Hi. This is the eighth and final installment of my blog for my English Composition I class. Our in-class face-to-face semester was switched to online classes due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID19), which is the reason for this being my last blog post. In this week’s blog post, I will be writing and sharing a blog for my semester reflection. My first use of reflective writing will be in this blog. We had two articles/videos to interpret for this blog one was Reflective Writing the other was Genres in Academic Writing: Reflection. I will also elaborate on the acronym “GRITT”, as it applies to my development as a writer through this course, this is an idea that is unique to our class, and it stands for: Genre awareness, Rhetorical awareness, Identity as an author, Theory of writing, and my Transfer of writing to future writing situations, how I plan to transfer my knowledge of writing to future classes and in life in general. 1. Your Genre awareness: What is genre awareness? How has it changed in this course? Please discuss the genres of your memoir and either your MLA research paper or your op-ed. Genre awareness is becoming aware of how certain texts are similar in their structure and organization, how content is dealt with, and how vocabulary, sentence structure and tone are used. Genre awareness helps us meet the expectations of our audience. Now I understand, when you are aware of your genre and you know what the guidelines for that genre are, it is a big step in meeting the expectations of those who read your work. As a reader, to know what to expect from a piece, is knowing what is expected in that genre. My genre awareness has changed dramatically in this course. I went from not knowing or caring about the genre of what I read, to trying to determine what genre it is and understanding why it would be in that genre. Using the guidelines of all the different genres we used to write our blogs and projects helped me write the memoir that is now my Narrative Project on this website. Writing the dialogue wasn’t that hard it was the showing of emotion and trying to convey that emotion, during the time when my memoir took place, that I found to be more difficult. Just finding the right words to make everything flow and fit together correctly and convey the emotion. My Research Project, which could be either an op-ed or an MLA research paper, and because I’m pretty sure that I will have to write another MLA research paper somewhere in the future I chose to write an MLA research paper. It was something that I hadn’t done before, at least not in that format, and wanted to experience that genre of writing. The research paper wasn’t that difficult to write, it was more the guidelines of the genre that were a little frustrating at times. The guidelines of an MLA research paper are pretty strict. Citing your resources correctly, having a “works cited” list, making sure that your quotes are presented correctly so that there is no question of plagiarism. Making sure your making your argument correctly with enough cited information to back it up. It can be frustrating, but I think I did pretty well for my first time. 2. Your Rhetorical awareness: What is rhetorical awareness? How has it changed in this course? How did you apply rhetorical awareness in your research project writing? Here are helpful resources: What is Rhetoric? / Exigence in Rhetoric (ThoughtCo.) / Rhetorical Purpose / Rhetorical Modes Rhetorical awareness is understanding what is successfully fulfilling the purpose of your writing, it is dependent on your ability to anticipate and address the needs of your audience. Rhetorical awareness is recognizing which techniques work for different audiences and situations. A rhetorical situation is made up of three components that determine how you construct your particular document.
