New found Love

My dearest Love,

Do you remember in the third grade when we met for the first time? Until then, I knew you existed, but I really had no interest.  It was in Miss Clomps class. She was kind of old and grouchy, not to mention grumpy, cranky, ill-tempered, and a little ornery.  I also do not think she liked anyone who was high-spirited with lots of energy, which was everything that I was.  That is why when she introduced me to you I thought you were old-fashioned and boring.  She really made a poor introduction. Between your focused personality and my lack of attention, there was no hope for us in the beginning. It was Miss Clomp who helped me to really enjoy the song by Pink Floyd “We Don’t Need No Education” and drove me to sing “hey teacher leave them kids alone”.   So at that time, I really had no interest in you or my other love.

When we first met, you were mature and sophisticated and I was not.  I was young and full of energy.  I would rather go play ball or run a 3 legged race, and honestly what I knew of you did not make sense.  At first I paid no attention.  Then when I tried, I still could not understand. You seemed to defy all logic.  In eight and ninth grade, I really tried hard to understand you again but still could not.  You always lived by your own rules. I would spend what seemed to be hours and thought I had you figured out; only to find out that you had jumped track and gone a different way.  Because of this, I thought that it could never be for us. From what I could tell you liked to make up rules and then break them, unlike my other love who would consistently follow them. 

My other love she was easy to figure out, no mysteries, no deception.  If she said something she meant it and it was always that way.  No games of cat and mouse. No smoke and mirrors. Her logic and ability to think deeply was so interesting to me. It really kept my attention.  Originally that is what I thought I wanted, but lately she has been too easy to understand. With simple calculations I can tell where she is headed and it is usually in the same boring direction, unlike you. With you, it is always a mystery. No calculated plans and ending up in the same old place. You always give me a refreshing experience which constantly ends up in an unexpected spot.  I decided a long time ago you were too complicated, hard to understand and not worth the risk. Recently, I have had a change of heart and have been tempted to reconsider.

It is true that when I was younger it could have never worked out.  I was far too immature, but now that I am older I think it might. I think if I worked harder, maybe I could figure you out. This is why I am writing you to see if you will allow me a second chance. I know I will have to spend more time at it, getting up earlier and staying up later.  It will be less watching TV and less time at the gym. I will have to leave work earlier, with shorter lunch hours and fewer lazy days at the side of the pool. But I think all the hard work will be worth the sacrifice. I am willing to make the commitment, try harder, and be more focused.

Yes, my love.  I think it will work out this time. Let’s give it another try. I am sure we can make it work out and with your sophistication. I don’t think we will ever get bored with it. This is why I am willing to take the risk and will be leaving Math to come to my one true love, which is English.

The importance of Definition, Classification and Division, Process in reaching a desired audience

I did not realize that English was so scientific until we covered the areas of Definition, Classification and Division, and Process. We will start by looking at definition. When you look to use definition in your writing it is important to consider who your audience is. If you are using domain specific terms, you would not have to define those terms if your audience is in that domain, but if your audience is outside that domain you would have to define the terms in further detail. Your writing will have more or less definition depending on how much classification and division is put into it.

Classification and division is the process of segmenting your rhetoric into different parts and then breaking down each segment. It is easiest to identify classification and division in expository text, but there is classification and division in any writing since the author is going to use some type of process to break it down. For example: In cause and effect writing you can break the text down and list all the causes and all the effects in the writing. In compare and contrast you can classify the writing in what is being compared, and then divide it by listing the differences that were pointed out.

The easiest of these concepts for me to understand it process. Since I am a computer tech I use process all day long. When someone calls me on the phone with a technical problem I first use the process of asking sets of specific questions to identify the problem, and then use the process of giving a specific set of instructions to solve the problem. In my field the processes that I use are always changing because technology is always changing. In the case of writing, process is used often. Some examples of process are: food recipes, any instruction manuals, troubleshooting guides, and repair manuals.

Definition, Classification and Division, and Process work together to complement each other. For example, to write a repair manual you have to classify the different areas of a car and then use process and definition to break down those sections even further. When considering who your audience is these three things have to be taken into account. If you were writing a repair manual for experienced car mechanics it would have much less definition then if you wrote one for the layman mechanic.

Cause and Effect and Visual Rhetoric

When I was in Junior High School I used to spend hours trying to solve a little 6 sided puzzle called a Rubik’s Cube. Anyone who has ever solved a Rubik’s Cube will understand cause and effect. As you move the colored sections on one side of it to get all the colors together, the sections of the puzzle on the opposite side move in the same fashion. This will mess up what you have done on the opposite side without careful planning. Since every change that you make on one side of the Rubik’s Cube effects the other side of it, you have to try and solve both sides of the puzzle at the same time taking into account the cause and effect. After I learned to solve a Rubik’s Cube have noticed that everything in the world has cause and effect, every action has a reaction. For Example: if you spend too much money on fun and games your do not have enough to pay the rent, or if school is not important enough to you when your you are younger you might still be going to college when your 40, and you could go on and on with examples since everything in the world has cause and effect. When cause and effect is applied to writing it is important to write about both the things that caused the event and effects that occurred after. By doing this it will help you to better communicate your point to your audience.

