Plagiarism

Before reading the handout I was convinced that I had never committed plagiarism. However, now that I read the handout, I'm afraid that I may have plagiarised. I think I was at fault when I was paraphrasing other peoples work. In several papers I have written I read other peoples work online to give me an idea on the topic. I paraphrased it and didn't cite it since I didn't think I needed too. I am also worried that it was plagiarism when I have rewritten sentences or messages that I found on the Internet. I have often used the same idea and just reworded it in my essays, but I now know that its plagiarism. While I can continue to do this, I need to cite other peoples work in order to not plagiarize.

Authority in reading and writing

     Authority is a key factor in reading and writing. The authority in writing is the voice of the writing explaining the lesson. While reading a text you are following the authority of the text. The authority is the writers voice telling you the information. The reader is like a citizen in a society, he is supposed to take everything the writer/authority tells him as law. The writer must convince the reader to believe him by convincing him that he has the authority on the topic. It is vital in the writing process to make the authority strong by providing examples and evidence to show that you are right. Authority is importent in the reading process, since the reder must find the authority in the reading and try to learn from what it has to say.

     I am able to trust Herbert, King, and Thomas as authorities in their writings. They present themselves as trustworthy by providing evidence to their points. This way I believe their statements. They also are trust worthy since they are talking about ideas that are very common, and I already agree with. They all set up thier argument and proved the examples to back it up. I trusted thier arguments since they made it relevent to me. They were also very trustworthy since the lesson was a way to help myself, people in the middle class. Writers become trustworthy authority's if the reader can relate to what they saying and they provide evidence to prove their arguments correct. 

     I distrusted their authorities when they were telling me exactly what to do. I aggreeded with them them about the problem but they didn't convice me on thier solution. When they told me what to do it felt more like an order, autmatically making me mistrust them. They also didn't back up their solutions to the problem with enough evidence that it has worked in the past. 

Activity 3 chapter 2

List of my questions:
Does the author have faith that America can fix itself?
Who is the intended audience? The people or the government?
Is his accusation on Ms. Black accurate or just his fear?

List of interesting points:
I find it very interesting how he compares current America to past America.
It's interesting to me how harshly he attacks America, such as when he says "we've become a haples, can't-do society".
His most interesting point is how America is "in denial" and his solution to the problem of needing to get out of denial.

List of quotes:
"America will never get its act together until we recognize how much trouble we’re really in, and
how much effort and shared sacrifice is needed to stop the decline. Only then will we be able to
begin resuscitating the dream."
"That’s how people behave when they’re in denial."
"The wreckage from the recession and the nation’s mindlessly destructive policies in the years
leading up to the recession is all around us."
"The human suffering in the years required to recover from the recession will continue to be
immense."

Problems with America: "America will never get its act together until we recognize how much trouble we’re really in, and
how much effort and shared sacrifice is needed to stop the decline. Only then will we be able to
begin resuscitating the dream." "The wreckage from the recession and the nation’s mindlessly destructive policies in the years
leading up to the recession is all around us."

How it effects the people: "That’s how people behave when they’re in denial." "The human suffering in the years required to recover from the recession will continue to be
immense."

After this reflection several things are clear to me. For one the author is sure that America is an horrible shape. He has many quotes including the two I paired noting how badly America is doing. He also is very concerned with the citizens. It is clear that he is worried about the citizens denial and warning them that they will be suffering for longer unless they fix things now.

Freewrite Reading

   I think it is very important to read a vast majority of different genres. I read genres such as Non-fiction, Fiction, Biography's and textbooks. It is necessary to read each genre with a different lens. When reading Fiction I am both enjoying the fantasy and the creative side, as well as looking for the moral message from the story. I am reading it with playful and curious perspective. For example, as I read A Clockwork Orange, I was excitingly following the story as well as learning from the protagonists mistakes. I read it in this way so I can enjoy myself while learning from the novel.  When I read Non-fiction, I am reading it with more of a serious perceptive. In this sense I am focusing on learning the information from it. That is similar with how I read textbooks, except I am even more serious with these, and try and memorize the information instead of gradually learn it. I have to do this , because school requires memorization for assessments. When I read Biography's I am reading it with a students perspective, attempting to follow the story while soaking in all of the authors information and lessons. Thus, allowing me to learn his or her story.

     I hope to expand my capabilities as a reader. Most importantly, I want to become a faster reader. I am a slow reader, and I would be able to read and learn more if I had a quicker pace. I also want to improve my analysis while reading skills. While I am capable of analyzing novels after I read them, I struggle to analyze and read at the same time. I want to improve on that skill so I can have deeper understandings of the novels I read. 

