Knowledge Community

You are creating your own "anatomy of a knowledge community." Jenkins defines knowledge community as the community that comes out of a shared knowledge-base. I want you to create your version of the anatomy of a knowledge community using one of your own knowledge communities (so you choose the subject matter: Jenkins' example was Survivor).

***The purpose of this blog post is to show your awareness and understanding of what and how a knowledge community functions. It also serves as a visual argument. So you begin by picking a knowledge community to work with. Then decide what it is you want to express about this knowledge community. It should be a knowledge community that you are a part of. 

***Your audience is other members of your knowledge community. Think about how you can make your composition so that they want to read it and be more a part of it. 

***You need to create a new post in order to do this, so that you can use images, videos, graphics, etc (again make sure you preview your post BEFORE posting to check on the size of the images, videos, etc).

***This can take any form, but should not look like you merely "threw" something together. Think about why you are choosing the images that you are or the colors that you are. All of them should connect and create a fluid composition. 

***Be creative and think outside the box. It should be more than you fulfilling an assignment--more about who you are as a writer and pushing yourself creatively.

Due: Tuesday, February 28 by class time. 

Reflection over Main Assignment #1

Please respond to the following questions: 

*think through the process(es) for each project--article, editorial, rhetorical analysis--and examine them side by side; what connections and differences do you see between the different genres and audiences, the different rhetorical situations

*what is important to understand about a rhetorical analysis after completing one

*what can you take from this project to move forward with

Remember reflections should be thought-out and specific--use details, refer back to past assignments and/or readings, etc. Shoot for 300-400 words. 

Work Day: The Persona Poem

Persona poem are poems written from a different perspective other than your own--it could be from the perspective of a person (real or fictional), an animal, an object, etc. The important thing to remember is to play around with language and the point of view.

Shoot for 15-20 lines.

*You don't have to engage with any one for this blog post.

Due: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 by 8:00 pm.

Reflecting on Reflection

As you read, Yancey believes that “reflection” allows students to become agents of their own learning. Other theorists view reflection as a means of looking back so that we can understand how to move forward. After reading Yancey's theory of reflection, I want you to reflect on reflection. Using specific evidence from the reading respond to the following questions:

*What is Yancey's theory of reflection? How does she connect it to composition? 

***Note: she defines reflection in several different ways, so I'm not looking for everyone to use the exact same definition. Use the one that stuck out to you or that you were drawn to. 

*Make your own connections between reflection and writing--where does reflection fit into the writing process? To your writing process?

*Why is reflection "important" to you as a writer, a thinker, and a knowledge-maker?

250-450 words. Engage with your peers. 

Due: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 by class time. 

Rhetorical Analysis: Brainstorming

In this post, I want you to start by writing a quick summary of what you already know about your movie (can be anything). Then in two-three sentences explore why you picked it. Next generate a list of possible themes, threads, or issues that you found in the movie. Which one of these appeals to you to possibly explore? Next generate a list of 5-8 things you might want/need to find out about your movie. And finally think out loud about how you are going to do a rhetorical analysis of this movie, in other words, how might you make sure this project is an analysis and not another kind of writing (like simply a research essay)--think about how Lundsford and Ruszkiewicz define rhetorical analysis, and how you understand how to create one. 

Growing Learning and Adapting

The Beginning
The first adventure I had with writing was at the young age of 5. I was in kindergarten at the Montessori School of Maui, and had been practicing my letters for weeks. Using sandpaper letters, I had mastered the sounds and shapes of the entire alphabet. After that, I learned the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters. The process had been tedious and challenging for my kindergarten self, but I knew I was ready to write. When I finally wrote my first sentence, I couldn’t believe the huge accomplishment I had made. I was proud and excited to show everyone that: “The dog ran.”

The Next Step
As the years went on, my interest in writing decreased little by little. Instead of being a fun new challenge, writing was now an agonizing process. The teachers taught me little about grammar and syntax, and instead expected me to write papers without any help. It wasn’t until 6^th grade when I switched schools that I finally started to receive help.

At that time, I started to go to a college preparatory school. The classes were challenging and the workload was much more than I was used to. The teacher’s were preparing us for the many assignments we would be writing in the future, and introduced us to the five-paragraph essay. They were not difficult intellectual works of rhetoric, but they were more structured than anything I was used to.

