PB3A: Shakin' Things Up

My scholarly article is titled “How Students Use Prior Genre” by Reiff and Bawarshi; the goals of the experiment were to determine what genres students already know, to observe how students use this prior knowledge when presented with new writing assignments, and to understand student’s methods of transferring genre into new ideas to fit their needs. Reiff and Bawarshi also endeavored to determine how one may predict if a student would be a “boundary crosser” or a “boundary guarder.” Reiff and Bawarshi defined boundary crossers as “students who engaged in high-road transfer as they repurposed and reimagined their prior genre knowledge for use in new contexts”, and boundary guarders as “students who seemed to guard more tightly and engage in low-road transfer of their prior genre knowledge, even in the face of new and disparate tasks.” They identified these two types of students based on their answers to set questions that answered the research questions presented above. Reiff and Bawarshi categorized students who were less confident in their abilities to identify genre, and were more open to new ideas of genre as boundary crossers. They categorized students who were confident in their ability to define and identify genre, and therefore more set in their ways as boundary guarders.

My idea for transforming this article into a new genre for a younger generation, is fairly simple. I am going to adopt the persona of a “boundary guarder” in this experiment and write a letter home to my parents telling them all about my first few weeks at college. This letter will obviously try to depict a first year student writing home to their parents for the first time, so it will not be entirely about their first year writing class, but their first year all together. A good portion of the letter will be how I would envision a “boundary guarder” answering some of the questions presented in “How Students Use Prior Genre.” I will probably exaggerate the confident persona that is indicative of a “boundary guarder” to ensure that my ideas are clear. I am concerned, however, about the length of this letter. I know that I will need to keep it realistic, and therefore can’t be more than a page and a half (what can I say? I’m a bit wordy). I might make the letter longer than realistic to ensure I present as much information as I need to.

I’m fairly concerned about my idea for transforming the article for an older audience. I decided that I’d like to write the script for a gameshow, similar to something like Family Feud. I have absolutely no idea yet what I would call it, but I’m going to try for something really witty. I think that this genre would be appropriate for an older audience because game shows are only on during the day and the only people who have time during the day to watch game shows would be a much older audience consisting of retired persons. In the game show, the contestant will be given a genre and they will have to imagine different ways that some strategies of that genre could be used, for example the genre of “compare and contrast essays” has strategies that could be used to convince your spouse that it really is a good idea to go on that Alaskan cruise, or to persuade the CEO of a company that your product is better and more efficient than the competitors. I am definitely going to play around with this idea and figure out how to make it less complicated, if anyone has any input on that I’d love to hear it! Any other feedback on any part of my ideas would be most welcome! Thanks J

The Thlog Awakens

Okeydokey, thlogging time. Let's see. This week wasn't too busy at all, which was a welcome break. I mean, yeah the WP2 was due on Monday, but I turned it in before then. It turns out I really enjoy not having things due! I'm a bit nervous about WP3, mainly because it requires being artsy as well as fartsy. I’m not so great at that! I have ideas, but I really need to figure out how to think outside the box on this one. The readings that we had this week really helped with getting a handle on the level of artsy going on. In general I prefer the comic book style reading better than just reading a text because I am a visual learner and pictures are awesome. I preferred Losh and Alexander’s work over McLoud’s because I felt it was easier to follow. McLoud did refer back to the same strip (finding the key, opening the door, and getting eaten by the lion) multiple times, but he also introduced different story lines that I expected him to use throughout the rest of his paper. I thought that he would use the A, B, C, D person storyline to help elaborate on all of his other goals of writing. Of his goals, I had a difficult time grasping what exactly is meant by image. What I understood of McLoud’s examples or explanations for image were simply how you chose to depict your characters, and I’m sure that’s entirely too simple. Although, that could make sense and it could correlate with what was discussed in Losh and Alexander’s work about the style of dress and how that represents you. Interesting. I’m still not sure about how I would find an example of that. I need to sit and think about what I can do with my WP3 and how all the ideas from our readings will affect how I write and what I write about in the self-analysis. Oi vey. Alrighty, time to go work on PB3A. TTFN.

