Thlog: Week 4

Holy smacks. I just realized this is the first time I've done my thlog on a Thursday. I should celebrate. 

Monday’s section was a big step in the right direction for me. I went into class really pleased with my paper, ready to submit it after class. We begun with an exercise where we highlighted and color coded four specific features of our paper: the main idea of the paragraph, textual evidence, course reading evidence, and personal analysis. I really benefitted from this exercise, because I realized that my paper lacked textual evidence and personal analysis. I also learnt that my summarizing paragraphs have no purpose, and don’t correlate with my thesis at all. Reverse outlining each paragraph, and highlighting the different aspects of my paper really helped because I became aware of crucial mishaps in my paper. After Monday’s class, I decided to reevaluate my thesis, and propose a whole new idea so that each paragraph correlated with the overall position of my paper. (S/O to Dan for helping change the WP1 due date —  you’re the man, Dan)

I appreciated, as usual, Z’s set of writing tips. ESPECIALLY the tip on spelling people’s names right. It is very rare that someone spells my name correctly, but when they do I notice a profound increase in respect for them. I also enjoyed the writing/process tip of making your paper into a poem. I decided to break up each sentence of my second paragraph, and immediately noticed one or two BS sentences that really didn’t need to be there. So once again, this in-class exercise saved my paper.

The Murder! Rhetorically exercise we did on Wednesday afternoon was really interesting. It surprised me how easily we recognize genres, simply by noting a few key rhetorical features. For instance, the police report was recognized by the case number and the officer’s name. I’m learning more about genres as we progress through Writing 2. I’m not too confident that this WP2 is going to be insanely amusing, so let’s hope for the best. 

J

Thlog: Week 3

Here we are, at our third week of the quarter. Honestly where has the time gone?! Already a quarter through Writing 2: I feel like I’ve learnt more about writing than I have in my entire time at college. So last week was a bit of a bummer because we had MLK day on Monday. Then, on Wednesday I was away at USC playing tennis. So although I didn’t attend class physically, I still managed (somehow) to motivate myself to do the readings. “Responding to Other Student’s Writing” by Richard Straub was an odd yet interesting read. I would consider myself a rather aggressive essay responder, as I often enjoy changing around and re-wording people’s text to fit my personal desire. It made me realize I should probably be making suggestions on people’s work, rather than correcting the entire essay. Whilst reading Straub’s article I got inspired, and wanted to practice peer reviewing. I tried to meet up with Alex to do peer reviewing, but we both underestimated the amount of time the paper’s would take us to write. After reading everyone else’s thlogs, it sounded like they all benefitted greatly from the peer reviews, so I’m really disappointed I couldn’t attend class on Wednesday. The WP1 has been a little bit of a struggle. I’m really glad I picked out a topic that I’m genuinely interested in, otherwise I’m sure I would have procrastinated. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can produce for the final WP1 paper. 

Thlog: Week 2

So the second week of Writing 2 has come to an end. As I suggested in my PB1B meme — “One does not simply do thlogs on a Thursday” — I’ve fallen into the ordeal of procrastination over this MLK long weekend. Whilst reading Z’s email about the formatting of a thlog, I realized I’ve been trying to write too academically and perhaps not personal enough. Maybe it’ll be good for me to “fart” out some words onto the page and actually enjoy writing this. So here goes.

Monday we began class with the daily writing tip/strategy: the oxford comma. To me, the oxford comma is one of those ‘things that I’ve never paid much attention to, only to one day realize that I’ve been doing it the wrong way’. It’s sort of like realizing that the hole in a soda can’s tab is actually so that the straw doesn’t float up. 

Silly me. Although Z explained that either having no comma, or a comma before the “and” is grammatically correct, the oxford comma mentally separates the second to last and last words. I’ll definitely be using the oxford comma from now on, so thanks Z for the helpful writing tip!

We followed the comma with the affordances and constraints of a ‘hard copy’ and a ‘blog’. Personally, I much rather writing/using a hard copy of something, because the information sticks in my head more, and I feel more comfortable with having a physical piece that I can doodle all over. Then again, we do live in 2016, so maybe I should start blogging more… 

On Wednesday we visited the phenomena of hyphens and dashes and how/why/when to use them. Since Wednesday, I’ve been experiencing The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon — where  people who just learn or notice something start seeing it everywhere. I’ve been noticing hyphens and dashes in pieces of writing a lot more than I usually would have had we not learnt about them on Wednesday. They’ve appeared in all different kinds of settings including class, emails, news articles, and Facebook. I’m really glad we touched base on hyphens and dashes, because I honestly have never really understood the difference between the two. Just for my personal reference: a hyphen is used to connect two words, and can be used as one meaning. Whereas dashes emphasizes a pause rather than a period.

I have tennis practice directly prior to our Writing 2 section, so often find myself starving and dreaming about food.

