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Thlog week 10

Sadly, this is my last thlog this quarter. So, rather than write a summary about what I have learnt this week, I choose to write a brief wrap-up about what I have learnt from this class , which I think should be a good preparation for my final portfolio.

There were too many things I did not know until I took Writing 2, such as "genres", "moves" and "rhetoric". But in this blog, I want to focus on the development I gained from three writing projects (WPs).

Compared to other two WPs, WP1 is less time-consuming and demanding; however; it taught me a important lesson about structure. In WP1, I divided my paper traditionally into five parts: introduction, argument 1, 2, 3 and conclusion. I think most people were encouraged to write a critical think essay in such way in high school. Nonetheless, as Zack commented, one-page long paragraphs are a strong representation of my article's weak organization and structure. Also, the biggest drawback of a super long paragraph is that it increases the difficulty for readers understanding my paper. To imagine your ideas as a huge cake. When you cut it into multiple pieces, it is easier for readers to digest each of them. But as a whole, no one can devour it entirely. Therefore, after WP1, I always intentionally avoid writing everything in a super long paragraph.

WP2 is a much harder one. We were required to compare the differences between academic and non-academic writings. Two types of genre are so different, yet to specify how they differ from each other in a concise manner is also so difficult. To decide what to cover and what to leave aside is an art of writing. Focusing on a specific thing, and then you can make the analysis specific and strong, whereas, splitting your analyses all over the place, none of them can make a sound, Sometimes, less is more. 

From my perspective, WP3 is the hardest as well as the most fun project. we were asked to transform an academic paper into two non-academic genres targeting on younger and older audience respectively. I chose two genres, instructional article and meeting agenda, that I never had haven any experience on, and hence while I was writing them I never stopped asking myself what "moves"I could make to persuade my audience. Although this project was not sufficient to train myself to be a qualified author of instructional articles or meeting agendas, it did provide me with an opportunity to practicing writing for intended audience. To adjust your writings to meet the expectation of different groups of audience, I think, was what this project taught us. This skill will benefit us now and in the future.

WP3

WP3

Summary:

The scholarly paper I transformed is Big Rubrics and Weird Genres: The Futility of Using Generic Assessment Tools Across Diverse Instructional Contexts. In this article, the author attempted to argue that generic rubrics for writing and public speaking are unproductive and theoretically misguided and therefore they should be replaced with discipline-specific rubrics. Moreover, it demonstrates that the education purpose of the assessment to academic writings and oral communications cannot be properly accomplished without the consideration of the context. To convey this idea, I transform the original article into two pieces targeting on younger and older audience respectively: a meeting agenda for departmental faulty with respect to developing discipline-specific rubrics and an instructional article for students of design major about how to present their designs. The meeting agenda focuses on embodying the author’s support to the application of discipline-specific writing rubrics, while the instructional article is meant to reflect the complexity of pedagogy of public speaking, which is argued by author in the section “Design Critiques as a ‘Weird’ Oral Genre”.

             

             1.Click here for my older audience translation.

             2.Click here for my younger audience translation.

Self-analysis:

             For older audience. I wrote a meeting agenda. As Laura Bolin Carroll asserted in Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis, “[Authors should] make all sorts of choices based on their audience.” (49) Considering the audience of this meeting agenda is the faculty in a college, the tone of my agenda should be formal. Therefore, I avoided any use of slangs or informal words in my agenda. Also, since the exigence of a meeting agenda is to inform the faculty of the approaching meeting, each message should be presented in a clear and direct way. To reflect this rhetorical situation, I also arranged my agenda in an organized format—categorizing each message and listing them in order of priority. At the very beginning, I decided to highlight the most essential information—when and where the meeting will be held—so that the reader will not omit these information due to incaution. Then, I decided to mention the background information of my meeting right below: answering what group of people the WEC program targeting on and the goal of this specific WEC meeting. In another words, it was meant to address “So what” and “Who cares” questions (Graff, 96). Along with “preparation for meeting”, these information are supposed to be aware of by the faculty before the meeting, therefore they are listed before the agenda item.

In the real agenda (the part describing what will be done in the meeting), I numbered each activities and questions that will be held or discussed during the meeting for the sake of showing a clear and organized structure. The time allocated for each section or specific activity is explicitly stated at the end of each line. Such move was meant to inform the audience of the predetermined schedule for the meeting. Overall, these “moves” contributed to a clear-formatted agenda, aligning with McCloud’s idea of flow (157), which visually navigates readers through and between each important information they need for the upcoming meeting.

            Although due to the constraint of the genre I cannot directly echo the author’s argument, the objectives of each section and the activities of this imagined meeting is closely related to the author’s idea of applying discipline-based wiring rubrics. In meeting, faculty members are asked to bring, analyze three student writing samples from different departments, and afterwards contemplate through five questions with respect to how to develop a discipline-based writing rubric. I think these activities support the author’s idea that writing expectation for a same genre may vary among different fields as well as embody the educational value of a discipline-based assessment system which the author advocates for.

