Journal Entry #9: Genres in Writing

Answers:

1) To discover the goals of the college the writer utilizes the activity theory. Powell studied how the students reacted and worked through the tensions they would come across in the activities systems. She researched how academic genres can limit what students write about.

2) To gather her data powell looked at how personality and environment influence how students write, or what they write about. Powell looks exclusively at the contradictions in students writings to collect her data.

3) Often times, a genre is assigned to students and students are required that students look at situations from a certain angle. This prevents students from applying their own styles of writing. It is because of this that students are in danger of losing their sense of self, only so that they might please their professor. Suggestions from their peers also tend to impact the outcome. this all weakens the students ability to think freely and critically.

Journal 7: The Revision Process

Answers:

1) The author explaining the process of revision in editing, and her hypothesis is that editing varies among editors of different experience levels. She came to this conclusion after putting together an experiment including six professional editors.

2) Her information was acquired after she split the editors into groups of "normative" and "communicative" editors. The writer also split the groups into the more experienced editors and less experienced editors. Normative editors tend to focus more on the technicalities like grammatical errors, typographical errors, and such. Meanwhile, communicative editors focus more on the manner in which the paper would sound were it read aloud. Texts were composed containing strategically placed errors and later distributed among the editors to see which professionals would catch certain mistakes. Following the editing of the papers the researcher would get back with each editor to find out why the corrected what they did.

3) Professional editing differs from student editing in that professional editors make one swift overview to that they can keep the flow of a writing going. Its not as stop and go. In addition, editors revise for a living, and as professionals, they put more time and effort into their revisions because there is more on the line than simply what your classmate thinks of your work. Students typically don't know the writing styles of their classmates and may have a poor understanding of how the writer wants the piece to be written whereas an editor is usually approached by the same group of writers and has a general idea of everyones style.

Journal Entry #5: Specialization

Specialization:

The problem of specialization was a debate I found worthy of discussion because it was a cultural debate aswell as an academic debate. David Easton argues that specialization has hindered one's abilities to develop common knowledge. Easton believes that specialization pinpoints a certain field of study, and by doing so he claims it almost forces a student to avoid those subjects outside the said field. He relates this to Humpty Dumpty by saying that since knowledge is no longer general, people cannot solve real life problems. The editor Bruce McComiskey also believes that specialization devaules more general courses because a person will look forward to the more specialized course while the remaining will seem like uninteresting required courses. I strongly concuer with Easton, I think that specialization, while making a student expert in one subject, it weakens them in all other subjects. Students should be required to take classes in a multitude of fields, while most of the courses should be geared toward a major.

Journal Entry #3: Inventing the University

Reading Questions:

1) When the writer of this passage states that a student should "invent the university," he means that when one is writing for a class that person should write from the viewpoint of a professional in the given field of expertise. The student should use similar terminology to that of a professional economist for an Economy class, or Psychologist for a Psych class. The student should still write like a expert even if the ideas are still unclear to them.

2) For one to become an insider in a certain field one must try to see things for the insider's perspective, or put themselves in an expert's shoes. It is key to learn the material and the vocab, or at least know how to make it seem as though you have learned it. Students need to think of themselves as a person qualified to speak about the given subject.

3) The writing was clearly written and concise, however, still uninteresting and contradictory; in my opinion. The writing, i feel, should have contained more body, more back-up, and more grounds. It seemed as those she went against some of the introduction later in the writing. The writer happens to think his writing is at a higer level, and somewhat difficult to understand. I disagree. The writer believes the second essay should have been made using a bit more complex sentence structure. I, again, disagree.

Workshop #1: My Expertise

Workshop #1

I would consider myself an expert in:

• Goalkeeping (Soccer)
• Sprinting
• Humor
• Poetry
• Argument
• Mechanics
• Machine Operation
• Auto-crossing
• Moto Super Sport
• Dirt-biking
• BMX Racing
• Food Running
• Food
• Disc Jockey-ing
• R&B + Hip-Hop

Fields of interest:

• Soccer
• Fitness
• Humor
• Poetry
• Food
• Music
• Automotive
• Any form of Cycling

Journal Entry #2: Soccer Article: Broken down Toulmin Style

Journal Entry #2

Recently, I wrote about an article that discussed the so-called "natural born intolerance" Americans have developed for soccer. The claim being made is that Americans, typically having a weaker understanding of the game as well as a love for rough sports, target soccer as a game for the physically weak or "geeky" athletes. This claim was supported by writings in multiple nation-wide prints including the Washington Post, The New York Times, and Boston Globe. The claim was warranted by the American masses' significantly stronger support of "rougher" sports; such as American Football. Backing might be found in the Ivy Leagues replacing of soccer with rugby, supposedly because soccer was not rough enough. Grounds to support this back-up include the fact that much more money goes to football, and more scholarships are provided for football. Football costs more to watch, and given the general consensus that continues to be passed around, "football is just plain better" (an American might say). The qualifier is that the Ivy leagues might have replaced soccer for another reason, we cannot simply assume that they replaced it with rugby because it was not rough enough. A rebuttal might contain the fact that technically competitive soccer was invented in America, and the game quite frankly couldn't be "naturally intolerated" by its own inventors.

Journal Entry #1: It's simply American to hate soccer; or is it?

Journal Entry #1

According to an article written for Soccer News Magazine in 1997, it is simply American to hate soccer. The writer goes over how Americans have somehow developed a sort of natural intolerance for the game calling it a gym class joke for geeks who need their hands to push their glasses up on their faces. This claim is evidently not factually supported and certainly takes no relation to a policy. Given that, we can conclude that this is a value claim. The writer begins by quoting American writer's derogatory comments on the sport in prints such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Boston Globe. For example, one writer for the Boston Globe argued that soccer was "a mindless sport where hordes of incomprehensible athletes run aimlessly in a circle until everyone is dehydrated and, finally, some guy uses his skull to score a touchdown." Clearly he was ignorant in his writing. He discusses how America was built on rough sports going all the way back to the first Ivy League sports. How Harvard replaced soccer with Rugby because it wasn’t rough enough. Later, Football was developed from a disorganized rugby game and became the glorified American sport. All the while soccer was played in America a few years before the fever hit European pitches. Thus, soccer is truly more American the football, yet it has been over shadowed by the rougher sport only because it is just that; rougher.

Article URL: http://www.sover.net/~spectrum/hist1.html