 It makes matters worse when we hold class discussions and exercises about our favorite food restaurants in IV. This particular exercise involved writing a description on our favorite restaurant in IV and why. The most commendable descriptions involved ones that not only described, but gave evidence as to why the restaurant was the best in IV. The three best descriptions all had one thing in common: they all appealed to the audience. 

Following through to next week: I’m not too sure how this WP1 is going to turn out. I’m actually looking forward to writing it, probably because I’ve picked a genre that interests me. We’ll see how it goes!

J

PB1B: Generating a Genre

Although texts of the same genre can have varying content, their particular genre is easily distinguishable because they contain particular conventions and patterns. There are various websites that create works of a particular genre at random using their associated conventions.

The first website I visited was called SCIgen, which generated a scientific research paper page. Although the information was complete nonsense, the genre was easily distinguishable because of the associated conventions including the layout, context and style. In most cases, the audience is a professor or someone of a research descent, so one could assume the audience doesn’t have plentiful time to look through lengthy research papers. The paper is therefore formatted in a very specific, uncomplicated structure so that the different segments of the paper can be referred to at ease. The headings of each segment are all bold and larger font, accompanied by numbers, making each section easy to find. The spacing in-between each of these sections are exactly the same each time, which also conveys a professional pose. The authors names are also listed below the title of the research paper, which creates credibility. Although the title itself is randomly generated, it is very specific and scientific. For instance “Constructing Evolutionary Programming and Vacuum Tubes”  doesn’t sound like a fictional title, but more scientific. The content involved in a conventional scientific research report includes the author(s), abstract, introduction, related work, principles, implementation, evaluation, conclusion, references and scientific diagrams. The diagrams are specifically labelled using “Figures,” as conventional reports often are. The whole research paper is in black and white, as it appears more professional and scientific, because colors can often sway the audience away from the content.

The next website I visited was the Pandyland website, which randomly generates comic strips. The website is formatted by having three separated boxes, one after the other. Each box’s comic is selected at random, so the comic itself often doesn’t make sense. The comic genre is easily distinguishable because there are often colorful and funny scenes, with no more than two or three characters. When there is dialogue involved, the characters’ words are placed into a cartoon bubble emerging from their mouth. The characters themselves are cartoon, often with distinct facial expressions. This particular website randomly generated rather crude humor, involving erect penis’ and having an itch on his ‘winky’. The content in the comics seek to evoke a laugh or happiness using different kinds of humor including aggression, violence, and crudity.

The third website I visited was a meme generator. A meme is the compilation of a well-known picture of someone or something, with a short caption that is often humorous and relatable to society. The words within the meme are always presented in a white, block, clear, prominent font, so that the audience is able to read it at ease. The picture is always centered in the text; the first part of the text is above the picture, with the punchline always appearing underneath the photo. This forces the audience to read the joke in two separate parts, which typically enhances the emphasis on the punchline. For instance, the meme I created myself is a well-known character in a TV show, that includes text that relates to a communal situation. “One does not simply do thlogs on a Sunday.” The audience is for people in Z’s class, and the joke is aimed at procrastination in the class. The punchline “do thlogs on a Sunday” is situated at the bottom of the picture, to emphasize its importance in the joke.

The final website I visited was the bibliography generator “Easy Bib.” A bibliography is a list of the books referred to in a scholarly work. A bibliography is set up in a specific way and order, so that the readers of their work are able to access information on where the references are derived. A bibliography begins with the referenced author's name, title of publication, date of publication, place of publication (if a book), publishing company, the volume number of a magazine or printed encyclopedia and the page number(s). A bibliography is always formatted alphabetically with clear font, often the same as the body paragraphs of the author’s work. 

These varying websites can help people better understand genre because although the actual content within these websites are generated differently, each website follows the exact same conventions and patterns making it easy to distinguish the specific genre. For instance, even though I had never created a meme before, I was able to review the thousands of previously created memes and decipher how to formulate one. This assignment has enabled me to understand that although the content within a text varies, what makes a genre are the multiple conventions included.

PB1A: Stalk or Statistics?

Whilst attempting to think of a familiar textual genre, I realize there are hundreds of different genres I am exposed on a daily basis. A restaurant menu, a phonebook, an internet bill: honestly I could go on. I decided to look through my internet’s search history, to give myself an idea on the kind of websites and textual genres I expose myself to regularly. I found my search history flooded with sports player profiles, but hadn’t only visited these websites to find out information about the athlete’s sporting history. Conventionally, people use player profiles to familiarize themselves with an opponent and obtain statistical and personal information regarding the player for varying purposes. The first string of player profile’s I visited on my computer was the USC Women’s Tennis team. My coach asked me to do a little bit of research on the tennis team we are playing next week, which includes analyzing each players’ match statistics. The second string of player profile’s I visited were a heap of boys on various UCSB athletic teams. It’s quite normal for my friends and I to stalk boys, check out their pictures and personal information such as where they’re from, their weight and their height, and what better way to do that than to use a player profile. Usually the audience for sport player profiles are sport enthusiasts, opponents, coaches and media outlets. But I often find myself looking at player profiles to research people for reasons other than professional. 