            The second transformation of my scholarly piece is geared for younger audience, especially students of design (or design-related) major. It is an instructional article teaching students how to present their designs. Different from a meeting agenda, the tone of an instructional article is usually very conversational. To illustrate this feature, throughout the article, I used both first- and second-person language so that the audience can feel as if the instructor (author) is talking to them. Just as Janet Boyd pointed out, “Choosing how to express your meaning is every bit as important as the message itself” (87). The use of conversational expressions, as a convention of instructional articles, makes the article relatable and understandable.  Also, as Losh and Alexander’s comics reflected, taking appropriate tone and voice can contribute to a successful writing identity, which will help the author effectively communicate with their intended community (114-126). The audience of an instructional article is students, and therefore writing as an instructor can further effective communications with them as well as enhance the credibility of author. In my piece, I imitated the tone and voice an instructor talks to his students by writing many sentences in imperative mood in order to establish author’s identity as an instructor/teacher.  In addition, for the same purpose, I mentioned the name of the author and his position (although they are faked) right below the title because I think a design professor is more qualified than anyone else to write this article.

Instructional articles tend to attract the audience at the beginning, introducing what the article will instruct. With regard to this convention, I wrote a straightforward title and addressed “Who cares” and “So What” questions in the introduction. In addition to an informative introduction, Instructional articles are also structured in an informative manner. In my article, the main body, as stated in the title, consists of five individual tips. Each tip is numbered and serves as a sub-title dividing the main body into five parts. This structure is very popular among those instructional articles we can read on internet or in magazines (which is also the specific type of instructional article I want to translate to), so structuring my article in the same way may increase the likeness of my piece to them. For educational purpose, I wrote one-sentence paragraphs. Such move can highlight important information as well as make the entire article seem more organized.  Besides, at the end of each tips, I wrote one sentence to sum up the gist of each tip. It is a convention of instructional articles because summaries are convenient for students to memorize.

            From my perspective, an instructional article is a suitable genre that can effectively bear the original information of this part of article. Also, by teaching people what they should be careful about during a presentation, such as concepts, credibility and arguments, it reflects the main idea of the author in the section, “Design Critiques as a ‘Weird’ Oral Genre”, that the pedagogy of public speaking is much more complicated than teaching students to achieve some simplified goals (such as to inform or to persuade). Moreover, as I wrote in the introduction of this article, “the benchmark for a good presentation varies among different fields”, it indirectly echoes the author’s main idea that the evaluation of oral communication should take context into account as well.

            As Losh and Alexander wrote, “Writing means always changing – changing to meet the needs of different audiences!” (144). The translation of genre is all about writing to appeal to your new audience. Therefore, the process of translating one genre to another is similar to re-carve a sculpture: the appearance is changed to meet your new audience’s expectations, whereas the material constitutes your sculpture is still the same.  In my opinion, the idea author wants to convey is the material he carves and re-shapes. What sculpture will it be (what genre he will write in)? It is all dependent on the audience.

Work Cited:

Anson, Chris M., Deanna Dannels, and Amy Gaffney. "Big Rubrics and Weird Genres: The Case Against Generalized Rubrics"" Broughton Hall 3217, Raleigh. 28 Apr. 2010. Lecture.

Boyd, Janet. "Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)." Writing Space: Readings on Writing. Vol. 2. Parlor Press, 2011. 87-100. Writing 2 Reader.

Carroll, Laura Bolin. "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps tpward Rhetorical Analysis." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol. 1. Parlor Press, 2010. 45-58. Document.

Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. ""So what?/ Who Cares?" ." They say/I say the Moves that  

Matter in Academic Writing. New York: Norton, 2010. 92-101.

Losh, Elizabeth M., and Johnathan Alexander. “Writing Identities.” Understanding Rhetoric: A

Graphic Guide to Writing. 114-139. Print.

McCloud, Scott. “Writing with Pictures.” Making Comics. New York: Harper, 2006. 8-55. Print.

Thlog week9

WP3 is definitely the most important item in Week 9’s agenda. During this week, we survived the last Writing Project this quarter (Congratulations!) WP3 is a fun project but also a demanding one. To transform an academic paper to something else is a literature experience I never had before. Therefore, when I worked on WP3, I proceeded with uncertainty and anxiety. Fortunately, we were provided opportunities in classes to share and discuss our questions with other team members. It is always better to solve questions together than doing yourself alone.

I enjoyed writing WP3. I composed two genres I never touched: instructional article and meeting agenda. The most difficult part of writing them was that you did not know where to start and what to writing. For example, I attempted to writing to an interesting opening for my instructional article, however, the more interesting you wanted it to be, the less it became. I found that mechanical imitation won’t work because each piece features its own author’s writing style. Forcibly adjusting my style to fit others’ is not an effective way to produce a good work. Therefore, I changed my strategy. Instead of studying how a specific piece was written, I re-placed my focus to conventions and audience. Through considering what conventions of an instructional article are, what its intended audience are, and what moves I can make to persuade them, I found where to start and expand my thoughts and writings.

Peer-review workshop is another source I got help from. Sometimes flaws of an article are concealed from the author’s eyes, whereas they are easily exposed under reader’s examination. In peer-review workshop, my team members gave me a lot of constructive and insightful advices to me that really reduced my work on revision. Polishing writings is an endless work—your writings can always be better—and we don’t need to bear this task alone all the time. Asking for advises from your classmates is a good way to make it easier for you (you gain efficiency).

Thlog Week8

This week is a busy week, and so will be next week and next-next week because the winter quarter is about to end but we still have a lot of stuff not done yet, such as WP3 and portfolio. Despite these upcoming tasks make me feel overwhelming, I still feel obligated to quickly review what I have learnt this week.

