PB3A

For my PB3A, I am using the article titled Reading and Writing Without Authority by Ann M. Penrose and Cheryl Geisler. The authors investigated how differences in authority are present in the academic world by comparing the article of a Janet, a college freshman, to the article of Roger, a student completing his doctoral work in philosophy. Through their investigations, Penrose and Geisler demonstrate the importance of reading and writing rhetorically and discuss the importance of students seeing themselves as participants instead of observers in the construction of knowledge. They write that student's lack authority in their writing corresponds to their lack of previous knowledge about the subject and their inability to relate to the subject/issue being presented.

For the genre transformation for a younger audience , I am thinking of writing a college admissions essay meant to be read by an audience of high schoolers (14-18 year olds). The essay would begin with a student speaking of how she used to be really introverted and shy and she was always afraid to share her ideas. People always told her that she had a lot of potential and she herself knew that she had a lot of good ideas but she always felt limited to the ideas that she could express because she felt that she did not have the full knowledge needed to fully engage herself into certain subject, but one day she encountered something life changing and she decided to dive deep into a topic that she was really interested in and through her studies and with her gained knowledge, she was able to better engage herself in the subject and was then able to act as a participant rather than an observer. She was then also more confident in expressing her ideas and opinions on the topic. The subject that she had become really interested in wis the major that she is applying with at that particular institution. I’m not sure what the essay is going to be on exactly but that is my main idea for this transformation.

I also had another idea for the younger audience but I'm not sure if it follows the idea/topic presented in the article. So my idea was to create a comic strip for for an audience of kids ages 8-12. So for the comic the storyline would start with a small girl who is shy and afraid to speak out in class, and is constantly confused in class because she is not participating and therefore is not being fully submerged in the ideas, but then one day a "superhero" shows up and his superpower is bravery (or something like that). The hero encourages the student to speak up and express he ideas and opinions in class and once she starts doing so, she starts understanding the class material better and feels that she is more engaged in the subject and becomes way more interested in it.
OR The comic would have two characters; Janet and Roger who are in the same class. The two characters would have personalities and ideas that correspond to the way they were represented through their papers. The comic would show that Roger is more outspoken and Janet is more afraid to express her ideas but that she has many brilliant ideas. One day Janet will decide to emerge herself more into the subject matter and be more of a participant on the conversations in class. The comic will then show that once Janet is more active in expressing her ideas and opinions, the two characters have a great time sharing ideas with each each other and with their other class mates.
Again I don't have all the kinks worked out, but is this a good idea/do you think it follows the topic of the article?

For the genre transformation for an older audience, I am thinking about writing a blog post addressed to parents with young children. The blog post is going to tell parents that is is important that they encourage their children to express their thoughts and ideas. It will stress that getting their children into the habit of incorporating their ideas into the things that they do at a young age will help them with all of their future endeavors because it is important at all ages to express opinions and ideas. The blog post will also talk about how parents and all adults should get young children to really think about what they think certain things mean, and it will provide pictures and short sentences/phrases that the parents could show to their kids and ask them to “analyze” - just something that will get their kids thinking their own thoughts.

VIII. Thlog

IT FEELS SO NICE BEING DONE WITH WP2. I don't know why but I had an especially hard time with this wp. I sat in the library for 8 straight hours one day just working on it and trying to come up with ideas and trying to make the paragraphs flow nicely but after those 8 hours, I still felt like I had made no progress. BUT it all worked out eventually so all is good!!
I think my favorite part of Monday's class was watching the Bob Ross videos and the Disney painters video. The Bob Ross videos were of course funnier and more entertaining to watch, but all of the videos helped me see the moves and the rhetorical decisions that all of the artists made. It was also nice watching something where the moves being made were also narrated because before these videos, the only 'moves' videos that we had watched were ones where we had to determine the moves on our own, but in these videos, with the narration, it was easier to see what the moves were as they were being made.
I also really liked watching the video of the story Everybody Poops. It was interesting seeing how different the story could be presented on the video versus on a physical book because the animations were more lively and there was movement between some of the objects and and camera often zoomed into specific objects or characters that were important. I did think though that the Morgan Freeman reading of the story was kinda interesting (kinda weird) and that it just completely changed the story.
Anyways, i have to say I'm kind of excited to work on WP3. I feel like this is going to really show me if I have learned or how much I have learned from this class. I already have some ideas for what I want to do for both the younger audience and older audience transformation and I am excited to pitch my ideas in my PB3A and to hear feedback from everyone.

VII. Thlog

Some of my friends in other writing 2 sections have been SUPER busy and swamped recently with their WP2s; having to turn in their final drafts only 2 days after having their rough drafts peer revised, so i've bee extremely grateful for the changes that were made to our class syllabus that have given us more time to really work on our assignments to the best of our abilities.
With that said, this past week was a pretty short one, but it was really helpful; especially the peer revising. It was nice being able to have other peers read and revise my paper and to be able to share ideas amongst one another. I noticed through peer review that a lot of us had different ideas and different approaches to this paper. Also, after having my paper peer revised, I was almost able to see my paper in a different light and realized that I have provided a lot more information on the topic that I had chosen than was necessary, and that I needed to add more information on the different genres and their rhetorical features. In our groups, we were also able to exchange ideas on how to incorporate quotes from the class readings, which was something that I was really struggling with while I was writing my rough draft.
On Wednesday, I also found the socrates activity really helpful as we were able to look and and dissect the beginning of the chosen introduction and we could see what moves each of the authors made and were able to discuss why those introduction sentences were chosen as class favorites.