My rhetorical awareness has definitely changed because of this course. I’ve become more aware of what rhetoric is and how to use it when I’m writing. I’m more aware of the goal of the piece I’m writing, who’s going to read it, where I need to go to make the point I’m trying to make. I’m also becoming more aware of the audience that will be reading my work and trying to give enough information to inform them, but not too much as to overwhelm them, which could lead to their unwillingness to read any further. In my research paper I used rhetoric to inform and persuade the reader to change or reinforce their beliefs in the argument I was posing. Making sure the opening paragraph informed the reader what the topic of the paper was, along with stating my thesis, and giving just enough information to inform but not overwhelm the reader. In the main body of the paper I made sure to try and persuade the reader to see the purpose of the paper with my argument and sufficient information from professionals to back up my argument. Again, just enough to inform but not overwhelm the reader. 3. Your Identity as an author: How are your past academic writing experiences different from your present experiences with writing in this course? How are the past and present experiences the same? How has it changed in this course? Include a conversation about naming and establishing a relationship with your author-self. Also discuss some or all of the following: being a blogger/vlogger, web site author, memoirist, research author, reflective author, found poet, counter-narrative writer, etc. In the past my academic writing experiences were a lot different than my experiences now. In the past the subject matter of what I was writing was always an assigned topic, and usually something that I didn’t have much interest in writing about. Basically, my writing in the past was much like one of our reading assignments in which Don Murray talks about it being a product not a process. Now my writing is more of a process where I try to use all of the things I’ve learned to this point, genre awareness, rhetorical awareness, writing as a process, and I try to make meaning with them. I don’t think my past experiences with writing are anywhere near the same as what I’m doing now, like I mentioned before my writing back then was definitely a product, and there was very little to no process at all involved in it, nothing like I’m doing today. I’m more excited about writing, I actually enjoy writing the assignments and posting them for the discourse community to read. Which is a total 180° from where I was when I started writing for this course back in January. I was very self-conscious about other people reading my writing. My identity as an author has changed dramatically from being in this course. When we started in January, I had no relationship with my author self. “In a letter to my author self” I described that, and I actually ask for forgiveness from him “because he has been locked up in a dungeon in my mind for decades.” Letting him out was definitely a good thing to do. I never did name my identity but I don’t think he needs one right now, we’re working well together. Right now, he is helping me in other classes I’m taking, and I’m pretty sure is going to help me in the future with my education and definitely with career dealings. Writing for English comp as a memoirist, research author, counter-narrative writer a blogger and reflective author has given me a better understanding of theses genres and the ability to repeat the writing if I need to. I do feel really good knowing that I have written effectively in each of these genres, and the pieces I wrote are on my web site for everyone to read, I guess you could say there’s a little pride in knowing that I wrote them. 4. Your Theory of writing: How has this course impacted the way you define and value writing? Which composition concepts/terms do you most value? Include a one-sentence thesis or tag line that represents your theory. This course has definitely impacted the way I define writing. It has taught me that writing can be exciting, you can enjoy the process of writing, and not dread the thought of having to write. Writing can have all of the emotion that you would feel or see in everyday life. We covered quite a few composition concepts that have become valuable to me when it comes to writing. The one that I always think of first is thinking of writing as a process and not just the finished product. I think the process is more important than what is produced. Another one is revision, I think Mary Karr puts it best “other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision.” Revision has become my friend, and a necessity to me. It has become something that I see as a tool now, and understand why it is important to writing. Becoming more in tune with my author self, getting to know him again and letting him out of the dungeon that he used to live in, and using him more than I used to has really become important now. I think the concept of writing being a process not a product is one of the ones I value most, just because I’ve learned that there is a process to writing, and that it has made writing more enjoyable for me. Genre awareness is another one that I’ve learned to appreciate. Having to take this course and learning more about what genre awareness is in writing and what makes up a genre’s guidelines. A line from one of the videos I watched for this course comes to mind when I think of genre awareness and that’s “Genre awareness helps us meet the expectations of our audience.” I’m supposed to come up with a tag line to brand my theory of writing, first let me say that I’m not sure if I have a solid theory of writing but writing has become exciting for me now that I have an understanding of what writing can be so here’s my tag line, “Writing can be exciting when you have the knowledge to do it effectively.” 5. Your Transfer of writing to future writing situations: How do you plan to use your growing writing knowledge to compose texts in future academic and non-academic contexts? Include a discussion about your writing processes, writing mindset/author identity, genre awareness, and rhetorical awareness. Conclude the conversation with a future scene of writing to illustrate how you might enact writing transfer in a different context. I plan to use my growing knowledge of writing to compose texts in the future as much as possible. While writing for this course, I’ve been getting more confident about my writing and that intern has helped me immensely with the writing of assignments that I’ve had outside of English comp. I think this course will continue to help me with the rest of my academic career, especially with future writing assignments. In the non-academic context I think it will definitely help with writing of reports, presentations, and emails. Writing as a process is one of the things that I will definitely take away from this semester in English comp. The process of writing a first draft, then revising it until it becomes something that can inform or persuade, has become a much more enjoyable process for me, more than what it used to be. Along with a better understanding of genre awareness and rhetorical awareness and how they are both used to convey to the audience the purpose of what I have written. My process of writing has become much more enjoyable more so than what it used to be. Coming up with the words to put on paper isn’t that difficult for me it’s the genre and rhetorical awareness that I have to be mindful of, making sure I stay within the genre and not wander outside the guidelines, and not to over load the reader with too much information, keep them interested to read more. My author identity is good right now and I’m trying to keep it that way, like I mentioned earlier, I never did name my identity but I don’t think he needs one right now, we’re working well together, and I need to keep it that way. My author identity has grown as well, I have expanded the tools I have to write and tailor my writing to the audience it is intended for. One other thing, writing for the discourse community has made me a lot less self-conscious about people reading what I write, which makes every second of this course worth it. I see myself using the tools I have learned in English comp. now as I try to navigate my way through the rest of my time in college. I’ve already been putting what I’ve learned to use this semester in my other classes. I see having to use rhetorical awareness quite a bit to persuade, inform and maybe even inspire, the target audience in order to change or reinforce their beliefs and actions. When I’m working, I see myself having to write reports and emails. Writing these for or to bosses or even co-workers to inform, persuade or inspire for whatever the reason, and having to use my growing knowledge of rhetorical awareness to inform them of my position on the subject to try and persuade them to change their beliefs or reinforce what they already know.
