Discussion Forum

Personally, because of a time crunch and procrastination, I did not participate as deeply in the discussion forum as I would have liked to. I was not in class the previous Thursday because of the football game and did not fully understand the directions. If I had been in class I feel that I could have participated and understood what I what doing a great deal more and I would have gotten a lot more out of the assignment. I want to be able to fully participate in future forums so that I can have better input to it and would know more what I was talking about during the reflections. Although I did not give my all in this, I still did the assignment. I thought from what I got out of it, it was useful to be able to post my answers and read what other people in our class thought. It was interesting to see the similarities between some student’s answers and the extreme differences in a few of the others. It made me think about the reasoning for the differences and if I was giving the more educated answers or not based on my opinions. I think that having questions and responses based on more onions than right or wrong. This foundation for the forums makes it so that all of the students can produce their own ideas about a subject, article, or any other assignment we have. Forums, like our blogs, let us write about what we think and feel about a subject not so much what we know specifically; they could also incorporate both of the aspects of what we know and our thoughts are.  I feel that altogether the forums were more helpful than anything; I would rather have them than not have forums because they help me.

            I think that we should have more forum discussions in the future because I would like to be able to do them with the understanding of what they are in my knowledge now. The forums would let me show everyone my thoughts and see my classmate’s as well. For me, viewing what others thoughts are and comparing them to my own really helps me to further understand topics that I have not quite grasped. To read what people my age and my class have to say can mean more to me than what a teacher might say in the purpose of these forums.

            I really don’t have much else to say about the forums themselves except for the fact that I wish I had fully understood what I was doing. The feedback everyone gave was a lot more detailed than mine because of my lack of effort. I know now that even missing one class for the football game hurt me more than I thought it would. The forums seemed to be a big help and useful to those who fully participated in the discussions. Personally, I just read the directions and posted what I thought was correct or the most educated answers.

Entering the Conversation

From Liberman’s article on science writing for popular audiences, one can conclude that science must be put in simple terms when being published for the public. All people must be able to understand it, no matter what knowledge they might or might not have in relation to extensive scientific research. Liberman thinks that most, if not all, science writers write articles in a style that was much too complicated for the average person to understand; the average person would be someone who is not in any sort of scientific profession and only has the basic knowledge to understand simple published works of science. To support his argument, Lieberman uses examples of science writing by Denis Campbell on news about how fish oil basically makes a person more attentive and smart; however, this article actually proves to be false because when a study was done on the subject it proved the exact opposite. When one first reads the article, all of the content is very confusing. The writing is somewhat backwards and the viewer cannot take anything away from this. If the average person cannot understand what the article is trying to tell them, they will not learn anything from the article or understand the news given. The evidence Liberman gives proves to be helpful because the article is a perfect example on how science writers can be confusing, and in this case, wrong.

There are many ways that this issue of science writers could be corrected. Lieberman thinks that “Any newspaper or magazine that has a Science writer should also have a Bad Science writer, whose job would be act as a sort of intellectual ombudsman.” This means that he thinks that there should be a person to check over the initial article to make sure that it is correct, according to the data that it may be reporting, and written in form that is understandable to all people who might be viewing it. Another way that I personally think that this problem could be solved is to have somewhat of the same thing that Liberman said to have, a person to correct to not understandable text; however, with my solution I think that the science writer should be cut out altogether. This solution could save money for publishing companies and this would make everything a lot easier to understand. If an average writer with no specific science skills wrote these articles, then there would be no confusion as to what they are saying. As long as the public can understand the content, the person who wrote it proves to be unimportant.  Altogether, something has to change in the way that science is reported to the public. Just because some, if not most, average people do not have extensive knowledge in the science field, that does not mean that they do not what to know what is currently going on in the scientific world. If science writing could become more simplistic, then there would be less confusion as to what scientists are trying to convey to society.

Open Writing

I feel that, depending on what kind of works you are publishing, there can be an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages. The benefits of writing on the open and accessible internet can be many different things. I think the biggest benefit of having works on the internet is receiving feedback. Why else would someone publish anything online? The only reason would be so that others could read it and so that the author could get a response. For the purposes of us writing our blogs online for class, it is a benefit for the students because we can see each other’s work and observe the way our class mates write and pick up good ways of writing or good ideas from them; however, I do not mean plagiarize. Also, as a benefit to me personally, I tend to write better if I know there are others out there viewing my writings. I feel more pressured not to just bull shit my way through my papers or blogs. To me, it would be embarrassing if I knew I did not try on something and knew it was bad but other people were reading it. I would rather give the extra effort and not look like an idiot to my whole class. Posting our blogs online also gives the professor an easy way to view our work and what we think of each other’s writings. I think that as a class we are exploiting the benefits that I stated about posting our writings online. I think that it forces us all to write better because it is being viewed by our class and anyone else who wants to see it.