One key concept of our WP3, from my perspective, is transformation. To transform one genre, in WP3 scholarly paper, to some genres else is not as easy as I thought, especially when you are also required to change it for two different populations of audience. After I finished my PB3A, I realized that transformation does not simply mean reformation; it also means re-creation and invention. When I started to plan my WP3, I found that I cannot just rearrange some sentences or only replace the objective tone with an emotional one to make the original piece a new thing. To transform it is far more complicated than that. I have to create something new to meet the convention of the intended genre the article will be altered to. I have to make certain “moves” that appeal to the audience of the new genre instead of the old one. This is why I think such work is more like invention. You take materials all from the academic article you choose but you also add something new, change something inside, and reform its physical appearance. When I attempted to transform one genre to another, I just felt as if I was writing a new one.

In addition, the process of transforming, I think, is related to the cartoon we were assigned to read this week, “writing identity”. When you transform a genre, oftentimes, you, as a writer, take a new identity because your intended audience is changed as well. Putting on someone’s costume and thinking in the same way as he does, I guess, will cause us to make same “moves” a real writer will do. Therefore, thinking about “writing identity” may help us make a better transformation. 

PB3A

The main argument of my article, “Big Rubrics and Weird Genres”, is that generic rubrics for writing and public speaking are unproductive and theoretically misguided and therefore they should be abandoned. In section “contextual dependencies in evaluation”, to prove this point, authors surveyed different departments in two universities and illustrated that, even for a same genre, different features of student’s paper are expected by instructors in different disciplines and therefore using a generic rubrics cannot provide a reflective assessment. During this process, authors recorded faculty members’ opinions about their writing expectations in WEC (Writing-Enriched Curriculum program) meetings in different departments to demonstrate that writing standards vary among different fields. Especially, authors provided many writing criteria from the Political Science Department in order to compare with other departments. I think this part can be transformed into a discussion/meeting agenda for students about how to write a research paper. The goal of this transformation is to reflect the argument that a good rubric should discipline-based. To accomplish this goal, I have two different plans:1) write two agendas for students of two different classes, political science and physics. By comparing two agendas, the audience can notice that even for an exactly same genre, the requirement and assessment vary among different fields. 2)I can combine two agendas into a bigger one concerning how to write a good research paper in general. In this bigger agenda, the purpose is to inform students that the benchmark for a good research paper differs in different disciplines. The latter plan can more directly embody the author's idea but the former one is easier to carry out and therefore more likely to be persuasive. 

             I think the transformation into an discussion agenda is an idea closely related to the topic of this scholarly piece and this section, “contextual dependencies in evaluation” , because it illustrates that a specific discipline may require students to perform analysis from specific aspects or by specific analytic tools.

            For older audience, I plan to write an instructional article, like those we can read on internet or magazines:” How to Lose Weight Fast” or “10 Things You Should Never Do When You’re Angry”. In section “design critiques as a ‘weird’ oral genre”, authors analyzed the design rubric used to evaluate a presentation, which demonstrated a landscape architecture design, conducted by a student called Bethany. In the article, authors thoroughly interpreted each key criterion in the design critique form, mentioned Bethany’s grade and explained the reason in terms of the presentation's content and her behaviors. I think this part can be transformed into an instructional article addressing how to present your design. Since authors have clearly stated each important element contributing to a good presentation, I just need to change tone and wording to make its style similar to an instructional article, such as using “you” to refer to the audience. Also, authors described many Bethany’s behaviors that caused her to achieve a poor grade and some elements her presentation lacked. I can make use of these information to transform them into multiple tips, “things that you should never do in your presentation”, which are very magazine-y.
               From my perspective, an instructional article is a suitable genre that can effectively bear the original information of this part of article. Also, by teaching people what they should be careful about during a presentation, such as responses to the audience, visuals or the argument, it reflects the main idea of the author in this section that the pedagogy of public speaking is much more complicated than teaching students to achieve some simplified goals(such as to inform or to persuade);it should be discipline-based.  

Thlog week 7

Once again, we had a very happy one-writing-class week (only because we can spend more time on WP2). Although the time of our class is halved, the amount of work awaiting us there is not (what we have done is only WP2 draft). During the only class this week, we still had some fun activities and the useful peer review workshop, which really helped me revise and improve my WP2. So, as usual, according to my own experience, let’s talk about them.

The mind map is very interesting. I remember I went over this concept in my World Music class last year, so I know to draw the idea out of our mind is a very useful approach to assist our writing. However, sometimes, I would rather to write an outline than to draw a mind map. I think, outline and mind map, to some extent, are equivalent to each other. They both do the same thing, so choosing which one is totally up to people’s preference. I am not good at drawing, so sketching an outline before starting to write seems to be a more viable plan for me.

Socrative. Com is a great website, and so is the comparing opening sentence activity. I have to admit that I was happy to see that some anonymous classmates liked mine (despite it was not one of the most favorite ones). By discussing the top two opening sentences, I found that using a question is a good strategy to grab the audience’s attention. Also, I found a common feature between these two articles was that they both attempted to resonate with the audience. Through interacting with the audience by questioning or using second personal language, they became more persuasive.

At last, I very appreciated peer review workshop. So helpful that I do not need to find where to start the revision by myself. My group member gave me the message. After all, a reader is more qualified than the author himself to evaluate the work. Through their eyes, I saw flaws of my paper, which would be very likely to be ignored by myself. WP2 is due next Monday, so good luck everyone. 

