a paper without having some knowledge or expertise. This helps us look at our writing through two different perspectives and such. I feel like knowing what you write goes farther with confidence. Most of my writings I have written thinking I was the worst writer in the world. But a while I got over and got the assignment done without inhibitions, maybe this plays into “know what you write.” Even though I haven’t tried “attacking my paper“ yet, I feel like this is very useful. In sports, a coach always preaches the “attacking” mentality almost all the time. Attacking a paper would probably boost our performance like an athlete.

After these tips, we jumped straight into business with our peer review. Like before, I always found this time extremely beneficial. I learned that I should focus more on the readings and incorporate them more. Long story short, I still have some work to do and I wouldn’t have known this if it weren’t for peer review.

It just looked at my calendar to make sure, it is week 8 of winter quarter. Our time may be ending but there’s still work to do. I look forward to class this week. 

Thlog 6

There were many little things that I found interesting and helpful from this past week. To start things off, I thought the finding a better word for “says” was really beneficial, especially for me. I’ve fallen victim to using “says” over the course of my entire writing career - I will be first to admit that. “Says” is very limited word. Anyone can “say” anything. Usually, I use that word when I am trying to use a quote in my paragraph and it sounds like “In Article A, author John Doe says…” This type of sentences I feel like I overused and only limited to what I was trying to say. There are many other words that can replace that word such as argues, illustrates, states, interrogates, counters and so on. By choosing a specific word rather than using “says” we can create a better understanding for the reader. Honestly, it just sounds better and adds variety.

Another really helpful tip was “Parallelism” or the similarity in a structure within a series. I have had my trouble with parallelism before but I found this writing tip extremely helpful. Having effective parallelism is easy on the eyes and simply helps the reader remain engaged. The biggest takeaway I got from the weekly tip was to keep the same tense all throughout the series. This is something I will lookout for in the future in my writing.  

As for this upcoming week our WP2 drafts will be due. I look forward to incorporating these tips into my assignment. I also look forward to the feedback from my fellow classmates.