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Hi, this is the seventh installment of my blog for my English Composition I class. For this assignment, I had to watch three videos and interpret the video-text performances, which I have listed below. I also had to write a rationale that responds to five questions.
My narrative allows me to travel into my brain because I remember thinking, how am I going to get my people, my car, and all my equipment to Memphis. On top of that there was the thought of, can I get the time off from work, and if I can’t what can I do to work around attendance policy at work, can my Girlfriend get the time off, will my parents be willing to go. Is this worth all the work involved to be able to go. Will my car and I be competitive in the race. Looking back on it now, there was courage on my part to want to travel that far away from home and to ask my family to put out a lot of money and time to do this. It wasn’t as hard for me to get the material things there, it was harder getting myself there. My narrative allows me to explore my heart from back then because the scene I composed is from a time when I just started really getting passionate about competing in drag racing, instead of watching. I can remember the anxious moments before I asked my Girlfriend and parents about going to Memphis. The anger that I experienced when I asked the Plant Manager, where I worked, for the time off and the argument that ensued. The excitement of being able to go and see how we stacked up, against racers from across the country. My narrative meets the nerve element by showing the lengths I had to go to, just to get time off from work to go participate in something that was a once in a lifetime event. The argument with the Plant Manager that normally I wouldn’t have had, I would’ve just went silently on to a different way of getting what I needed, but this time was different, and I knew I was going to have to stand up to him and fight a little harder for what I wanted. My narrative enables me to re-examine the power I have in my life’s story because at the time I felt unsure of myself and my ability to do what I had done many times before at a local level with people that I became friends with. To a national level where the world would see what I was capable of, and there were no friends there. I realize now that the technical part (my car) of what I was doing was fine it could compete with the others that were there, my confidence was there I was just unsure. To me what shapes our sense of identity is both, life events and the stories we tell ourselves about life events. You have to have the life events happen to be able to tell ourselves the stories. Hi, this is the sixth installment of my blog for my English Composition I class. For this assignment, I had to read, watch and interpret four different texts, which I’ve listed, and have links to below. They are all to help with writing a blog which is counter factual to my last blog, Blog#5, Composing an Emotional Scene with Dialogue and Symbolism. Which I am also using for my Narrative Project.