Although posting out writings online as blogs is beneficial in certain ways, it can also bring about unwanted issues. The biggest issue with posting your own thoughts is that, other than those people in our class, we do not know who exactly is reading what we post. There are some really creepy people out there and it always worries me that someone could be going through all my thoughts online. In contrast, I am sure that almost everyone in our class has something like a Facebook or MySpace so we are all used to having people look at what we are thinking. Another problem with using the internet for our school work is the technical issues that have been coming up. A person never knows when the system will go down or the internet in the dorms will go down. Recently, at University Towers, the internet went down for a long time and caused a lot of the residents issues because of school work that had to be turned in. Although the library is always an option to go to for internet issues, the issues on Moodle going down or something similar to that, like blogger going down as well, could not be helped by the time we need our work in. No one wants to be counted off points for simple technical difficulties.

All of these challenges can be addressed in simple ways because if the fault is technical, you can always talk to the professor, and as for the issue of creepy people, we could try to make our blogs private in some way if it ever became a big issue, which I do not think that it will.

Feedback and Critique

I believe that I am fairly good at offering criticism to other’s work. I complement anything I like and if there is anything that I see that could make their paper better I tell them. I think that giving complements is a defiantly a good thing to do while you are editing someone else’s paper because it shows them their strong points while also showing them what they could do better in. I would never say anything hurtful; however, I would want people to be completely honest when viewing my paper so I plan to do the same for everyone else. Even if I am given a bad comment I think of it as a good thing because it will only make my paper better in the end.


I know that constructive criticism is never a bad thing. Sometimes editors can be too harsh with their comments; however, with peer editing I find that never to be the case. Constructive criticism is never giving corrections but thoughts and ideas on how the text can be improved. The only errors that should be corrected are grammar. I feel that sometimes it can be hard to give criticism to classmates because if I am at the same level they are, why should I be giving them criticism on their work? Although I think that I am good at giving the constructive criticism, sometimes it can be hard to say everything I want to say about a classmate’s paper. I do not want to be the one to make anyone mad for not getting the point they were trying to make in their paper and going a completely different way with it without knowing it.

I think that the most helpful critique that a person can give to me is asking me questions on anything in my writing that might be confusing or could be elaborated on more. Not only will that extend the length of my paper but make it a great deal more thorough. I want to make sure that everything in my writing is explained and there are no questions of what I was trying to say in the end. I want all my points to be sharp and backed up with as much information I can have. The more proof I have the more I feel my paper is complete. While writing peer editing comments for our first paper, I asked a lot of questions to help the people who had not made the page requirement. I hope they are able to use the questions and comments to further their thoughts. The questions, in addition to helping get things explained more, are there to get the writer thinking about more ideas and thoughts to include in their paper.

At this point, I have not received any peer edits back; however, I hope the comments will help me to make my paper more understandable and organized. I also hope that my group will ask me questions as I have done to their papers so that it will help me think of ideas to put into my paper and give it more direction.

Shitty First Drafts

I think that these are good practices because I feel that a lot of them involve taking writing one step at a time and not getting too stressed out about it because once you feel pressured for time or stressed it is easier to get stuck in one spot. Taking a paper draft by draft has always worked for me. If I get stuck I usually stop and take a break for a while then try again; if I am writing late at night the best thing for me to do if I am still stuck is to just go to sleep and wake up with enough time to finish my paper before it is due if it is supposed to be due the next day. If it not due the next day I will take it literally piece by piece.


The steps for me to write a successful paper are to first make some sort of brain storm of the ideas I have that I want to write about. Sometimes I will do a web, or multiple webs, and then from there I will go paragraph by paragraph organizing my thoughts by main subject. After that, I will go about wiring mini, unfinished, sentences. These steps usually take the longest so that once I get to writing my actual paper I can just add a few words here and there and it is already put together. Using this strategy keeps me from having such an awful first draft. I try not to make my first draft too bad so that I will not have to completely rewrite my paper. I am the type of person to only want to have to do something once. I am more open to fixing the little things than I am to having to completely re do a paragraph or more than that. I do not try to reach perfection my any means but I want to look like I am educated. I have friends that will zoom through two thousand words in a little over an hour and think they have done well. They know that their paper is not very well put together, but all they care about it getting it done. I am not that way. Getting the paper done fast is one of the least of my concerns unless I am crunched on time, which does happen sometimes. I try to give myself enough time to organize my thoughts so that my paper is not all over the place like others may be.