This continued throughout high school, and eventually I had the five-paragraph essay stuck in my mind. I learned to P.E.E. in every paragraph (point, example, explanation), and always have a strong thesis statement. We worked in different mediums, however, they instilled in us that the five-paragraph essay would be our key to success.

Since I’ve been at DU, this knowledge that I have learned over the years has adapted into something more flexible.

The Rhetorical Situation
Every paper that I have written has started with an inspiration. It is usually something that I am agreeing or disagreeing with, thus giving an overall theme to the paper. This is key to have a strong piece of writing with a flow to it. It was not until WRIT 1122, however, that I knew the terms that go along with this idea.

I had never learned about the rhetorical situation and the terms that accompany it. It made so much sense to me that every piece of writing has a situation that has sparked its creation. I had always written for the same audience, my teacher, thus I did not have a lot of practice adapting my writing to fit another group of people. My writing aired on the more academic side, and being in this class really helped me learn how to know the correct way to write to a certain audience.

Every situation requires the proper audience in order to be appropriate. You wouldn’t wear a snorkel mask to school would you?

I had another moment in which I went “Ah-hah!” when we discussed the ideas of genre. I had never thought of a piece of writing, other than books, to have a genre. In my mind, an essay was an essay, and it was difficult for me to see it as anything else. The idea of writing an article for school that was not academic at its core was baffling to me. At first, I had no idea how I would address this, but after writing the 2^nd mini assignment, I realized that it made complete sense. Writing an academic paper on Miley Cyrus seems outrageous, but writing an article about her felt fun and natural.

Before this class, I had never heard of egos, pathos, and logos. I soon found, however, that their impact on rhetoric is tremendous. Through employing the three terms, authors are able to make their writing more successful. They can make their writing appeal emotionally to the audience or use facts in order to sway the audience’s opinion. With the terms, a piece of writing can become stronger than ever before. I learned this first hand, by using pathos in my piece on Miley Cyrus. I addressed the emotional impact her music video will have on its viewers and how it could potentially be bad. Without this emotional appeal, I feel as though my article would’ve been more flat and uninteresting.

Making Writing Interesting
Being in this class has made writing fun again, for it employs different methods than just the normal five-paragraph essay. Although I am a big fan of the five-paragraph essay, I believe that it is important to understand how to take the techniques you use for it and apply it to other genres.

Through using sources in the media, and writing blog posts about various readings, I have learned how to apply my knowledge in new and interesting ways.

I have come a long way since my early days of writing three word sentences, and I believe that through what I have learned in this class I am a much more diverse writer.

I have had many “Ah-hah!” moments, and foresee that there will be many more to come. Sometimes I miss being able to write in the format that I have used so many times before, but I know that the new knowledge I am gaining is only going to make me a better writer. I will try to take the new skills I have gained and use them in order to write in new and interesting ways. I can honestly say that although writing still proves to be a challenge for me, I am gaining more confidence and interest than I have ever had before.

Writing always was the thing I do not like to do until I take the 1122 writing class. In junior middle school, teacher was told me to write a diary every single day (in Chinese). Writing a diary was similar to post a blog post in this class, but the difference is writing a diary do not consider the elements of rhetorical situation and do not think about how to make the writing more persuasive or creditable. Writing a diary maybe just considered about making sense to the audiences. For example, I just wrote about what things I did in the day, and what benefits these things brought to me.

In high school, teacher told us the methods to decorate a piece of writing. When we write an essay, we can divide writing into narrative writing, argumentative writing, expository writing and practical writing. Narrative writing can be divided into poetry, prose, journal and fiction. In each certain writing genre, we can use different writing methods to make the writing more beautiful or persuasive. For example, we can use some parallel construction to make the paragraph more persuasive and creditable. We can use personification to describe an abstract thing more clearly and visually. We can use metaphor to make a sentence more tactful and understandable. The knowledge I learn from high school is related to rhetorical situation. However, the ideas of the knowledge were so vague that I cannot apply this knowledge into my writing. I still do not have my own writing process.

After I take the 1122 writing class, I know what I should do before writing, during writing and after writing. Understanding the rhetorical situation gives me general idea of writing. At first, we should confirm our audiences in order to use a certain genre. Then we should know the purpose of the writing. The purpose of the writing is very crucial to a piece of writing, because if you have an equivocal argument and many contradictions, audiences would not understand the meaning of the writing. Moreover, in order to make the writing persuasive and creditable, the tone of voice is significant in every piece of writing.