In blog five I described an event in my life that to me and for me was an emotional time. From the decision to send in the application to be invited Hot Rod Magazines' Pump Gas Drags, to the emotional roller coaster of arguing with the plant manager and the head of H.R. where I used to work for the time off to go to Memphis to participate in the Pump Gas Drags. Arguing with work was the biggest road block I had, all of the other pieces pretty much fell into place. To explore the “what ifs” I would have to start with what if I never saw the advertisement or my friend hadn’t shown me the advertisement for the event. I would not have known the Pump Gas Drags were being held in ’08 so I wouldn’t of have had the thought planted in my head to go, and wouldn't have had a reason to go. If my Girlfriend would have said she didn’t want to go or couldn’t get the time off from her work, then I probably would have gone without her. She has stayed home for other things that I’ve have done with my car. I would have explained that I was going with or without her, she may or may not have been happy about it, but she would have understood that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. If my Parents would have said they couldn’t or didn’t want to go, then I wouldn’t have gone. Mostly because my Mom has been going and supporting me, in everything like this that I've been involved in, from Baseball to Football to Drag Racing. For them (her) not to go would have stopped me from going. Not being able to get the time off from work wouldn’t have stopped me, I definitely would have found a way to go. Even to the extreme of quitting my job to go, which I had thought about. Where I worked there were rules about absenteeism that I could have worked around to get the time off without pay, but it would have taken some work on my part to get it done. To me there are only two possible alternate endings. One would be me going without my Girlfriend, but still going. Two would be not going at all because my Parents couldn’t go or just didn’t want to go. The only one that seams feasible to me is the one where my Girlfriend doesn’t go. My parents at that time were always up for a trip somewhere they hadn’t been before. In hind sight I don’t think quitting my job would have been a good plan. I think the emotions of the moment got to me and influenced my decision-making process. Version 1
Hi, this is the fifth installment of my blog for my English Composition I class. For this assignment, I had to read and annotate seven different articles, which I’ve listed below with the links for each one. Five help with this writing genre and the other two, Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway) and My Name is Margaret (Maya Angelou), we had to connect an emotional theme from them to a theme in our narrative scenes. I think my scene connects to Hills Like White Elephants because of the uncertainty and excitement I see in both stories. I’m not one to relive sad times in my life, so writing about those emotions isn’t what this blog is about for me. This is from the Spring of 2008 when I was invited to "Hot Rod Magazine’s “Pump Gas Drags.” This scene takes you through my process of applying for, and being accepted to participate in the Pump Gas Drags.
In early Spring of 2008, I was at work and we were on lunch and a friend of mine handed me the Hot Rod Magazine from January ‘08 and saw the advertisement for the Pump Gas Drags ,and was debating on whether I should send in the paperwork to see if I get invited. Hundreds of people send in their paperwork but only 75 are invited. The other reasons for the hesitation on sending in the paperwork was because this would be the first time we had traveled as far away as Memphis, Tennessee. Up to this time the furthest we had traveled was to Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pennsylvania, mostly we had stayed within Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. Also, this was during the time when the gas prices were $4 and up for a gallon, and gas would be a definite factor on whether we would go. Before I sent in my application, I would have to talk to my Girlfriend and my parents, (racing is a family thing for me) and see if I could get the time off from work. I was on my way home from work to talk to my Girlfriend and see what she thought about the idea of going to Memphis and racing. When I arrived home she wasn’t home from work yet, so I had time to think of how I was going to pitch the idea of driving almost 1000 miles, dragging my car and all of the equipment we use while racing, plus luggage and food, and coordinate our time off from work. I thought it shouldn’t be that difficult to get her on board with the idea. When she got home, I waited a little while to tell her about my idea. She made dinner and we talked a little about our respective days and when we adjourned to the living room to relax and watch TV, I felt the time was right and explained my idea. I opened with, “What do you think about us going to Memphis for the “Pump Gas Drags?” My girlfriend replied, “Um, sure. That’s a really long trip. How are we going to do this? Trailer the car I guess?” I said,“Yep, how else are we going to get it there, load it on a plane?” She replied with, “Ok smart ass. I guess your parents would go too? I mean I guess they would definitely want to go. How are they going to feel about it?" I replied, “Well, I’ll have to talk to them about it. I don’t think I’ll be chosen by Hot Rod Magazine to go, so it’s probably not going to pan out.” A few days later, I spoke to Mom and Pop about it. They were on board with the idea. My Mom was excited to go, it was somewhere she hadn’t been. My Dad was thinking like me, and said, “You won’t get invited to go, it's just how our luck runs.” I took the leap, and I filled out the application and had my girlfriend email it to Hot Rod along with pictures of my Chevelle. I really didn’t hold out much hope that I’d ever hear back from them, so I just went on with my everyday life at that point. One morning, my girlfriend texted me while I was at work. The text read “call me as soon as you can." I called her and what followed was a huge shock. My girlfriend, in an excited but quiet voice, said, “DUDE, WE’RE GOING TO MEMPHIS!” I wasn’t sure if what I thought I heard was in fact what was said. In my state of shock I asked, “Seriously? No way!” My Girlfriend replied, “I’m dead serious Bill. I’ll read you the email.” As my girlfriend read me the email, I was still in disbelief. She’s reading off deadlines for submitting this and that, and of course there’s a deadline to tell them you accept the invitation. My best friend at work