Thlog week 6

Since WP2 draft is on the horizon, during this week, we learnt very hard to prepare ourselves for this upcoming new challenge. We went over various topics and had very fun activities. Among them, I found three ones very helpful to me.

The first one is “replacing says”. Oftentimes, I was struggling with finding another word substituting word says. I realized that the lack of diversity of word choice will negatively affect the quality of my writing and undermine the interest of the reader to read. If I always use word says or argues to introduce a quote, it will definitely cause the reader to doubt my intelligence and therefore damage the rhetoric of my writing. But fortunately, thanks to this activity, I have learnt a great number of words that can express the same meaning of say.

“Using brackets” permanently answers a long standing question in my mind—why people use brackets in a quote?  I learnt that brackets can be used in a quotation to modify words and add context. I think to properly and actively use brackets in our quotes can improve the efficiency of using resources. In WP2, we are going to quote many things, and using brackets to adjust a quote will definitely contribute to a stronger argument and analysis.

Last but not the least, I love to review Sandy’s paper. She wrote a strong WP2 paper and reading it gave me many clues about how to write my own WP2. Reviewing her paper was a very good practice on analyzing moves and style. Upon spotting her moves, I started to think why she chose it and its effect. By this contemplation, I had a better understanding on what is a move and found that authorial moves are related to conventions. Analyzing the relationship between conventions and moves sounds very interesting. Also, her article shows some flaws that we might have in our own piece as well, such as lack of direct textual evidence. It is good to notice these problems ahead so that we can avoid them in our WP2s.

PB2B

Academic writing is not only a process of critical thinking but also a process of making different moves. After revisiting articles we have read so far and re-reading them like a writer, we can find many moves the author make on purpose. In the following, we will discuss why the author may have chosen these moves and their effectiveness.

·        Introducing Quotations: “Lloyd Bitzer wrote the following:..”(Dirk 19)/”Devitt argues that…”(Dirk 21)

Using quotations is a very common strategy to support the author’s own argument. The reason is very obvious. The author wants to increase the credibility of his own piece by borrowing similar opinions from other reputable scholars. Also, articles only containing words from the author are subject to bias, whereas articles having a powerful use of a variety of quotations seem objective and plausible. Therefore, using quotation is a very effective way to establish the reliability of article.

·        Signaling Who Is Saying What: “Anne Freadman, a specialist in genre theory, points out that …”(Dirk 19)/”Perhaps the shift started when the rhetorician Lloyd Bitzer wrote the following:..”(Dirk 19)

Similarly, the author intentionally mentioning who is the owner of words he quotes is meant to increase the reliability of the quotation itself. If Anne Freadman were a physicist and Lloyd Bitzer were only a middle school student, do their quotation still seem powerful? The answer is definitely “No!” because physicist and middle school student are not even related to topic of genre and their words about genre are not consultable. Therefore, pointing out who is saying what is very critical when we using a quotation.

·        Explaining Quotations:” In other words, Bitzer is saying that…”(Dirk 20)

Paraphrasing the quotation is a process of establishing the connection and transition between your quotations and your argument. Quotations are not isolated. It has its own function under a certain context—supporting an opinion, introducing a new one and etc. When we come back from the quotation, paraphrasing it can help the article smoothly transit from the stage of listing evidences to the stage of analysis. In this course, author also answers the question why this quotation support his idea, connecting the resource back the article.  Moreover, since readers may skip the quotation, explaining quotations makes sure that they don’t get lost.

·        Introducing What “They Say”:” When pressed, for instance, most academics will tell you that..” (Graff 92)

This move introduces an idea which will be contradicted by author in the following article. I think such move can emphasis the importance of author’s point of view. By proving that what people commonly do/think is wrong, author successfully grabs the attention of his reader and convinces them that they should read through this article because they might be one of the people who are doing/thinking wrong.  This move is very effective when we are attempting to refute a standard (but may be incorrect) view.

            

·        Agreeing and Disagreeing Simultaneously:” Though this statement is clear and easy to follow, it lacks any indication that anyone needs to hear it” (Graff 96)

Disagreement comes with agreement bringing objectivity. Denying what is wrong while acknowledging what is right indicates that author’s judgement is unbiased. Also, this move highlights the importance of author’s argument. In this case, it implies that “who cares” has the priority to be concerned over the clearness of a statement.

·        Question and Answer:” So why was I talking about country songs? I think that using such references can help you to see, in a quite concrete way, how genres function.”(Dirk 18)

Such way to write is meant to give readers a feeling that the author is having a personal conversation with you. The tone become less formal and less didactic when we pose a question then answer it because such casual way to talk usually occurs in our daily conversations. Using “Question and Answer” brings the author and his argument closer to the reader; but it should be utilized with caution because it is not appropriate in academic writing. In non-academic writing, whether or not using it is totally dependent on genre and personal preference.

·        Bullet Shooting: using bullets to make something stand out.

The author uses bullet to separate some ideas of examples from the main paragraph for the sake of clearness or highlighting. As I used in this blog, this move makes your piece seem organized and easy to follow. Also, Instead of squeezing everything together into lines and paragraphs, using bullet to make something stand out is refreshing to the reader. Highlighting what you think is important and make sure readers clearly understand your point of view is the primary goal of a communication. This move contribute to both, and hence it is very effective.