The purpose of the sport player profile is to provide the audience with necessary information about a player including how good the player is at their sport, their physical appearance, their sporting and personal background and their age for instance. Personally, I often look at player profiles in attempt to recognize the person by looking at their photograph. People often look up players on websites to try and obtain a better understanding on their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, along with their history in the sport. It is also common for people to compare themselves to other players, so a sporting profile enables them to get a feel for the level they are at. 

Many sport player profiles vary, depending on the sport and the website. The UCSB Women’s Tennis page is a slightly different format than the NBA player profile page. However, they are very similar and each page allows the audience to obtain necessary information on the player. This information includes the player’s name, date of birth, photograph, biography, sport ranking, nationality, professional history, weight, height, previous game statistics and videos showing the player’s highlights. The UCSB Women’s Tennis player profile page slightly differs from the NBA player profile in that it includes information relevant to the level and area of sport. For instance, the UCSB Women’s Tennis player profile page includes the players’ high school and what the player is studying at UCSB. Whereas the NBA has no such information listed amongst their players, and instead includes options to purchase the players’ named merchandise.

The tone of the a player profile is strictly formal, with no slang or misspelling. The style is often colorful, and is often associated with the player’s team or nationality. For instance, my player profile on the UCSB Women’s Tennis page is blue (as shown below), because UCSB’s team color is blue. On the men’s and women’s professional tennis circuit, the players do not play for a team, so the background of their player profile is filled with their nationality’s flag. It is formatted in a clearly listed way so the audience can find specific information quicker without having to read irrelevant text. In some cases, the player profile includes color coordinated arrows to indicate the progression of the player over a particular period of time.

These specific rhetorical features and conventions all make up the very specific textual genre of a sport player profile. Including player statistics, personal information, and the specific formatting, the sport player profile is easily recognizable and serves to give the audience a brief introduction to the player.

Thlog: Week 1

My first week in Writing 2 has been interesting and eye opening. In our introductory class, Z introduced us to the notion of genre, and how each one is affiliated with varying conventions. In particular, we focused on the country genre, and compared a couple of different country songs with conventions. For instance, the class collectively mentioned beer, trucks and acoustic guitars as a convention of the country genre. Some conventions were affiliated with the country genre, but many were often not present in each country song. These particular conventions are what makes the country genre unique. In addition to the country genre, we touched base on the horror film genre, and discussed the affiliated conventions. Like the country genre, I was intrigued at the way in which I viewed the selected films, because I became more aware of the familiar conventions of a horror film genre. It wasn’t until I carefully listened to country songs and clips from horror films, talked in small groups, and shared brainstormed thoughts with the class, until I realized how many different conventions each genre can have. 

Kerry Dirk’s Navigating Genre’s explains how we subconsciously participate in various genres in everyday life. These genres’ outcomes are predictable in their rhetorical function. For instance how a joke should generate a laugh. The joke itself isn’t recognized by the formal features, but rather because of their perception of the rhetorical action that occurs. Dirk also describes the difficulty of categorizing a text into a genre, because two texts in the same genre can look extremely different. Finally, I learnt from Dirk that genres enables us to make more efficient decisions whilst writing, as we can see how other people have approached the similar situations before.

After reading Peter Elbow’s Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing, I learned a new approach to thinking. Elbow suggests there are two different kinds of thinking; first order thinking and second order thinking. First order thinking is creative thinking that comes naturally without fear of judgement or criticism, whereas second order thinking the critical more analytical thinking. For instance, I use first order thinking when I’m writing in my diary, whereas I use second order thinking when I’m revising a speech for a tennis fundraising event. However, implementing both of these is difficult at the same time because one must be abundantly inventive yet tough-mindedly critical.

We finished the week revising a couple of ‘Letter of Recommendation’ requests, where I realized how this specific genre has conventions that are present in each example letter. However, some conventions were more present than others, and influenced the effectiveness of the letter respectively. I realized that I’ve used many of these ‘Letter of Recommendation’ request conventions before, and correlates with Dirk’s explanation on recognizing how other people have approached similar situations before, and using the template accordingly.

About Me!

Hey guys! My name is Jaimee and I'm an Australian studying Political Science here at UCSB. I moved to California after graduating high school in 2013 to pursue a professional career in tennis. Back home in Australia I have an older sister, a mother and a father and a dog named Tessie. After my degree I hope to continue further with my tennis career in Europe and utilize Political Science to further gain a Law degree. I'm looking forward to develop my writing skills throughout the upcoming quarter.