is standing next to me hearing my end of this conversation, and is motioning to me as if to say, “What’s going on?” I hung up with my girlfriend and said to my friend, “I am one of the 75 people out of hundreds who got picked to race in the Pump Gas Drags at Memphis Motor Sports Park.” As the words are coming out of my mouth, I still can’t believe what has just happened. Version 2 Hi, this is the fourth installment of my blog for my English Composition I class. For this assignment, I had to read and annotate three articles discussing the writing process. After reading the articles, I had to create a scene where I discuss writing with the authors and use three quotes from each of them. As I am not a coffee drinker, nor do I frequent book stores, and I’m not a social media fan either, so I thought I might try a different setting of where I run into Don Murray, Anne Lammott, and Mary Karr. I used a restaurant that my Girlfriend and I frequent named “Border Café”, not as different as I would have liked but it does the job. I’m pleased that I got the opportunity to read these pieces because it opened my eyes to how writing will always be a constant process, and how you have to push yourself through the stages of writing and revision. I’ve provided links to the articles below and I encourage you to check them out.
On Thursdays my Girlfriend and I go to a restaurant close to our townhouse that’s called Border Café, we go there because the food is excellent, if you like Tex-Mex/Cajun style food, which we do. Last Thursday when we went it was around 6:30pm and it was cold and raining like it had been most of the day, and we were anxious to get inside and get dinner, we were both starving. I was craving their fajitas and stressing about the blog due this week for my English Composition class which I should at least had some ideas for, instead I’m having the normal questions running through my head. How do I start writing? What should I even write about? What place should I use for the setting of the story? Can I just push it off to the last minute and pray I get it done in time? I’ve never been the best at writing, especially story telling it’s one of the genres in writing that I’m not good with letting other people read. After I have all these thoughts go through my head, I decide to not think about it until after we’re done dinner. I open the door for my Girlfriend and we go in the hostess seats us and we open our menus and begin to decide what we’re getting for dinner. We talk about what each of us is interested in getting for dinner. The waitress comes and asks if we are ready to order and we do. But during this process I over hear someone to right saying “We have to respect the student, not for his product, not for the paper we call literature by giving it a grade, but for the search for truth in which he is engaged.” I turned to see who was speaking and to my surprise it was Don Murray, I recognized him from his picture in the readings for my English Composition class. He was discussing his ideas on the writing process with two women who seemed to be very intrigued by the point he was trying to make, while enjoying their meals. I sat and listened to them for a minute as one of the women responded “Writing is painful, it’s ‘fun’ only for novices, the very young, and hacks” which was another phrase that I swore I had heard before. Then I realized that the two women he was with were Mary Karr and Anne Lamott! I made eye contact with Don Murray, he was sitting on an angle across from me, and asked him “Are you Don Murray?” and he responded ”Yes I am”, and I responded “I thought that was you“ and he proceeded to introduce Mary Karr and Anne Lamott to me. I began to tell them that I was taking an English Composition class and was stressing about writing this blog, and explained it to them. The three looked at each other and soon broke into huge smiles, at that point I knew I could ask them about the writing process. I asked “I thought writing was something either you were good at or you weren’t.” and once I said it, I knew I was in trouble. Anne responded with “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” To which Don said “The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting.” I got the feeling they all agreed but Anne leaned forward and said “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something, anything, down on paper.” I was in shock at the fact that I was talking to three writers who are well known and accomplished each in their own right sitting here talking to me about the writing process. At that point Mary replied with, “The idea is to get some scenes down. Let your mind roam down some alleys that may land in dead ends—that’s the nature of the process.” Thinking about what I was experiencing, I wished I was better prepared for this eventful evening but who knew I would go to dinner and run into theses three. I had to ask them about revision so I posed the question “Is revision a necessary evil, do you have to revise your work more than once. Do all authors need to revise?” Mary answered this question quickly with ”Other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision, the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality.” I had one more question I wanted to ask before our dinner came and it looked like the three of them were getting ready to leave. “What is your opinion on the way writing is taught to students?” I asked them. Don responded with “Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness.” Anne chimed in with "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird." To which Don chuckled and added “And once you can look at your composition program with the realization you are teaching a process, you may be able to design a curriculum which works” at that point our dinner had arrived. I thanked them for their help and for answering my questions, and we said our goodbyes. We ate our dinner, and my night ended with me feeling much better about writing this blog I felt inspired and I with a few ideas on how to write it and what to write about. Plus, I had the opportunity to meet such a hospitable group of writers. Hi, this is the third installment of my blog for my English Composition I class. For this post, i read A Fable for the Living and then write a letter to my author self and connect the theme from A Fable for the Living to my letter. I wrote my letter with the mindset that it maybe a letter that I would stick in the ground to see if I got a response from my author self and if I did get a response what he might say in return to my letter. To understand this blog better I recommend that you too read A Fable for the Living.