Revenge of the Thlog

This week was another short week, so there is only one day’s worth of class to discuss. We did a lot today, but at the same time, not too much. One of the things that we did today, I wasn’t really that big of a fan of. That was the thing of socrative.com where we each submitted out first few sentences of our papers and voted on them anonymously. Although it helped me realize some flaws in my intro, I thought it took too long to get everyone to submit their own intro and then to vote on it. The time that was spent on voting for the best intro could have been better spent on more in-depth peer review – in my opinion. I think it would have sufficed to give a sample of 4 or 5 intros and then have the class vote on those – it would have save time while still achieving the goal of having us identify what moves make for the best intro.

Even though I didn’t enjoy the voting thing, that doesn’t mean I hated class today. I enjoyed reading over my peer’s papers and asking them questions to help them improve their work. I appreciated the thought and effort that my partners put into reviewing my paper. They helped give me ideas of where to break up my paragraphs to make them a more reasonable length (because that was one of my questions for them), and they questioned how I could make certain aspects of my paper easier to understand. I can always ask for friends or family to help me edit and review my papers, but I would prefer for my classmates to help edit and revise my paper with me because they have the context to understand what exactly it is that my paper should be discussing. They can help me get back on track where friends and family could not, even if they had the prompt. That’s all for now. Time to go work on editing that WP2. TTFN.

(P.S. I really hope you noticed my Thlog titles and appreciated them, because I don't have many left in me!)

Attack of the Thlog

This week was a crazy week for me. I had 3 midterms spanning 2 days with 2 midterms on Wednesday. You can only imagine how grateful I was that our WP2 rough draft wasn’t due Wednesday, like I thought it was when I glanced at the syllabus. Thankfully this week has just been a lot of help and clarification on the ideas and concepts that can be used in our WP2. I am pretty sure I’m going to be a bit hesitant with including brackets into my WP2, even though we have to, because I’ve never used them for anything other than equations. I think I’ve always thought it was customary to italicize actions and although I’ve seen it used I have never personally used brackets to modify a quote. Figuring out a way to do that smoothly will be interesting and useful to understand how to do.

I really enjoy going over grammar ideas or concepts – even the basic ones – because they always refresh my memory and give me new ideas to make my papers stronger or more creative. I have always enjoyed parallelism for the main reason that it just looks right. I try to write with parallelism (unless I’m meeting a word countJ) because I really feel that it helps ideas flow and appears more put-together than just writing down whatever comes to mind, as I’m doing now.

I’m actually looking forward to writing the WP2 because I’ve got so many ideas for how it should go, and I really want to prove that I can write a good paper. I’ve already started a very basic outline and am going to really try to just get every idea that I can onto the paper and make my very own shitty first draft. I usually try to write the final draft of my paper while writing the rough draft – a really terrible habit. Hopefully this paper will turn out much better than my last one.

PB2B: Moves Like ...An Author?

The idea of “moves” is an interesting one. It covers such a broad topic of life that it makes an exact definition difficult to come up with. I choose to think of moves as someone’s decisions, either once or repeatedly, that have an effect on how something is presented and/or received. Every writer has their own preferred moves; one writer may prefer commas over dashes to insert a thought. You may prefer to use italics to show emphasis while someone else may prefer to change up the font of the word they wish to emphasize. Our readings over the past few weeks contain a plethora of moves to dissect and contort for our own uses.

They Say, I Say provides us with examples of specific moves that are common amongst writers. Looking over these moves, I recognized a few that I think are very common in writing, at least for me, so I decided to search for examples of them in our course text. I looked for not only phrases and expressions, but also introductions and transitions.