·        Laughing First: using joke as the opening.

There are many strategies to start an article, but using joke is not an orthodox one. It depends on the topic. If we are talking about a heavy topic, such as warfare and death, trying to grab readers’ attention by using joke seems unadvisable. However, in most case, this move draws readers’ attention really quickly.

·        Question Shotgun: “All writing is conversational. So what? Who cares? Why does any of this matter? (Graff 92)

The author poses a series of questions which is essentially related to his main argument at the beginning. Leaving them unanswered is meant to encourage readers to read through the article and find the answer. These questions serve as the backbone/rope because as the article unfolds, these questions get answered one by one until the end, which is just like a backbone/rope connects each paragraph into a whole.

·        Slang Sling:” If you use any kind of slang words, you, too, use jargon, but if you studied these words in a book, they are probably not very hip..” (Janet 89)

Article is conversational. Relating context, the author uses a slang, hip, here because he is addressing a topic about slang and jargon; using a slang can give readers a good example about what is a slang. Regardless of context, making good use of slangs can make an appeal to those who speak slang as well. However, for those who do not know slangs, use of them is not an effective way to communicate.

Work Cited:        

Carroll, Laura Bolin. "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps tpward Rhetorical Analysis." WritingSpaces: Readings on Writing. Vol.1. Parlor Press, 2010. 45-58. Document.

Dirk, Kerry."Navigating Genres." WritingSpaces: Readings on Writing. Vol. 1.Parlor Press, 2010. 249-262. Document.

Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. “So What?/ Who cares?” They Say/I Say: the Moves that                       Matter in Academic Writing. New York: Norton, 2010. Pp. 92-101.

“Rhetoric.” The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language, Fourth Edition. 2003.                             Houghton Mifflin Company, n.d. Web. 24 July 2009.

Thlog week5

It just feels like in a twinkling that we are already in week 5 now. We are stepping into a new year—according to the Chinese lunar calendar, year 2016 knocks the door at midnight on 2/7—and standing right in the middle of the winter quarter. Maybe it is because we are working so hard that even forget our time is passing J. Anyway, at least it is comforting to find we learn things just as fast as time lapses. Immediately after we turned in our WP1, we jump into the next topic—moves—and WP2 this week.

Moves has many different interpretations in different context. But in writing, I have an inclination to interpret it as decisions. Deciding which word to use, deciding which people to quote, and deciding how to organize the entire article all moves authors can make. I really like the activity that everyone was asked to describe the Rock’s ultimate signature moves, the people’s elbow. By this activity, I realized that the process of recognizing a genre is very similar as describing wrestler’s moves. There is no single movement or gesture making the people’s elbow what it is. Similarly, there is no single convention forming an individual genre. The kicking of right leg, the roars to the crowds, the iron elbow crushing down on opponent’s jugular and etc., they make people recognize the people’s elbow. Likewise, it is a combination of different conventions that contributes to the formation of a certain genre.  In another word, in a certain genre, authors are more likely to make some certain moves. And it links to another topic we went over this week, reading like a writer.

To read like a write is a very efficient way to learn writing and also a very interesting concept. From my perspectives, it is just same as what we have done before, analyzing conventions of a genre, but from a personal view and on a more frequent basis. By thinking of the reason behind each move the author make, we start to question ourselves what rhetorical effect it will achieve and if we will use the same trick or strategy in our own writing. PB2B will address this topic more deeply, and I hope I could pick up some new knowledge about writing while writing PB2B.

PB2A

Last year, I took Earth 10, which is a very interesting course with regard to climate changes in Antarctica. Thanks to this course, I got a chance to read through some research papers analyzing the effect of global warming on Antarctic. Therefore, I decide to pick an Antarctic-related paper to be the subject I am going to dissect and discuss later in this blog. I think it is easier for me to understand and also closer to our lives than any other dull and exhausting academic papers.

Testing Paradigms of Ecosystem Change under Climate Warming in Antarctica (Testing Paradigms) is the title of this scholarly peer reviewed academic paper. The title, as many other papers’ titles do, directly address the topic of this paper. Rather than making an ambiguous but inviting title, academic papers always be honest and direct to their audience about what they are going to mention. The authors of academic papers, undoubtedly, are those scholars in related fields, and so are the audience. Using jargons, such as “paradigms of change” in this case, can further a precise and concise communication between them, quickly distinguishing the paper itself from hundreds of thousands of other papers that address disparate themes. For laypeople, the secondary audience, words such as “Antarctica” and “Climate Warming” at least indicate and help them understand the content of such a highly scholarly article. Also, academic study is a very serious domain, where objectivity and scrupulousness are highly appreciated. Under such context, or constraint, a brief and clear title is more suitable than a fancy and word-playing one. The certain format is also a convention of academic papers. Each section is laid out one by one in a fixed order: abstract, introduction, materials and methods (experiments), and then results and discussions, and eventually reference. The exigence of paper is usually mentioned in abstract as well as introduction. In Testing Paradigms, the exigence is clearly stated in abstract—“large-scale mechanistic explanations…may not account for complex spatio-temporal processes…we suggest that our network approach to evaluating a recent and widely cited paradigm of change… could be broadly applied.” (Melbourne-Thomas, 1) The exigence is crucial to an academic paper because researchers have to respond to something they deem worth searching. If they are only echoing the same opinions or findings their predecessors had already discovered many years ago, the entire paper is going to be meaningless because there is nothing worth  researching. This is the reason why these scholars are very willing to mention the motivations of their research at the very beginning.