To Whom it May Concern, This is a letter to the part of me that is considered my author self, he has been beat down and tormented for over 30 years, and now he may have a glimmer of hope, a small chance to be let out of his dungeon of loneliness to make an appearance for this English Composition course that I have thrown the two of us into, so I can slowly tear open the door to let my author self come to life again. To you I would like to apologize for treating you this way and not really using you for much over the years. I didn’t have a lot of use for you then, but now because I’m taking us on this adventure through an English Composition course, I hope we can work together to grow and develop what we didn’t have for decades, a relationship that benefits us both. Me reading and understanding what we have to write in the blogs and projects for this course, and you helping me with my ability to write in a manner that I would be proud for anyone to read. My plan is to work with you get over my fear of writing for other people to read, which as you know has been hindering us for years. I’ve always been self conscious about what I write for others to read and I think it’s because I thought others wouldn’t like or understand what I wrote. Next the ability to write and use the vocabulary that we know we have, but when we’re writing, the words escape us and I settle for what comes to mind easiest and not search for a word or words that fit with what I’m writing. Therefore, I will try to get my vocabulary up to where we need it to be, so we are able to write like we should be able to. Also, to get my thought process, when I am writing, to be more like that of a writer. All three of these things should help us on our journey towards the end of this course and beyond. I hope you can forgive me for the time you were silenced and sitting alone in the dungeon of my mind, hopefully now you will be able to see the light of day more than you have in the past. It would be remarkable if after all this time we could be reacquainted and work together to be much better than we were before with each other and work together to write more than before. Please accept my apology and I hope to here more from you in the coming assignments. Sincerely, William Hi, this is the second installment of my blog for my English Composition I class in which I will discuss a few things, mostly dealing with the creation and design of this web site, and also the subject of multimodal and how it could be applied to our work in this class, but mostly on our web sites. Most of the material that I used to write this blog can be found in the web sites that I have linked below.
I am creating a multimodal website to create a portfolio using process and product for a holistic assessment of my writing. This post could also help inform readers how to use the information in the websites I referenced to create a multimodal website of their own. Ball and Charlton define "multimodal" writing as any combination of the five modes through which meaning is made, makes a multimodal text, every piece of communication that a human composes, use more than one mode." Thus, all writing is multimodal. The idea of all writing being multimodal is an idea that I agree with, because if you think about the five modes through which meaning is made, you use two or more every time you write anything. The five modes through which to make meaning, arranged in order of importance:
Another pair of writers, Borton and Huot have a different list of criteria for assessing multimodal composition. The criteria are: BORTON AND HUOT: SAMPLE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CRITERIA The composition conveys a specific purpose. The composition identifies a specific audience—either explicitly or implicitly. The composition employs a tone consistent with the designated purpose and audience. The composition is organized around an appropriate controlling idea. This idea is clear to readers/viewers/listeners. The composition uses transitions to guide the audience effectively from one set of ideas to another. The composition synthesizes relevant information from research efforts with composer’s own ideas and arguments—in a way that increases the rhetorical effectiveness of the whole. The composition uses detailed description, examples, sound, music, color, and/or word choice to convey ideas in an effective and appropriate way to the audience. The criteria that Borton and Huot have proposed sound almost the same as criteria used to assess a traditional print essay, except for the last one, which talks about the use of sound, music and color to convey ideas. These obviously cant be used in a traditional print essay because there is no way embed sound or music in a print essay, not like you would do with anything having to do with a modern multimodal assignment. As to the design aspect of this blog, we were asked to read “It's All C.R.A.P: Four Principles of Design” and to explain what C.R.A.P. stands for so here it is:
Hi, and welcome to the first blog of many for my English Composition class. This first assignment is a questionnaire known as the Proust Questionnaire, which has its origins in a parlor game popularized by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature. I found this a little difficult to fill out due to the intrusive nature of some of the questions, but it was interesting to have to think about some of them, I discovered some things about myself because of these questions. Things that I normally wouldn’t have to think about.