• Capturing Authorial Action contains commonly used moves for expressing another’s ideas or opinions. I found an example of one template in Dirk’s Navigating Genres when he begins a paragraph with “I further acknowledge…”(19) This type of move is authorial action because the author is presenting an idea that they agree with and believe to be relevant and necessary for their audience to know. Another Authorial Action template was used in Reading Like A Writer when Bunn stated that one Professor Moran “urges us to read like writers…”(84)
•  Introducing Quotations is a common place to use generic templates to ease into the quotation. Dirk uses one such template to quote Professor Reiff on teaching composition. The template used in this instance is “X writes” on page 19. This move is safely neutral in arguments because it neither shows agreement of condemnation of an author’s words and opinions, just simply states that they wrote something.
• Introducing Objections Informally is a subtle way to acknowledge possible problems with your argument. Elbow uses this move in Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing when he says “But does freewriting or uncensored, generative writing really enhance creative first-order thinking?”(33) Elbow’s use of this objection at the beginning of a paragraph is a move that allows him to cut down opposition to his argument while proving his point even further.
• Commonly Used Transitions are useful to know as they provide you with the ability to move smoothly from one topic or idea onto the next. There are many types of transitions and the one that I found an example of was a concession in Dirk’s Navigating Genres. Concessions are another useful way to acknowledge counter arguments or to acknowledge something that may be slightly odd or unusual, which is how Dirk uses a concession in his paper. “I further acknowledged that it is quite rare that teachers of writing get to write so directly to students in such an informal manner.” (19) This move was used at the beginning of a paragraph, which is in fact a mighty fine place to transition topics.

While searching for some common moves from the index of templates, I couldn’t help but notice a few common moves that were not acknowledged in the index. Some of these moves were so common that I observed them in more than one article. Please don’t mind my names, I promise to try to not make them too corny.

• The Tour Guide: Some authors like to tell you what exactly they’re thinking and how it will affect you through the paper. “Johnathan and I are here to serve as your guides – to lead you through the process of becoming a more effective communicator.” (Spaces, 8) Spaces for Writing is not the only place that I noticed the author telling their audience what the purpose of the paper was. Dirk also used it in his paper “My purposes are…”(18) This move tells the reader exactly what they are supposed to be getting out of the article that they are reading.
• The Philosopher: Authors, it appears, enjoy asking questions to focus your reading and understanding of what they are trying to tell you. Nearly every assigned reading we have had has multiple guiding questions, generally towards the end of their paper to get you to think objectively about writing. Bunn is a very obvious example – He teaches you the questions to ask yourself so you may read like a writer and then applies them to his own paper.
• The Blockhead: Not too many authors do this one, probably because it tends to not leave room for your own analysis. I consider the blockhead to be when an author, Bunn in this case, uses 9 block quotes in 14 pages of writing. This move provides your paper with a lot of evidence, but can be seen as just fluff if much of your evidence is repetitious.
• Notice Me!: I noticed (please don’t hate me) that when an author want to ensure you are paying attention to and thinking about a specific idea they may say “Notice that…”(54) or “Notice how…”(74) as both Birkenstein & Graff and Boyd used in Saying Why it Matters and Murder! Rhetorically – respectively.

The Phantom Thlog

A new week, a new thlog. This week has been really helpful in preparing for the WP2. I definitely think I have a better handle on this one than I did on WP1. I’m worried because I’ve got a lot of midterms next week to study for, so I’ll need to write PB2B and WP2 rough draft over the weekend just to make sure it’s done in time. Thankfully, I’ll be done with midterms next Wednesday, so I will have time to edit the crap out of my rough draft and get it into a nice pleasant, easy to follow and concise WP2.

 I really enjoy having to come up with names for all of the “moves” we find, because that really makes it more of a game, and I’m a bit competitive so I enjoy a challenge to have the wittiest name. Being able to be more creative with simple things (like naming something as opposed to being creative in a whole paper) is rather fun for me; it’s just challenging enough to make it original that it keeps me thinking, but it doesn’t make me want to throw something at a wall.

I also enjoy trying to think of a topic to write WP2 on. I’d like to write on something original and slightly out of the box. I suggested vaccines in class, and I’ve already thought of the disciplines I’d like to find for it – I’ve even already spit-balled a few potential arguments (even though we aren’t really supposed to) that I think I can work with easily – but I don’t know if I will stick with that idea. (Is it grammatically correct to have parentheses inside dashes?)

RLW was an interesting piece and it got me thinking about how I should read works. The way that Bunn suggested reading really breaks down the thoughts and ideas of the paper – and by extension the writer – into easily digestible chunks that can be expanded upon and used to formulate a great essay!