Another convention is the tone and diction. In Testing Paradigms, the first personal perspective, “we”, are employed throughout the paper. We can feel that the discourse to the audience is conveyed in a way like giving a presentation. The communication is one-sided and does not expect any replies but hearing. The tone is formal and objective, and words, such as “evaluate”, “formulate”, “model”, “confirm”, “examine” and “assume”, are broadly used contributing to an unbiased and meticulous expression. As I mentioned above, objectivity and scrupulousness will never be considered redundant or excessive in academic field; hence the tone and diction contributing to these two attributes become typical and repeatedly emphasized among academic pieces. I think they are the most important aspects of a scholarly piece.

Look back at Testing Paradigms, the question posed by this article is straightforward: is the current paradigms of changes accurate? And the approach to test the current established paradigms of changes is to use qualitative network modeling (figure below). As per the description of the authors, such approach is superior over the conventional one because it will account for the complexity and uncertainty which has been omitted by the old approach. The detailed process is very scientific and, well, awesome. By comparing the outcomes of the change of portion of each animal in the ecosystem obtained from different modeling approach, the paper demonstrates that “network models can be used to critically evaluate assumptions about the structure and function of ecological networks and to identify key hypotheses for testing in the future.”(Melbourne-Thomas, 1) In order to understand this paper, we must clearly know what aim of the research is and what the result of research has implied so far, which are all mentioned in abstract and introduction. Therefore, as a layperson, I think introduction and abstract are the most important parts of an academic paper.

Works Cited

Melbourne-Thomas, Jessica, et al. "Testing Paradigms Of Ecosystem Change Under Climate Warming In Antarctica." Plos ONE 8.2 (2013): 1-9. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Jan. 2016.

Thlog week 4

As usual, we had very cool and fun activities in this week’s class. The main focus of this week's activities revolved around WP1, and I learnt a lot from them about how to revise paper.

I really like highlight activity. We were asked to highlight different part of our paper in different colors. By separating different part visually, we could see a clear pattern of how we analyzing. Main idea of each paragraph is supported by multiple evidences. Then following every evidence are analyses. Mr. Zack said words “analysis” was originated from a Greek word meaning “loosen”. It is very interesting concept implying us that to analysis means to rip up open and see what is inside. Although I still have not thoroughly understood what exactly does analysis mean, I think the word “loosen” at least gives me some hints about how to make good analyses. Anyway, learning how to efficiently analyze takes time and effort and we keep writing and analyzing things to hone our analytical skills every day. During highlight activity, I also realized that I should put each main argument  to the very beginning of each paragraph so that the reader can readily follow the flow of my mind. Otherwise, the reader will easily get bored and confused about what I am arguing about.

Another activity I really enjoyed is poemifying our paper. Simply, we just press enter after each period, then we got a poem-formatted paper. Such activity taught me the importance of the sentence length. Only writing long and exhausting sentences makes reading very dull and difficult. Only writing short and quick sentences cannot precisely express writer’s thoughts and discourages the reader with a feeling of discontinuity. A monotonous pattern of sentence length is definitely a bad thing we should avoid. Using a good combination of both long and short sentence can make our paper more interesting.

thlog week 3

The third week only has one class, and in this class we worked very hard on our writing projects, which is very painstaking but fun. The first examined part of our essay is the introduction. Someone said she cannot start writing from the introduction. Very interesting. I always start writing the introduction then body paragraphs, but at the end struggle with the conclusion.  Anyway, writing the conclusion is very different from the introduction, and hopefully we will learn it in the future days. Go back to how to write an introduction. During the stage of peer review, I read some interesting and distinct introductions from other classmates. Someone starts with a hook, just like me, which I think it is the most traditional way to introduce your thesis. Someone just starts with her own mental struggle about choosing which genre to write about. Also, someone starts without any decorations or rhetoric and writes straight about his thesis. Reading these different introductions inspiring me with more ideas about how to write an inviting introduction. In addition to the styles of introduction, I also realized that a good introduction should answer two questions, as mentioned in our reading, “who care” and “so what”. The most common way to address “who care” is to talk to the intended audience. For instance, one of my group member’s topic is sports journal, and he wrote in his introduction that sports journal is the best way for sports fans to follow big events in sports. I think it is what my introduction lacks. ”so what”ness is often embodied by refuting other people’s opinion, in the examples of our reading. But I don’t think it is a very efficient way because we can hardly find a well-known opposite argument to counter every time we write our thesis. Rather than using contradiction, I would emphasis on the importance of thesis itself. In my article, I said knowing how an economic news article is structured will help people read it faster and more productively. I think it is a better way.

Thlog week 2

Over this week, we have learnt a lot of stuff spanning many aspects of writing. We learnt about rhetoric, rhetorical situation, rhetorical analysis, argument, oxford comma, dash and hyphens, and etc. Among them, personally, I found rhetorical situation and dash vs. hyphens are two interesting and meaningful topics, and thus I decide to mainly address them in this thlog.