An appropriate genre can arise consensus of the audiences. Different genre should have different ethos, pathos and logos. When I wrote a piece of writing for New York Times, I considered explain my opinion more clear and more professional by using big words and sophisticated sentences, because the audiences of New York Times usually are the professionals and knowledgeable people. However, when I wrote a piece of writing for Entertainment weekly, I use less formal words and talked about the causal topic with an “Entertain Mood.” If I used more big word and complicated sentences, many people would not read the magazine, because they want to relax by reading the magazine instead of reading an academic paper.

At last the peer review is the most helpful way to improve our writing quality, because we could know where we have logic errors and how we amend the logic errors. The grammar problems and logic problems can hardly solves by ourselves and software, so the grammar mistakes and logic errors are the biggest problems in our writing and are hardly evitable for us. Thus, we surely want anyone to review our writing in order to identify anything that does not make sense or anything that confused the readers in our writings.

Finding the Core to Writing

English and Writing have always been my worst classes. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school when I took my first writing class that I really enjoyed. I’ll never forget, Creative Writing, seventh period with Mr. Bosch, because without it, I would have never started or ever been interested in the basics of writing. Coming into my first year hear at Denver I was worried about the choices I had for Writing requirements. As the quarter went on I could admit that I began to slowly enjoy writing and learning about the critical components of a good piece. In my experience, this class opened up a variety of techniques that I learned as a writer myself, more specifically, the importance of my approach (ethos, pathos or logos), my tone of voice (choosing your audience), and accurately addressing my rhetorical situation.

My first moment had to have been our first reading on rhetorical situation. It made no sense to me and I couldn’t even pronounce it correctly. After only a couple days it opened more in my writing that I could have ever imagined. I began to think about why I choose every word that I did. I never thought about writing as an action or response until now. Rhetorical situation allows you to directly reach your intended audience using persuasive language strategically to accurately reach your goals or interests.

Another major aspect I gradually realized was the approach I needed to take in order to make my argument strong and credible. This is made up of an ethos; pathos or logos approach to your audience. Without this, I realized writing would be dry with nothing to pull you in. Each of these techniques creates a different approach that may draw any given audience into your work with many different intended genres and styles.

Lastly I learned that my tone of voice is extremely important in every piece that I write in order to make a strong argument. Without the right tone, you jeopardize your intended audience and your main point that you are trying to argue. The power of your tone can make or break your piece when any given individual listen, reads or interprets what your saying.

Its the core of your writing that builds your foundation for any piece and without these aspects i came to realize your writing is nothing at all. Without each of these important moments in your writing process, your work will become dull and meaningless, weak and boring.

Don't Let your Light Bulb Burn Out!

In our busy society today, there is an increased portion of our daily lives that are dictated for us, and the result of this is that, at least for me personally, we have forgotten about the light bulb that resides in
each of our heads. I have a daily routine, and the only thing that really changes with it is what is served in the dining hall, and what assignment I have to do for my classes. Even though these assignments change, I tend to do them mechanically, just doing what I know I need to do to get the grade and turn it in. Ever since I have been in Kara Taczak’s writing class, a combination of the fact that it is a class that I actually enjoy, and the content that I am learning has made me stop and remember my light bulb. When I consider it, I realize that over the course of this class it has turned on more than a few times.

My first “moment” that illuminated my light bulb and pulled me out of my mental slum was the first day of class, when I first met the professor. As I am sure many students can sympathize with, it is extremely hard for me to fully devote myself academically to a teacher I find extremely dull, disorganized or mean. I am not the student who checks a professor’s ratings before signing up for their class, so the first day of ever class is a gamble. I not only let out a huge sigh of relief the first day when Professor Taczak walked in, wearing fashion forward clothes, talking without even a hint of a monotone, and pulled out zebra bordered paper, but I decided that this was going to be possibly the first class I have taken at college that I actually enjoy. My light bulb burned bright at the prospect of not dreading going to class every time, and doing my homework to the fullest and trying my hardest because I finally had a teacher I wanted to impress. Although it may not be the type of “moment” most people may expect to be a turning point during this course, as someone who doesn’t usually enjoy school, this was more influential to me than perhaps any
other moment.