Personal Letter

Jack English-Cooper

Professor Justin Lotspeich

Rhetoric 110: Written Communication I

936 Words

9/7/2014

                        Personal Letter: My Terrifying Teacher

Dear Family,

            I would like to express to you all the reason why I have not been able to learn in my library class. There is a silver lining in this story that you all should pay attention to if you want to know how to learn from a class where it is impossible to learn.  As many of you know, I recently switched middle schools. From kindergarten through fourth grade, I attended a private Quaker school, Cambridge Friends School. As you can tell from the name, there was an extremely friendly academic environment filled with smiles, and it was a place where the students called their teachers by their first names. Then I switched into my city's public middle school, The Brown School. I was in for the shock of my lifetime. I was alone in a new school where everything was different. This new school had an old-fashion style of teaching where the teachers were strict, and the rules were endless. We called our teachers Ms. and Mr., and we had to sing the pledge of allegiance every morning. Sometimes we even had to sing it by ourselves in front of the class. I had never learned the pledge of allegiance, and was dumbfounded by the idea of singing the same song every morning. I once dropped the flag, and was thoroughly surprised by the shock on my peer’s faces. Despite my terror of going to a new school I was able to learn from most of my teachers. However, there was one class where I could not expand my intelligence: Library class.

When I first went to this class I was immensely confused. Why was there a class dedicated to library education and what would we be learning? To this day I can’t recall what we were supposed to learn except that it had a great deal to do with books. I walked into my first Library Class and sat in the front, ready to learn. When our teacher started the class I was overwhelmed with fear.

From the start of that class and throughout the year my teacher never smiled. Nor did she talk in a quiet reasonable voice. She was a rather large African-American woman with purple glasses and ruby red lipstick. She glared at all of us, and she screamed when she spoke. I vividly remember her teeth snarling at me when I attempted to answer a question. She would whip her arms and body around as she explained her lessons. I once asked a question, and she answered, “I know I ain’t gotta answer something like that! Figure it out for yourself boy!” I responded dumbly, “Ok”. She would spit and shout phrases like “Ya’ll going to read and ya’ll going to learn”. Most of the time, I was too afraid to raise my eyes from the table to try and make out what she was saying.

 Some of you may be arguing that this was not an example of injustice, but merely a strict teacher. Well, I have the perfect example of when I experienced first hand her injustice that inhibited me of learning a lesson. When I took quizzes I normally struggled to find the answer. After a lot of deep thinking I can figure it out, and with that moment I truly learn the material. We were taking a quiz on a book we had just read, and as usual I was stuck on a question. So I did my normal routine of thinking while letting my eyes stare forward or glaze around the room, when my eyes fell on the wrong person. I didn’t even realize that my eyes were aimed at the teacher when she pierced the silence with the loudest scream I have ever heard, “Why are you looking at me? The answer ain’t on me; look at your damn paper!” I was more terrified and embarrassed than I had been my whole life. I refused to let my eyes shift from my paper and couldn’t think of anything except for how I was going to survive that class.

I failed the quiz and didn’t try to learn anything in that class after that. I was so afraid of another confrontation that I kept to myself without attempting to learn anything at all. I have no idea what we were supposed to learn from that class. All I remember was that one quiz.

The injustice that occurred was my teacher striking terror into my heart. She could have been a reasonable teacher and asked me nicely not to look at her. She could have been open to my different style of thinking and learning. Instead she scared the learning out of me. I was a nervous new student, and her rage prevented me from being able to think clearly and learn in her class. The silver lining is that I experienced a different form of education. This teacher might have crossed the line, but the strict and old-fashioned style of learning at this school was new to me, and it taught me how to work hard and respect my teachers. This experience also taught me to value teachers who understand that some students process information differently. It is unfortunate that I experienced her outburst that stopped me from learning in Library class, but at least I learned that educating yourself requires an unafraid mind and how I process information best. So, maybe we learn things we weren’t expecting to learn from injustices.

Sincerely,

Jack English-Cooper

Jack English-Cooper

Professor Justin Lotspeich

Rhetoric 110: Written Communication I

662 Words

9/7/2014

                                    Dear Reader Letter

1)    I attempted to use as many reading strategies as I could for this letter. I think my most successfully used strategy was pathos. Just like Douglass, I was able to fill my essay with vivid imagery and descriptions of how terrified I was to make the reader feel sorry for me. Logos and Ethos were more challenging for me. In the end, my essay had some logical reasoning but not nearly as much as how much pathos it had. I addressed ethos at the beginning when I describe my school transition, but I feel it could have been stronger.

2)    During my prewriting stage I brainstormed and drafted. Brainstorming worked well for me since I was able to think about my essay wherever I was until I finally decided upon a story. It also worked really well for me to talk to my friends, and ask them which story they thought I should use. What didn’t work for me was how I did not outline. That would have been helpful to organize my ideas before I started writing. I failed to do this and jumped right into the drafting process. The drafting process didn’t work that well for me, since my ideas were all jumbled and I needed extra time to revise.

3)    The writing stage was my most successful stage. I was mostly using free writing, at first, which helped to get all my ideas down. However, it made it more difficult during the editing process since some of the writing was confusing. Using multiple sessions to write my essay was very effective for me. Sometimes it’s hard for me to focus, so using this strategy helped me only write when I could give it my full attention. What did not really work for me was attempting to write with my notes. I tried to write with my notes from class next to me to make sure I was writing correctly, but it just distracted me. It would have been better to use my notes solely for the editing process.

