Last English Blog

Rebuttals:
1. Have an intro that ropes people in and gives them good information.
2. Persoalize the essay. Add a character and have a story about them come up throughout the essay.
3. Have an anecdote in the beginning that introduces the topic.
4. Use sites and interviews efficiently.
5. Appeal to what people actually care about.

Cultural Evaluation

"Types of Dance: A History of Social Dance in America -- AAS Online Exhibition." American Antiquarian Society. AAS Online Exhibitions. Web. 02 Aug. 2011. <http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Dance/types.htm>.
I can use this website to talk about the different types of dance and the impact they have on our society.

Eric, Treak. "Ballet As an Art Form." Ezinearticles. Web. 1 Aug. 2011. <http://ezinearticles.com/?Ballet-As-an-Art-Form&id=4035159>.
This source can be used to set up my argument that dance is an art and the effects arts have on our culture.


Brooks, Bonnie. "Here and Now - Impact of Dance on Culture and Society in the Late Twentieth Century - Column | Dance Magazine | Find Articles at BNET." Find Articles at BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. Feb. 1998. Web. 02 Aug. 2011. <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_n2_v72/ai_20187613/>.
This source can be used to show the impact that dance has on society as a whole.


I'm evaluating the (good) impact that dance has on society. It can be a form of education and a different learning experience for the audience. There are many new tv shows and movies about dancing which sparks an interest in the activity and may get people more involved. It benefits everyone, the dancers and the audience. The dancers stay active and the audience gets to observe a beautiful form of art.

Gaga

The What's Sex Got To Do With It? article explains why the author believes that Lady Gaga will be the death of sex for our generation or the end of the sexual revolution. The beginning of the article talks about how successful Lady Gaga is, how many albums & singles she's sold and how she's continually been on tour. The first thing that really appeals to me is when the author says that her  "little monsters" are "damaged goods in need of her therapeutic repair." and then goes on to talk about how her whole show is about  how everyone is perfect the way they are. Both articles are successful in making me believe that Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta) is not as lonely, and outcast as she makes herself out to be. She went to the same school as the Hilton sisters, how bad off can you be? They both talk about how lady gaga is manufactured. The second article points out how lady gaga uses transgendered because it is part of the dominant culture's language and points out that as the author was writing it, her spellcheck underlined the word. The whole "little monsters" thing is definitely easy to relate to and is a good thing to bring up on the authors' part.

Cultural Objects

Going Green
Going green is really getting big in our culture. It's becoming trendy to recycle anything and everything. It's hip to buy things made from 100% recycled materials. It's really good for our culture and our world but I think it needs to catch on more so we can recycle more and have less stuff going into landfills and clogging them up. We will eventually run out of room in the landfills. The going green revolution needs to catch on even more so we can recycle more and help our environment.

Teen Mom & 16 and Pregnant
16 & pregnant and teen mom are shows on MTV that show what happens to teens during the 9 months of pregnancy and the first couple years of the baby's life. These shows are not beneficial for our society because they glorify teen girls getting pregnant and raising children. Not that being a teenage mother is bad, but MTV makes it out to be so trendy. Same with shows like Jersey Shore. They praise things that should not be praised for the gullible kids in my generation.

NASA
Okay, maybe NASA isn't a big deal for everyone in my culture but to me it is. I follow NASA on twitter, I probably retweet them more than I retweet any of my own friends and I go on the NASA website and watch NASAtv religiously. But it is a big deal in our society because they're not going to be getting the funding from the government anymore so there is a debate about what is going to happen. President Obama said that any projects that we are planning to do will be passed to other countries space travel organizations and other exploration will be able to be done by private organizations. NASA's funding situation will probably be bad for our society as a whole because we wont be able to have the knowledge that we are capable of learning.

Peer Review 7/27

This peer review was definitely different because of the kind of essay we were writing so we had to edit in a different way. I'm still improving on my editing skills but I think (and hope) that I was able to help Eric with his paper. I feel like I gave him a lot of comments that were pretty helpful. Eric helped me a lot too. He pointed out a lot of places where I could add more description and pointed out some awkward points and I think they helped my essay a lot. It was helpful to hear his feedback and I was glad to see that he understood what my purpose is.

Reading Response

1. These essays are definitely less formal than the other kinds of essays I'm used to reading and writing. The essays I've written have mainly been about content, sources, and what your argument is. Josh's essays and the gaming addiction one are more about telling a story and getting a message out about themselves to the reader.