The second time my light bulb switched on was the introduction of rhetorical situations. I have always been an anti-conformist, I do not have Uggs or tall leather boots, I recently acquired my first flannel, and I refused to get an iPhone as long as I could, all because I just don’t like doing the same thing as everyone else. However, the concept of a rhetorical situation showed me that all of the unique and creative writing I have done over my life is actually not random at all, and is responding to some event or situation. This is a fact that I probably did realize on a subconscious level, but it was forgotten along with my light bulb. This “moment” has not really burnt out yet, and I do not think it ever will. It has caused me to look at my writing in an entirely new way. Understanding not only what a rhetorical situation is, but the contents of one has changed the way that I think about writing and is a new found concept that I think will stick with me for life, which is something I cannot say for most of what I learn in school.

One of the concepts within rhetorical situation that earned a light bulb of its own is audience. I
was one of the students that wrote what she thought the teacher wanted to hear. But then I realized through this course that what we think the teacher wants to hear is completely false, because in most cases they want to hear us in what we write; what we have to say. Now knowing the foundations of audience, I can appreciate that I need to not only be true to myself in my writing, but also know that I do myself an injustice if I do not. What I write about is connected
to me personally, I am communicating my ideas with someone other than myself, and if I do not do that in the most efficient and appropriate way for who I am
writing for, my opinions will not be taken for their full worth.

It is very easy to stop noticing the things that stimulate your brain, but once that happens then the most important thing that makes each of us who we are, our ideas and thoughts, are lost. Do not let your light bulb burn out and become another educational zombie in the system, and always take notice when it lights up, because that will not only make for better work, but
a more enjoyable experience.

Throughout high school, writing was all about the five-paragraph essay, having the correct number of sources, and making sure the word count was close enough. I disliked writing class, and despised my teacher because my papers were never good enough, or were lacking a few small details. Back then writing was all about finishing an assignment that was taken from a rubric.

When we first arrived in class, we began talking about the idea of a rhetorical situation, or situation that causes a person to want to prove a point about something. When in high school, I never thought that the rubrics I was given were probably meant for me to find a situation that would make me want to write and argue. The idea that our assignments were not just given because they had to be, but that we were actually supposed to get us to dig deeper and make connections that we had previously missed or never made.

The idea of audience was not heavily introduced in high school, making it hard to target ones piece of writing. In high school, I always just assumed that we were writing for the teacher because they handed out the grades. After looking at the subjects of rhetorical situation and audience, I now realize the extreme importance of tailoring a piece of writing to the specific audience. In regard to rhetorical situation, and changing the audience’s views on a certain subject, the matter becomes even more important.

Writing with a purpose seems to be the bigger point of the class, and realizing the power that writing has. In MLK’s letter, he wrote with a greater good in mind, of freeing his people from segregation, and implementing the values that our government had promised on the creation of our country. MLK knew exactly what needed to be said, and the audience that it needed to appeal to; to this day I am one-hundred percent positive that MLK’s letter has inspired many people to do the right thing.

When I used to think of genre, I would think about the classification of movies and books into action, comedy, or thriller, but did not truly see the real purpose. Now I see that certain characteristics of a piece of writing must be incorporated to make it fit into the desired genre. Genre and audience are connected and must both be expressed through the writing.

Before this class, I had never even heard of ethos, pathos, and logos. These three subjects make a piece of writing understandable and relatable to the audience. When establishing ethos, and author needs to get through to the writer, through the presentation of an ethical argument that interests the reader. Once the reader understands the argument, they can be roped in further through the use to pathos to appeal to the reader’s emotional side. Once the reader is roped into the argument, the author can present facts to back up what they have said. I believe that ethos, pathos, and logos are the key to a well-rounded, understandable and relatable argument.

Media is the final piece of this class, and we haven’t truly talked about it. My senior year of high school, I only had writing class second semester, and didn’t think I had written anything throughout the first two quarters. Looking back I do believe that I posted stuff on Facebook, or had been texting my friends. Writing is all around us, and we use it more than we think. I had never blogged before coming to this class, and didn’t really think of it as a way to write academically. Throughout this class we have used the Internet as a means to share our side of an argument, and to view and comment on other peoples arguments. We have also written a newspaper article and a magazine article, which help writers better understand the audience and genre aspects of writing.

The three things I have truly learned this quarter thus far consist of rhetorical situation, genre, and audience, and they have been connected through writing in different forms and genres.