The Proust Questionnaire __1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness? My idea of perfect happiness would be to wake up every day in a different state at a different drag strip with my mobile home pulling my two-car trailer traveling around the country drag racing, without the pressures of life weighing on me. Also, the resources to live freely without the hassles of having to work for somebody else and the worries of not having money to do what I need or want to do. __2.__What is your greatest fear? The thing I fear the most is being broke and homeless, with no chance of rebounding from whatever situation put me there. __3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? The thing I deplore in myself is my shyness around people I don’t know and not being as outgoing as other people. __4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others? Most people I’ve encountered in this part of the world are always quick to want to argue about whatever the subject maybe. Most aren’t hospitable, most think there is an ulterior motive to a stranger speaking to them. __5.__Which living person do you most admire? Anyone who has the drive and desire to work for themselves and is successful while doing it. __6.__What is your greatest extravagance? My greatest extravagance is my Race Car. I bought it in 1997 finished building it in 2000 and have been racing it, fixing it and updating it ever since. __7.__What is your current state of mind? Calm but with an underling feeling of anxiousness. __8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue? For me it would have to be friendliness. __9.__On what occasion do you lie? I don’t normally but on the rare occasion I do it would in a situation where I was trying to keep the peace. __10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance? Right now, I would say my weight, if I lost about 20lbs I would feel a lot better about myself. __11.__Which living person do you most despise? Donald Trump __12.__What is the quality you most like in a man? Humor __13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman? Honesty __14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse? I don’t know __15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life? Cars and making them fast. __16.__When and where were you happiest? There are a couple things that I’m the happiest while doing. One is racing my car. Speed is like a drug to me it puts a huge smile on my face. Two is traveling to places I haven’t been before. __17.__Which talent would you most like to have? There are three talents I would like to have one would be to write with confidence, to draw and the other would be to play the guitar __18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? The biggest thing would be to be more assertive. __19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement? Building my car from the ground up with information that I read in books and magazines. __20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? A car __21.__Where would you most like to live? I don’t have a specific place just anywhere there aren’t a lot of people and my nearest neighbor is far enough away so I can’t hear or see them. __22.__What is your most treasured possession? My car, I have a lot of blood, sweat and tears in it. It took me over three years to build it and it’s the one thing I can say I built myself. __23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Being homeless, jobless and feeling like there is no way up from there. __24.__What is your favorite occupation? Metal fabricator. __25.__What is your most marked characteristic? Using my hands when I talk __26.__What do you most value in your friends? Honesty and trust __27.__Who are your favorite writers? Don’t have any. __28.__Who is your hero of fiction? Spiderman __29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with? Haven’t really thought about it. __30.__Who are your heroes in real life? First responders, and those who gave their lives for our freedom __31.__What are your favorite names? Never really thought to much about it. __32.__What is it that you most dislike? People who steal, weather it be identity or material. __33.__What is your greatest regret? My biggest regret is that I didn’t go back to school sooner than this. __34.__How would you like to die? Happy and wealthy and the last of my family to go. __35__What is your motto? Life is short, live it like every day is your last, because it could be. |
Bill LewisThis is where I try to make meaning with the assignments for my English Composition class. Archives
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