VI. Thlog

This past week in class taught me a lot about style and stylistic moves in writing. I really enjoyed the lesson on parallelism during Monday's class. It was nice seeing how parallelism is in a lot of places that we would normally not notice, such as in resumes, and how much better a resume with parallelism is than a resume without parallelism. I thought it was really helpful seeing the parallelism in sentences and how parallelism can occur only once in some sentences, but can occur several times in another sentence. I also really appreciated all of the tips that were given on writing. I have used all of the writing tips in the process of writing my rough draft for WP2. I especially liked tip #1. I never really realized how often I use the word 'says' to begin a quote or to cite and author, but after hearing that tip I changed all the 'says' in my WP2 to other verbs and I feel like that alone changed my paper pretty dramatically as there was much more variation in vocabulary in my essay.
"Peer revising" Sandy's paper helped me see what I should and should not do in my own paper. It was nice being able to look at a sample paper and do a reverse outline and revise the thesis.  I really dug deep into that paper looking at ways that it could be improved. I tried to relate some of the "faults" that the paper had to my own writing style so that I could use the revisions I made to that paper on my own writing. Through the sample revision, I realized that some things that I want to improve on my WP2 are my use of direct evidence from the sources, putting my own voice into my writing, and adding to the so what/who cares aspect.

PB2B

            The moves that an author makes are what give their writing individuality and personality. Not all moves that a particular author makes will necessarily be specific and unique to the author, but it is the combination of all of the different moves that the author makes that give their writing uniqueness. In the articles that we’ve read so far this quarter many of the authors have made moves in their writing that correspond to the moves listed in the They Say, I Say Appendix. Although some of the moves that these authors make are more generic and can be put into a list of moves, they also make some moves of their own.

            In “Navigating Genres”, one of the moves that Dirk makes that can also be found in the They Say, I Say Appendix is his use of “Explaining Quotations”. She uses “In other words…” (254) to begin explaining a quote that he had previously inserted into his writing. Dirk also uses the move “Introducing Quotations” when she writes, “Devitt writes…” (252), and “Devitt points out that…” (252), which shows readers that she will be using words or information from someone else. In “Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis”, Carroll uses the move “Capturing Authorial Action” when she writes, “Bitzer argues that…” (48) to emphasize that Bitzer is making a strong argument and is showing authority. She also uses many “Commonly Used Transitions” such as “in fact) (46), “however” (49), “finally” (50), and “although” (48) to show a sequence of events and to provide a sequence to her writing. Lastly, one move that Bunn makes in “How To Read Like a Writer” is “Introducing Standard Views”. He writes “Instead of reading for the content or to better understand the ideas in the writing…” (72 in which he point to reading for the content to be the standard view on reading, whereas reading to better understand the ideas in writing is the way that he believes more people should read.

            One of the moves that I noticed in the articles that was not listed in the They Say, I Say Appendix was the use of “one-liners” where authors write really short, concise sentences which I believe are meant to make a statement. Bunn uses “one-liners” in his writing and creates statements such as “You are reading to learn about writing” (72) and “I came to realize that all writing consists of a series of choices” (72). When there are so few words being said, the statement being made becomes intensified and has more power. Bunn also uses “dots for thoughts, or dotted lines, through his piece to separate different thoughts and ideas that he is expressing. Through his piece, Bunn inserted anecdotes, what I like to call “story time”, that make his life and his experiences more relatable to readers. One of the anecdotes that he used began “In 1997, I was a recent college student living in London for 6 months…” (82). This would make him more relatable to college students who he probably believes comprise the majority of his audience. I also noticed that some authors such as Boyd and Dirk used “Point to Point”, or bullet pointed lists, in their articles. The use of bullet pointed lists emphasizes the important points that the author wants the readers to fully capture. Boyd uses bullets to list ask questions to get her readers in a certain mindset, and Dirk uses bullets to provide examples and emphasize important information. Dirk also uses is “the Enlightened” where he often uses the phrase “I realize” or “I have come to realize” in which he states time when he made a new discovery or came across new information that he was not previously aware of.

V. Thlog

I found learning about “moves” this week really interesting. I didn’t originally know what a “move” was exactly, especially in the writing world, but I learned that it is basically something in particular that a writer (or anyone really) makes that can be recreated by other people and that makes their work or their actions unique to them. The examples of MJ’s shooting techniques and The Rock’s “The People’s Elbow”, and pinpointing the moves made by Bunn in “How to Read Like a Writer” helped me better understand what moves are and how they can be super small details that can be looked over.

I also found the lesson on concepts and disciplines to be very helpful, and I think the lesson has better prepared me for WP2. Before that lesson, I was pretty confused about how I should go about WP2 and I didn’t really understand what the prompt meant by choosing an article from two different disciplines or how I could possibly find and article on the topic from a scholarly and non scholarly publication, but the lesson cleared everything up for me. When we were looking at disciplines and determine which disciplines are categorized as hard sciences, soft sciences, and humanities, I realized that was something I would not have been able to differentiate on my own (especially between the soft sciences and humanities) and I found that really enlightening!!

One particular part about class that I really appreciated was when we, as a class, were asked to say some of the notes that were given on our WP1s and as each classmate said their note, the rest class was asked to raise their hand if they received the same note. I really appreciated this because when I heard that other people received the same comment or criticism that I had gotten on my paper, it made my feel like I wasn’t so alone knowing that a lot of I wasn’t the only one going through the struggle.