Rhetoric is, according to our reading, “the way we use language and images to persuade” (pg.38 in reader). So the goal of rhetorical analysis is to dissect the approaches rhetors use to make their argument persuasive. In order to do so, we look at its rhetorical situation, or context. There are three elements constituting the context—namely, exigence, audience and constraints.  Exigence is the reason why we have to write. For instance, we see many charitable ads around us which advocate protecting environments and condemn the industry for releasing excessive CO2 into the atmosphere. Apparently, the appearance of these ads is attributed to the global warming and therefore it is the exigence, the circumstance or condition that asks for a response. Next component is audience—the recipients of the rhetorical message. I think this part shares the same idea of marketing in media, such as advertisements. The advertisement of a commodity always has its intended customers, and only can an advertisement finding and appealing to this certain population be productive and persuasive. The same principle is applied in writing as well. If we want to persuade someone, first of all, we have to know who is the someone. The last piece of rhetorical situation is the constraints. Constraints can be various thing, such as beliefs, attitudes or traditions. “The constraints will affect the way discourse is delivered or communicated.” (pg 41)In our PB1B, we are required to discuss three specific genres, and it is a constraint. I think, rhetorical situation is a core concept when we come to discuss a particular genre and its conventions because it helps you understand how conventions form and work.

In addition to conceptual knowledge, we were also taught some practical knowledge. It will help us clearly structure our sentence that knowing how to employ dashes and hyphen properly. Hyphens combine two single words into a new word, making the meaning understood more readily by readers. Dashes function in a sentence almost the same way as commas, which means breaking thoughts or adding details. However, dashes can invite a pause inside a single sentence separating the whole phrase into several parts. By doing so, dashes make the author’s primary idea flow more fluently. Moreover, if we only use commas, within one sentence, author’s secondary idea will be intertwined together with the main one; using dashes can effectively avoid such confusing situation.

PB1b

First, I want to compare and contrast the conventions of meme and comic because they both convey information not solely in the means of word but also image. The shared convention between comic and meme is that they both use pictures to help reader, the recipient of their arguments, receive more information than could they by just reading. In another words, they both use pictures to communicate with their audience. Although the use of visual literacy is beyond the scope of this article, it is one of the most essential conventions in both genres. In comic, funny images tell readers who is talking and under what context and what emotions. These information may cost a lot of words to explain, whereas, with visual elements, authors is capable of compressing a great amount of information into a few pictures so that readers can get them very quickly. In addition to this feature, comics are also very close to our daily lives. Usually, it just depicts a normal conversation going on between two characters. As an attempt to do so, characters talk in a very casual tone and their topics come from our real lives. However, different from trivial and routine conversations in the real world, the purpose of comics is always to create fun elements and therefore it must possess something unreal to make readers laugh at. For instance, in the comic generator I use, the way characters are drawn itself is funny. Big-eyed, triangle-nosed, characters with exaggerated expression are unreal but funny-looking and hence typical of comics. Similarly, memes use funny pictures for the same reason as comics; but the emphasis is mainly put on evoke a certain emotion or mood. The context and characters are less important factors in meme because meme is one picture, unlike a story-telling comics, pivoting on words it carries but not vice versa. You can see various memes share a same image but rarely a same text, so a certain type of image used to constitute a meme can be a unique convention of memes as long as it has a substantial population of fans. For example, I think many people would like to use the image of a baby holding tight his litter fist to make their meme. In general, there is no story in meme but a picture with one or two texts.  Memes enjoy more freedom on content than comics. Ranging from political satires to indecent jokes, no constraint, except being funny, is imposed on the content of meme.

In contrast to memes and comics, fictions and computer science research papers are more conventional literary genres and easier to dissect their conventions because they only (or mainly) deal with words. When it comes to computer science, what immediately emerges in our mind might be hundreds and thousands of unfathomable programming codes. However, none of them appears in a computer science research paper. Instead, abstract, introduction, process of proving, data and graphs, work related, and citations are conventions of such genre. An abstract is a summary of what researcher have achieved, always situated at the very front of the paper so that readers can determine if they have the need to finish reading the rest. An introduction is followed and addresses the question “who cares?” to its readers by stating their reason of starting this research as well as their approach. The part “work related” addresses the question “so what?” by demonstrating how this research can benefit other studies. Process of proving is accompanied with data and graphs because each time research put a plausible argument at least an evident supporting it must be provided. Besides, research papers never lack graphic evidences because they are more informative and visually appealing than plain numbers and therefore more persuasive. Citations are provided in text as well as at the end of paper in case of plagiarism. It is also worth noted that a formal tone and the first person pronouns such as “we” are employed throughout the paper. Compared to research paper, fictions are less rigid-structured but have more complicated conventions.  According to my mini-fictions generator, first, story took places at an imaginary world where the male protagonist runs into an unexpected adventure, in which he encounter the female protagonist. Afterwards, a villain appears and awaits for being defeated by them. At last, the story culminates in either a satisfying end or a cliffhanger for the sake of prompting a series. Magic, supernatural and high-tech elements are broadly introduced, characters are featured by their distinct personality and plots are fabricated suspenseful and novel. All in all, every convention of fiction serves a common purpose, which is to make story appeal to readers (usually youngsters).