2. The Purpose of the "I Kept Playing" essay was to show readers from the author's experience how dangerous gaming addiction can be. You can lose track of almost everything. The author lost his job, wasn't eating right, wasn't sleeping enough, and all he focused on was playing that game. The audience for this essay would probably be people who play videogames or families of people who play a lot of videogames because they would be interested in someone else's side of the story.

Freewrite #3

My first memory is actually late in my life (I think) I remember being probably three years old and my mom used to work as a messenger for different businesses delivering their inter-office mail to each different business. I remember riding along with her to the different buildings every day and for some reason the main part of the memories are the songs that would come on the radio. I can’t think of any right now but if I ever hear them I always think of those rides back and forth throughout Philly. Another early memory which is probably from around the same time, was when I jumped off a diving board for the first time. It was at Fox Chase Swim club. A lot of my earliest memories take place there actually. The first time I ever found myself to be intimidating was at that swim club. I wanted to go to the little-kid pool because my brothers were always trying to toss me in the 4-foot pool (swimmies and all.) I walked up to two other little girls who looked about my age and I was going to ask them if I could play with them, because they had dolls (I thought that was awesome because my mom never let me bring my dolls in the pool) so I started to walk over to them and they both got really scared and covered the doll and turned away. Of course, even as a child I was ever-so charming and I ended up becoming friends with them later that day and they told me they thought I was going to steal their doll. Why would they think that? I thought I looked like a pretty nice kid. Whatever.

Freewrite #2

What do you spend the most time doing, what do you love doing most, or what things are most interested in? What do these mean to you? Why are you interested in them?

I spend the majority of my time dancing (not necessarily at college) but when I’m home I would spend at least two hours every night at my dance studio but it wouldn’t really stop there. I’d practice my choreography everywhere I went. I’d practice my footwork under my desk at school/work. I’d go over dances in my head constantly. I’d run through them wherever I had enough space. Dancing means everything to me. I’ve been dancing for 14 years and it’s always been my main focus. I think I  probably missed out on some stuff socially because I had to be at my studio every night, and weekends to teach but I think I’ve benefitted so much from it. I got to teach children how to dance and that in itself was better than learning new techniques myself. I was one of those saps who cried when my girls went on stage at the recital in June. I am interested in it because it definitely keeps me fit but it’s so much fun. As opposed to going to the gym, which I do not find fun at all (unless I am taking some kind of class) I like my workouts to be disguised and fun.

Another thing that I do a lot is draw. I don’t spend as much time drawing as I do dancing but it still takes up a lot of my time. Drawing is more about keeping to myself, whereas dancing I did it to have fun with everyone in the studio, and teach the kids. But drawing was my chance to express myself and something to work at. I took art classes in high school and I think I liked it so much because it taught me about determination and it was just a completely different way of thinking. It was nice to throw an art class into the mix of English, Psychology, Math, Government and all that fun stuff.

Freewrite #1

The last time I remember being really upset is when my brother moved across the country for good. I was upset when he moved to California for a year, but he was volunteering for habitat for humanity and I knew he’d be back but while he was there he fell in love with San Francisco and he was devastated when he had to come home to Philly. He still did though, he came home for probably six months and applied for every job he could possibly find in SF. When he got his job at Stanford of course my family was really happy for him but it was hard for us to have someone in the family move so far away. The farthest away any of my family members live is less than an hour, we’re very tight knit. The day that he was leaving was a Monday and I was a junior in high school and I decided not to go with the rest of my family to drop him off at the airport..I don’t know why I did that but I remember I was a wreck the whole day. My brother was and is my best friend but him living across the country makes it difficult for us to communicate most of the time. The last time I was extremely happy also has to do with my brother. Around this time last year we went out to San Francisco to visit him for the first time since he left. We only spent a week over there but it was probably the best week we've ever had together. I can definitely see why he loves that city

Peer Review Reflection

I feel like this peer review was definitely more beneficial for me as the person doing the critique. The comments I got were also a lot of help and helped  me see what I need to work on and what points I need to make stronger and some stuff that I need to change around. I didn't feel confident in my paper but I feel like after I change around everything that I need to I think I will have a solid argument and I'll feel better about my paper. I can feel myself getting better at reading others' papers and providing helpful comments. I think every time I do a peer review I get better at critiquing.

Vanity, thy name is metrosexual

1. The author defines metrosexual as a developing phenomenon of straight men who wear several hair products, love clothes and are as sensitive and romantic as gay men. The author argues that these men are acting this way to find love and communicate better with women but she says they are not making money the way they used to. she says "Where have all the cowboys gone?"

2. Metrosexual men are less likely to make as much money and start their own businesses as men of prior generations. Also, women are going to have a harder time finding a man to marry and have a hard time trying to tell the difference between the gay men and straight metrosexual men.