I agree with the fact stated that attempting to obtain perfection will only ruin everything good about a person’s writing. I believe it is good to work towards that with every draft but thinking that it will be accomplished within the very first attempt is somewhat foolish. After reading this I have some worries only because I have not reached the page requirement for my paper; however, I know that I can do it and have enough time to finish what I need to say. I just need some help on organizing what I am trying to say into my arguments against the advertisement I chose.

Propaganda

Since World War II propaganda has grown to a more subliminal level. I feel that we do not notice the propaganda in current television ads or in any ads in the media. In German propaganda during the Second World War, the Nazi’s made it very clear on the type of image they were trying to portray of the Jewish community. Today, I think people are more ignorant to the images shown to them and the persuasive messages that they are being told. As viewers, we process these messages with no regards the underlying messages. To me, an example of this is the commercials we see for organizations that show images of children in third world countries that have blank looks, no smiles, and appear miserable. This is going to make me sound like a heartless person, but I hate these commercials. While these children may be hungry, the last thing they are is sad. I have a very good friend, Brooke, who went and spent a summer in Uganda, where many of the “sad children” are said to be from. She told me that she rarely saw a sad child; they were all happy with their lives. Because they live in a third world country, they do not have any way of knowing the difference of their lives to the lives of others throughout the world. Brooke told me that although hunger and disease are very large issues, they go to school, if available, and then play, especially the young children. They do not know that they are unfortunate; therefore, I believe that the commercials that portray them as miserable and depressed are out for something more than just helping these kids. There are many organizations that people donate to that do not know that half, if not more, of their donation is going to pay for the employees of the organization. However, this is not true of all organizations that go to help those in need. This form of subliminal propaganda shows us an image of an unhappy child and, along with sad music, makes us feel bad for having the things that we do so that we will donate to these organizations. Technology has made us believe these images and messages so much more because we are seeing actual film of these children; therefore, the images are real and if we are seeing the children ourselves, what reason do have to not believe that it is accurate?


In 2010, I think that people are most afraid of the economic and job world. Although our economy is, slowly but surely, rising back up, over the past three years we have been taught and have grown to fear losing jobs and money. Images and political cartoons displaying the fallen industries surround us everywhere and we have no choice but to fear everything ahead. We always fear what we are told to fear because we do not know what else to do. As Americans, we follow what a higher power tells us is wrong even prior to us finding out on our own; to me, we are a “follow the leader” country.

What is it?

Based on the discussions we have had in class, a rhetorical analysis is a breakdown of a text. A text can be anything from a novel to an advertisement, which is what we have been working with. I feel that a rhetorical analysis, in the case of advertisements, is going through every aspect displayed and finding what exactly appeals to the audience and how the propaganda will affect them. I think that a rhetorical analysis should be organized by the separation of the rhetorical analysis triangle. To begin, start with an introduction of all the different appeals and an overview of what is going on in the text. Secondly, go through each of the three appeals of the triangle separately in the order of least prominent to most in paragraph form. Then, to pull all of the different aspects together, in the conclusion, discuss how everything works as a whole part to make the advertisement successful.


Based on what I know, I plan to go about organizing my rhetorical analysis in the same fashion that I previously explained by going through each aspect and giving a detailed breakdown of the logos, ethos, and pathos of the advertisement. Not only do I plan to breakdown the rhetorical triangle, I want to include many of my own arguments and defenses on my opinions. When writing on the subject of anything that I am passionate about, I can honestly go on for pages and pages. In this paper I want to display great amounts of passion for whatever I may choose to analyze. I want to include factual information from both sides of my argument; therefore, I plan to do a good deal of research so that all of my arguments are thorough in the since that I know what I am talking about so that I have confidence in my writing.

So that my argument will be strong, as previously stated, I plan to start with the least prominent appeal and build my way up to the most strong so that within my paper my arguments can get more and more solid. While stating facts of both sides I want to use those arguments to further my points in the direction that I plan to go with my paper; by the direction I mean whatever way I choose to go in my paper in agreeing and creating an argument that way or disagreeing and rebutting the advertisement.

I am still not sure of what advertisement I would like to analyze; however, I have been looking in magazines and online for anything that stands out to me. There has been nothing thus far that I have looked at and felt a strong need to express how I feel about it. Whenever I am choosing a subject to write about I am always very picky. I want to find something that I know I can go through and find every aspect of logos, ethos, and pathos, that way I know I can write a lot about the subject and will still be able to fulfill the requirements for the rhetorical analysis.