Visual rhetoric is also an important part of the writing process. Visual rhetoric is so effective because we are naturally drawn to it. Pictures attract attention and are very effective in making a point. Because of this pictures can be used instead of text to portray a message and are very effective in advertising. With billions and billions of images available to us visual rhetoric is very distracting. I hear reports all the time that state that we watch too much television, play to many video games and spend too much time in the internet all of which involve pictures. I can tell you that I personally have spent more time doing these things that I have spent reading and working on my education. Visual rhetoric is more than just pictures and videos. If you can describe a seen in such a way that it feels like a picture when you read it then you are using visual rhetoric. In some cases this can be more effective than a picture because you can allow your audience to make their own picture bases on the familial gazes, which will give them a personal tie to what it is that you are constructing. For example, when we read the essay Dolly Palmer wrote about camping in the first paragraph of The Social and Physiological Separation of Space in Weber Writes, it immediately took me to some of my most favorite camping spots and I could see them clear as day. I think it is an important skill to be able to write your text with cause and effect in it, and in such a way that it also has visual rhetoric. To be able to write this way is a very effective skill and a useful talent.

Rhetorical Gazes

Visual Rhetoric creates gaze archiving which are pictures or images in our mind. We archive these images as we see and categorize them. Because everyone stores images an author can use them to relate to their audience. The following are some of the rhetorical gazes that we discussed today.

Familial Gaze are images that are more intimate or personal in nature. These images will mean something to you but may not mean the same thing to others. Examples of Familial gazes are pictures of your kids at a birthday party, your wedding photos, and personal pictures of friends and family. This picture of me and my my son with our cousin while camping is an example of a familial gaze.

National gaze are Images that most people would recognize such as the president of the United States, the bald eagle, uncle Sam and Weber State University. These types of images can be used to relate to a wider range of people. This picture of president Obama is an example of a national gaze.

Traveling gaze are images that would relate to vacation and travel. Some examples of traveling gazes are pictures of Disneyland or Walt Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Pictures of cruise ships and other famous places of travel. This picture of the great pyramids in Egypt is an example of a travel gaze.

Consumer gaze or Marketing gaze are images that are related to advertisement. This category probably has the widest range of choices since there are millions of images that are related to products that their companies want us to buy. This is one picture of many Coke ads that are available for view on the internet.

Learning about the different gazes is helpful because it helps you to think about what image would be most effective when trying to communicate with your audience. When connecting the right image with the right audience it will make your message more powerful.

Causal Chain

Of the tools that we have learned about so far the one that is currently on my mind the most is Cause and Effect. This is probably because it is the one that we have most recently discussed. My grandfather died when I was 7 but he used to always do and say things that would make you think. He wasn’t trying to teach me English but whenever I got in trouble for doing something he would always sit me down and say “If the dog bites you once it’s the dogs fault but if the dog bites you twice it’s your fault” then we would discuss the series of events that happened to cause my inappropriate actions and other choices I could have taken. Although this was a long time ago whenever something goes wrong in my life I still find myself looking for what caused it so the cause part of this comes very naturally to me. We learned today that cause and effect is the how and why of what we do, it predicts things that are going to happen. I believe that this is true but that we also have a choice in what we do which makes the effect part of things less predictable.

Today we learned about the causal chain, which are the terms that can be defined in a series of events. In analyzing the elements of cause and effect we start with contributory cause which is the series of events that led up to the main event. In our example it was love, married, anniversary, and date. The date is the main cause because it is the last cause that occurred before the main event. On our example the main event was speeding. After the main event you have a series of effects that occur. The direct effect was a ticket, which is followed by the remote effects which in this case were fine, insurance going up, and no cash.

I find it interesting to analyze cause an effect and find the Causal Chain very useful in the process of doing so.

Pier to Pier Review

I found pier to pier review to be important. I got some suggestions on how I could better structure some parts of my essay. I also thought that my essay was free of typos but several were still found to be there which surprised me since I had already gone over it several times. All in all I found pier review to be a good writing tool and hope that my suggestions were helpful for the papers that I reviewed.

Cause/Effect Text Structure: I found it interesting that although there are several text structures that cause/effect is the one that is used most often in text books. I can see how using Q Networks could help you to better comprehend what it is that you are reading. Q Networks is way of diagramming the text that you are reading and can be use in place of narrative reading.

There are 2 stages involved in constructing Q Networks.

Stage 1: Recognizing the main ideas being presented.

Asking the following questions can help you to identify the main event:

What is the author telling the readers about the idea or event?

What does the author say about the topic, expressed in a sentence?

Which words in the passages are repeated throughout?

Is the message presented in the first or last paragraph?

Stage 2: Identifying Text Structure.

Asking the following questions can help you to identify the cause/effect text structure:

Do the events interact with one another?

Does the interaction lead to a final goal or event?

Do the events act on each other in consecutive order and lead directly to the main event?

Do the events acting either alone or together contribute to the development of the main event in no specific time order?

After you have identified the cause/effect text structure there are 2 types of diagrams that you might need to use Chain Reaction or Chain Link. In chain reaction you are diagramming events in sequential order, Chain Link allows you to diagram several events that led up to the main event but may not be directly related.

The important elements of narrative structure in writing:

Having a thesis ensures your story will have a point. While writing in the past I have not really focused on a thesis, if the things that I wrote did had a thesis they were indirect. I think that this has caused it to take more time for me to write in the past because I would have to write it, rewrite it and restructure it several times before I got the point across. I am hoping to be able to use a thesis going forward to better make my point and help me to save time. I also find it difficult to find a thesis when I am reading something someone wrote. If anyone has any suggestions on finding the thesis it would be much appreciated.

It is also important to tell your story in chronological order. This simply means that you should write the events in the order in which they happened. When using narrative you should also make sure that your story has a plot, character, setting, climax and ending. Using narrative is a great way to relate with your audience because it is easy to use stories to educate and motivate people.