3. I found the namedropping of clothing stores to be an effective way of persuading me and the author describing them as mainly city-dwellers. It gave me a good description of the kind of man she is talking about. She is also speaking from experience.

Definition paper topic

Argument: Dancing is a sport

because sports

-require physical fitness and physical activity.

-are active pastimes or recreation

-Success, pleasure, or recreation derived from or afforded by an activity(OED)

Peer Review Reflection

The peer review for the rebuttal papers helped me out a lot. I got to see exactly what I needed to work on, which was a lot. I knew that my paper needed work but the peer reviews helped me understand exactly why my paper wasn't working out the way it should have. I saw that some of the points I made did not fit well with my argument and I had the opportunity to change it around before I had to hand in the final draft. Also, the activity that we did in class helped me pick out awkward sentences, find sentences that were too wordy and some sentences that didn’t make sense. Josh critiquing my paper was definitely the most helpful because I got to see what kind of things that he would point out while he’s grading. Overall I believe the peer reviews are helpful (especially for people like me.)

Rebuttal

For my rebuttal I will be doing "Games, Not Schools, Are Teaching Kids to Think" on page 590.

Nanotechnology

The main point of contention between Drexler and Smalley is the difference in opinion about if and how self-replicating robots could exist in our world. Another disagreement they come to is the issue of "Smalley fingers."

In these letters and responses these men are putting their reputations and the reputation of nanotechnology at stake. 

Smalley makes good points about how these robots could be created using atoms that would know exactly what to do and how to do it. But Drexler disagrees with most of what he says and uses scientific findings and other examples to argue against his points. 

Drexler uses his status in his field but also brings up how he won a Nobel prize and name drops a lot. He brings up how Smalley tried to dismiss his work by misinterpreting it in his publication in the Scientific American. He says that the information in Smalley's article is false.

Smalley creates ethos in his article through knowing a lot about the topic, using equations and bringing up the definition of basic chemistry. Smalley also puts in his article that he is a Nobelist.

Drexler is also a Nobelist and he states that in his letters. He also brings up all of the research he has done and how he studied and worked at MIT.

Smalley's fallacies have to do with the nature of his writing. He does not go in depth enough so Drexler has the opportunity to point out everything that was wrong and not defined enough in his article. 

Drexler's was defined enough and did not leave anything out so Smalley could not prove anything wrong. All he could do was disagree but he rarely did that.

I think Drexler is more convincing because of how persistent he is and how much evidence he has. He also keeps pointing out how Smalley's information is false which definitely affects my opinion.

Rhetorical Analysis

I will be writing my rhetorical analysis on "Why Twitter Will Endure" by David Carr on pages 583-585.

Sample Student Rhetorical Analysis:

3 Points Jackson makes about context and text

Context1.  Jackson points out that the audience of his speech was the 34 members of the House Judiciary Committee.
2. Jackson says that Jordan, a democrat, had to convince her audience (mainly republican) that she was not biased.

3. He points out that Jordan is trying to be humble and trying not to judge in saying "Has the president committed offenses, and planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution would not tolerate?"


Text:
1. He shows how the author (Barbra Jordan) showed evidence to support her arguments(example: reasons for President Nixon to be impeached and other historical quotes). (Ethos)
2. He says that "...establishes herself as someone fighting to defend and protect American values." (pathos)
3. Jackson appeals to emotion by bringing up how accepted authority and law deals with impeachment (logos)

My contextual analysis: Jordan brings up a point about how she would not subvert the Constitution of the United States and how a President should not. She tries to instill a strong feeling that the president should be impeached. She continues to say that "the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while piblicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice."




My textual analysis: Barbra Jordan believes the Constitution is being destructed and he will not sit on the sidelines. That is why Barbra wrote this speech.

First time blogging...ever

You'll have to bear with me, the closest I've ever come to blogging is setting facebook statuses.

My most recent english class that I had in high school was in one word a joke. I only wrote two essays the whole year and they were graded by an online essay scorer. My teacher was actually a cool guy he just needs to be in a different profession. The main thing we did all year was watch movies such as Hamlet,(2 different versions) Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and other movies like that. Not that watching movies was a bad thing but I don't really remember what happened..so i feel like I would have benefitted more from reading the books/plays. My junior year English class was an awesome class but it feels so long ago. 

For that reason, I think my writing skills are definitely lacking so I will need to brush up on a lot of stuff. 

So, I am hoping that English 15 helps me improve my writing skills and find out what my strengths and weaknesses are and work on both of those.