(fiction generator: http://fictiongen.inky.me/)

PB1A

Syllabus is a very familiar genre to every college student, and we encounter it each time we are enrolled in a new course. A syllabus has its own format that helps its writer, the instructor, arrange information he wants to convey as well as helps its reader, students, quickly distill information of their interest. First, the course description is always included in a syllabus. In this part, information, such as instructor’s name and email address, where and when lecture takes place every week and what will we do in the lecture, is provided for the sake of instruction. Students need to be informed of when and how to prepare for the class. Second, there is a list of required material. Same reason as the previous one, this lesson can be better taught if students are better prepared. Third, there are policies of this course. Usually, grading policy is given the most concern of students. How to get an A or A+ in a class always has the highest priority to those top students and how to, at least, pass the class absolutely possesses the same level of importance to those struggling students as well. Aside from grading policy, attendance policy and integrity policy are also frequently-mentioned policies and it is obviously because no one wants their course severely subject to tardiness and cheating. At last, there are sub-titles for every entry I mentioned above. In order to clearly form the syllabus and make it convenient for students to look for information of their interest, it is divided by sub-titles, which are distinguished from its content by font size, bold or italicizing. Content is all dependent on its corresponding sub-title and may contain bullets and numbers making details even more organized. In addition to the format, a formal and somewhat stern tone is also a convention of the syllabus. Because instructor gives respect to students, and in return he demands the same respect students give back.

The context of a syllabus is straightforward: instructor writes a list of things that all students should know about. In such context, its intended audience is every student in the class, and sometimes instructor’s TAs. The purpose of writing a syllabus is to inform its audience of all the facts of this class, to encourage students to study assiduously and to help students have a better academic performance. As a means to accomplish these goals, syllabus is always formatted in a clear and concise way.  Facts about course are written under course description, so everyone can quickly find it and read through. Under grading policy, details, such as time and percentage, about homework, exams and etc. not only tell students what grade they can earn in proportion to their effort but also implies that there are a lot of work laying ahead and hence everyone should work hard and prepare early. Sometimes, instructor will also provide a schedule of the class to persuade students to pace their own study plan well. Besides, a stern tone in a syllabus persuades students to work hard as well because words like “should”, “have to”, and “must” really send out a strong suggestion to students so that they become more responsible and hard-working subconsciously.

In brief, a clean and concise format, course descriptions, policies in this course and a formal and stern tone makes a syllabus a syllabus.

Thlog week 1

First, during this week, we discussed genres in many aspects. Not only did we look at genres in writings but also in other field of art, where genres play an important role as well, such as music and movies. Then I gradually started to realize that how meaningful the concept of genres is. Actually, genres are established and called upon every day in our mind, albeit we do not notice their functions at all. As I was asked questions like what makes a country music a country music or what makes a horror film a horror film, I realized that everyone can name a few features of a country music or a horror film without listening or seeing one because we have already encountered these genres before. We have already know what elements make a music typical of country music and what elements make a horror film horrifying; however, what we do not know is how to use our knowledge about genres purposefully and effectively to work for our writing. According to our reading Navigating Genres, by Kerry Dirk, genres guide writers to write what should be written. In another word, we should write what our audience expects and therefore create an efficient communication between us. In reading, Kerry Dirk fabricated a scenario of kidnapping and writing ransom notes. In class, we went through examples of recommendation letters. Both of them demonstrate the importance of writing in accordance with the rhetorical situation. There are rules about a certain genre, whereas writing requires more than simply following rules and filling blanks. We need to adjust genres to our situation. Also, variations of genre must follow its conventions. These are usually restrictions we should not break. Otherwise, we cannot convey our ideas successfully.

Second, despite we did not spent the majority of time on this topic, it is still what I have learnt: two types of thinking. First-order thinking is what you think subconsciously, just without thinking twice. They are intuitive and creative but subject to unaware assumptions, unconscious prejudices and unexamined points of view. Second-order thinking is to examine what you think. It is to control your mind but not the other way around (like you do in first-order thinking). But the way you think about thinking also hinders your thinking and often induces foolishness. Hence, when write, we need to combine both type of thinking together.

About Me

About Me

Hi, I am Tianyi Ma. Second year and currently a math major student (I am attempting to transfer to computer science major). I am a Chinese international student but before I came here I lived in Boston for two years. So, first I decide to spend a few words on Boston. The downside about Boston is snow. Hugely different from Santa Barbara, winters in Boston are inhospitably cold (at least I think so) and therefore always snow a lot. Tons of snow bring snow days, which I like, but also endless shoveling, which I just hate as much. The upside about Boston is also snow because I can ski and snowboard as much as I want there during the winter. Skiing and snowboarding are both so fun that I have decided to do them every winter since I learnt them in Boston two years ago. So, thank Boston for introducing these two exhilarating sports to me.

Okay, let’s go back to myself and be relevant and really serious. I am black-haired as well as black-eyed, 5 feet 9 inches tall, 20 years old and weigh 143 pounds. I was born in Southern China. My hometown is Nanjing, 190 miles to the west of Shanghai (you must have awareness of where shanghai is approximately at in China). My favorite color is blue and favorite classic music is Pahelbel’s Canon in D (I realize that there are a lot of pop music I like and it is impossible to find out one I like the most, so I hence decide not to mention my favorite pop music). I am a guitar lover and have been playing guitar for 6 years. I started to learn playing classic guitar at first and got my level 10 proficiency certification 3 years ago. Afterwards, I gradually became interested in a disparate but budding style of guitar playing called fingerstyle which is performed by acoustic guitar but not classic guitar. So, if you play guitar also, either classic or acoustic, please feel free to get in touch with me, we can improve our skills together J.

At last, thank you for taking time reading my blog and hope we all have a good time in Writing 2.