4)    I spent most of my time and energy in the post writing process, and almost every thing I did was helpful. I went to the writing center and it was very productive. I was worried about how the essay sounded, if there was enough logos and ethos in it and if I got my point across. The tutor gave me tips on how to make it read better. He also explained how my essay did get my point across and how it had a sufficient amount of logos and ethos. So, the tutor gave me a lot of help without sending me away confused on what I had to fix. Editing and revising helped me, because once I fixed all the mistakes it sounded much better. Reading it aloud also ensured me that it sounded perfect. Peer editing was a huge help too. Having other people give me feedback helped me contemplate on their advice and fix it, which made me a better writer and made my essay more successful. Using my notes and rereading the letters on canvas helped me ensure that I was writing in the correct style.

5)    I felt most confident writing my personal letter. Once I read all the weekly texts of letters, I had a good idea of what made a powerful personal letter. Due to that I was able to write a personal letter. I truly love writing and being creative. So, I was able to focus on my essay, and create the best piece of writing I could.

6)    I struggled most with the weekly texts. I was at first confused with the readings. I had never read personal letters, so it was all knew to me. There were times when I also got bored or distracted from the readings; thus making them harder to overcome.

A)   Well Developed

B)   Developed

C)   Well Developed

D)   Well Developed

E)    Developed

F)    Developed

           

Challenges I'm Facing With Personal Letter

    I am struggling in some aspects of the personal letter. I never never written a personal letter for school before which makes my first time challenging. For one I'm not sure how to address the message I want my reader to get. I'm also struggling with going from introduction to the story section. Even though I was easily able to put pathos into the letter my main challenge is how to work ethos and logos in. I'm not sure what I can say to make myself credible and how to provide a logic in why I'm right in my argument. 

    To overcome these obstacles I can of course go see the writing center. I will also reread to make sure my message is getting through to the reader or ask my peer to read it. I will read the other personal letter examples on canvas to get a better idea how to flow from introductory to story, and how to add logos and ethos.

     Both authors use very engaging writing that draws the reader in making them agree, remember their stories and support them. They each wrote clear unopposed explanations of the point they were trying to make. They were using logos here by giving evidence and a logical explanation for their point of view that left the reader with no choice but to agree. Amy Tan did this when she was explaining how clear it was that writing her essay in her mothers style of speaking and perfection how she expressed her emotions was a success, thus making the reader see reason that she was creating something beautiful. Douglass did this as he put the idea of slavery into a simple example that exclaimed how cruel slavery is. They both also told interesting stories, Amy's about how her mothers "broken" english affected her life and Douglass' story about his experience in slavery, which both made the stories credible. They were also remembered because each author wrote with personality. Their use of pathos enabled them to gain the readers true support. Amy made the reader feel sorry for her struggle of learning how to read with a mother speaking "broken english" and admire her for succeeding, which made people want to help in any way. Douglass readers were immensely empathetic for him after he spoke seriously about the horrific ways he was treated as a slave, and admired him for being able to read despite his circumstances, thus making them give their unrestricted support to him.

    The most successful rhetorical move they used was ethos and the conclusion. Their stories that they became excellent writers were fascinating yet hard to believe due to their past circumstances. They used ethos to gain credibility that they did overcome suffering and become scholarly writers. They both used sophisticated language that impressed the reader. Amy explained how much she practiced and Douglass revealed the significant steps he took to becoming literate. They also each used powerful conclusions that made their narratives persuasive. Amy finished hers with a confident statement on how successful her essay was persuading the reader to truly believe that it was and opening their mind to diverse forms of writing. Douglass concluded his narrative by saying "I finally succeeded in learning how to write". This was a powerful last statement because the reader not only understood his accomplishment but felt how important it was to Douglass and wanted every slave to accomplish the same.

     I wouldn't have changed their essay but I feel that they should have added more to be more persuasive. Amy Tan finishes hers by saying how successful she felt her diverse essay was. I would of used ethos here by adding the reaction her teacher and the world had to this essay. If she proved how successful it was by other peoples reaction to it, she would be have more credibility that it was in fact successful and I would have been more persuaded to write diverse essays like her. Douglass ended on a powerful sentence but he could have persuaded me more. If he had added how reading helped him escape slavery and succeed as a adult I would have placed a higher value on reading and he would have persuaded me to support him more.

Reaction To Douglass' Narrative

I was impressed by Douglouss' narrative and instantly supportive of him. He used ethos to make me respect his credibility. The narrative first explained how successful he was as an adult and I could tell how smart he was by how sophisticated his writing was. He also proved credible to how horrible of a slave life he had by going into detail of his experience. I reacted to the horrific details of slaves being whipped with empathy for them and hatred for the white slave owners since Douglass used pathos to make me empathetic. I reacted with support for him and his cause as he used logos in explaining how unfair slavery is and how the white man stealing African men is simply evil. The narratives also used timing in how he waited until the end to say that he finally learned how to read making me appreciate the struggle Douglass had.