Alex

Blog Post #8

             In this past week after the break we have come to talk about our last project. Since our last project involves working in a group. We have discussed in class about the distinct types of people in group projects. We talked about how there is people who depend on others to do all the work, others like to leave all the work until the end. In various groups there is different types of people, there is also people who get the job done, and other who like to be overachievers and take over all the work because they want to get most of the credit.

           We established some norms in class as to what we expect from each and every one in our group. For example in my group we talked about how we expect from every one to be on time in our meetings. This is important as nobody’s time is wasted and we all get to hear each other’s ideas on time. We also discussed to keep on task, respect each other, and encourage each other’s ideas. By establishing these behavioral norms we are all in the same page and we understand the importance of this project. We wouldn’t like to waste our time and effort on someone who is not going to willingly try their best like everyone else is doing.

SPRANNGGG BREAKKK is OVERRR!! 😭

Last class before Spring Break was discussed how necessary is to choose an audience correctly and to picture the reader very specifically. It needs to be a specific audience because a particular subject that an author choose to write is not meant to be read by everyone, if you want to be very specific and detailed about a subject, by doing this as a writer you already divert from the generalize theme, so just the ones that are really interested in such kind of work will be that audience that you choose.  The class created a specific person using as a start a millennial, so from there as a class we started complementing and adding more traits to this person, which would be someone who will be interested and read the work that as a writer you prepared specially for those specific people.

BLOG POST #7 (Who our audience are/is)

Before I start I hope everyone had a good spring break and are ready to get back into school.

Aight so two weeks ago we were taught an example on how to find an audience. The example was to create a person you would want to convince, so we would create this person’s hobbies, routines, job, etc. and thus we’d have information about said person. Once we created our member of our audience we’d find ways to convince this fake person to learn something from us by reading a informative paper. I understand the concept of creating a fake person and using it as our audience but I personally still don’t buy into the idea that one can be persuaded if another knows what that person is into. I guess another thing I learned is that it’s extremely hard to persuade a person that is comfortable with their lifestyle and hobbies. For example I’m not going to sell knives nor health products because I don’t see the need too, no matter if they say I can get rich easily if I sell out my family and friends mostly because I’m fine how I am already. On the other hand, back when I was a new noob I played a game called league of legends and my favorite champion to play was Pantheon. I was very bad at him and I looked at guides on the internet to improve my game play, it helped a lot at first but as my elo grew my builds weren’t working but because I was experienced at playing him I adapted my build for me and I don’t listen to guides anymore because I know what I’m doing.

I’m saying if a person doesn’t feel satisfied with their hobby / lifestyle they will look for a solution and/or other people who had the same problem that know a way to improve their hobby / life thing. So I think the way to find an audience is to search for the people that haves problems where my information will help them. That’s why for my midterm remix I made my fake person a struggling disorganized coder that can code very well but cannot organize and sort their information, that way when that fake person googles “how can I not stink at organized” they will more likely find my article.

In essence I learned that the most efficient audience are the people that seek my help and if I try to change a already satisfied person’s way of thinking, I’ll be wasting my time. Unless I’ve already helped them before and I tell them about this awesome new thing.

In today’s class we were able to revise two classmate’s Midterm Learning Records. I find it very helpful for others other than me to check how I was doing in this assignment. I also could compare how different it was my work from my classmate’s, by doing this I got better ideas on how I needed to add more evidence and my classmates provided very helpful comments to improve my argument. The guideline that the teacher gave it was very specific, this was very useful for the authors to look in what part their work is boring, what others will change and add, also if they are doing well, and to point out what part others like the most in the author’s argument. For me my classmates told me to provide more evidence and to change some part because it was still unfinished.

Today in class we got the chance to peer review our midterm drafts. I think that peer reviewing is important because we can make our writing better and we can successfully claim for a grade letter A. I found this time in class very useful and helpful.

The peer review questions that we had to answer, I believe, will help us write appropriate. When I was revising my peer’s draft, I was revising my own as well (in my mind) because the mistakes were now obvious to me. Like why did I even write that, type of questions came to me. Once questions are available, we can notice how we really performed in our writing and what changes we should make. The answer to the questions are important, especially, if the person that revised the paper thought that it was boring. Then we should automatically act and make the draft more entertaining. Perhaps by adding images and by providing interesting examples that students can relate to. Also, not only do we learn from our mistakes, but we also learn from the mistakes of others. Which is beneficial both ways.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t know, but it can help us write a paper well. Such as, if we are using the right words for a specific audience. Who is the audience and how can we create an argument that the audience can accept. These type of questions can be answered in a peer review and are helpful to become better writers.

Last reading “Genre Analysis in Technical Communication” by Maria Luzon, I felt that the author was constantly repeating the same, which it was the main idea, as writers we need to act more socially with people in order to understand others feelings, opinions, basically other’s way of thinking. Writers need to get to understand other’s perspective and write successfully a report that readers will appeal and get interest in. If I am not involve with society, I will failed on getting the attention of my intended audience because I did not get to know their likes or dislikes and what are their interests.  

Blog #4

Logos and pathos and ethos, OH MY….

Blog Post #3

     In today’s class we learned about commonplaces which in definition are: a well-known, customary, or obvious remark; a trite or uninteresting saying according to the dictionary. We concluded that they are widely held beliefs or ideas that reference each other. They articulate ideological positions, so they guide our actions. With this being said we found correlations between stasis and commonplaces. We concluded that since commonplaces require little or no support they can serve as a stasis point.

In the process of correlating these two we exercised them by finding a commonplace and following the four modes/questions that guide stasis (Conjecture, Definition, Value, and Policy). In my group we all talked about one of the most popular commonplaces:  What goes around, comes around. My group and I agreed that there is many people who live by this commonplace. It really does guide our actions because our belief is that, if we do something good something good will happen to us, but if we do something bad it will come back for us. It is just like karma. Our findings were that it is a belief, it is not a physical thing nor has it been proven. The value is that for some people this does matter, they have a high belief that it is true. For some other people this may not be the case. Finally policy, what we do with it is that many people are influenced by this. Their actions are influenced by this commonplace. For example some people believe if you help someone who is need, good karma will come to you. As oppose to bullying a person, some would believe you will later get what you did too.

BLOG # 3