11-11-08

Seltzer obviously knows how to protect his ideas from critique. He seems to know what people are going to complain about from his writing and writes in sentences to back up his claims against those people.

In Class Assignment for 10-9-08

I sprained my index finger yesterday and I have a little splint on it that makes typing very uncomfortable to me so I am not going to write too much about this subject. This whole project that you are trying to prepare us for is very interesting to me. I think more classes need to be like this. Take pharmacy for example. My girlfriend has to take classes like organic chemistry and human anatomy for 6 or 7 years to do what? Count pills. Organic chemistry teaches absolutely nothing about what it is like being a pharmacist. Does WVU care? No. They just want the money. At least after a few years of the history of journalism I am in a class that puts students in the real world to get real information about a particular job.

October 2nd in Class Assignment

As a writer I should be very concerned with the genre of writing that I need to be mimicking. If I'm writing a science report it needs to be drastically different from writing a english report. One would be more focused on the strucure and word usage and the other would be focused on what I did for my project. With the progress report I will be sure to include as many specific details as possible.

Assignment Due September 30

I'm a journalism major so essays are pretty easy to come by. I have the news stories I have had to generate and I've had the regular english class essays too. One of these Enlglish essays that aggravated me the most was one I had to write about a play called "The Friends". We were supposed to come up with a theory about the play that hadn't been discussed in class or any type of text book we may have used in class. Coming up with a thesis about something I barely cared about at best was difficult. I had to read and reread the pages to even form so type of opinion about the play itself. Once I had I decided that I would pick one point in the play and argue that that point was the real turning point of the play. I observed the psyche of the three characters very closely and then came up with what moment truely affected the three friends enough to cause an apex to the action. I argued my point strongly enough with psychological explanations of why certain characters said certain things at certain moments in the story. I completely hated the assignment but I did ok on it.

Class Assignment 9-25-08

The people in the clip seem to communicate through argument. This doesn't mean that they are affected at all by the arguing. It simply means that they communicate with eachother through a playful running argument between themselves. When they explain the outlining they are just as abraisive but i think it is just how they talk as a community. They explain in great detail the outlining aspect of tagging which probably means that it is one of the more important things to do. The so called leader of the group did not do a very good job of voicing his opinions about the project with his friend. Neither of them seem to interested with working seemlessly to the end of the project.

Class Assignment for 9-18-08

In the letters to the editor section there is a person named Y. Williams Burns that is concerned about John McCain's presidency from a Christian standpoint. They are concerned about McCain as a Christian because he cheated on his wife and is therefore (in their opinion), unfit to govern the nation. He certainly is very passionate about John McCain's shortcomings as a leader due to his shortcomings as a husband and father. While these two things are connected they are certainly not the same thing as bringing a nation into or out of war or controlling the economy. I guess some questions that they ask are "Does John McCain really support moral values?" "Does his politicial campaign rely heavily on his being a prisoner of war before?" "Is John McCain a fit father?" and maybe a little more inadvertantly he asks "Does Obama fit into the standards of a good Christian?"

Extra Assignment

One question I would have regarding this assignment would be; are we supposed to be making a thesis point and have a bigger meaning to this research project or do we just research the person and then report exactly what we find? I don't think it would be exactly possible to come up with a theory on this person's writing styles without doing the research before. If it is just a research and reporting back should there still be a overall feeling from the project?

Fifth Writing Assignment

Well I've just really done the bare essentials with the exploratory essay. I barely stamped out 2 pages but I don't think that this particular assignment is to hard. I mean I'm the type of person that doesn't have to think a whole lot about what they are going to do. I just pick what I'm going to work on and then I go do it. This exploratory essay doesn't help my thought process all that much. But I did it and now its off to work on the the letter of inquiry. That will be a little more interesting because I actually have to write to a professional writer and ask then to allow me to study them. It's a little intimidating.

In Class Writing Assignment

I once became a member of my high school's golf team. To be a member of that team you need to learn how to play golf, and understand the terminology of golfing. Group members communicated with eachother by using golf lingo that would be over the head of someone who doesn't play golf. Subjects that aren't appropriate for discussion would be anything not relating to golf. Subjects that are appropriate for discussion are things about the golf course and how you or your teammate is going to play it.

Fourth Writing Topic

Coming Soon

Weekend Review

I have learned what a discourse community is this week. I still don't know exactly what is the difference from a discourse communtiy and an audience though. I think all the things the faigley talked about regarding a discourse community is implied when you are thinking about what type of audience you are writing for. I think Faigley just wanted a book to publish because the ideas he presented are not nearly as revolutionary as he woud like to think. One question I have would be - What does a Dicourse Community have that an Audience truely doesn't?

Third Writing Topic

A professional writer needs to know and be able to do many things in order to effective participate in the process of communication at the workplace. A writer needs to be able to effectively transfer their thoughts to the paper. They also need to be able to keep orderly and detailed accounts of their thoughts and activities in the workplace. The professional writer needs to learn how to communiticate his ideas to his coworkers above all else because that is the height of teamwork in the workplace.

Second Writing Topic

2.Argument today in my opinion has become much more of a thing that people do for fun. Friends will call eachother bad names when they see eachother for the mere fun of it, couples will play fight with eachother because they are comfortable with eachother. Fake arguing has become almost a term of endearment. It releaves stress and lets the other person kow that in actuality you are very far from argueing with them. You just have to acknowledge what is sarcasim and humor from what is seriousness and opposition. TV is a whole different ballpark. People with TV shows will only talk to people who they can plan out an argument that will in fact support their own agendas in the end. All TV is basically staged, whether they are fighting or getting along, everything that is said is all for their own mtovies.
4. Persuasion in my communty to me is done every day by politicians and political activists. They seem to be exactly what this question is asking. They all give speeches and hold fun raisers all designed to get the community to join their side of whatever argument they are fighting for or against that day. Persuasion is done on a smaller scale by everyone in every language. A boyfriend will try to convince a girlfriend on what they should watch and eat that night by giving her a list of the pros and cons of each of their possibilities . A Christian will try to convince basically everyone they meet everyday that they should go to their church by simply telling them they are going to hell if they don't. Adds on TV try to convince the public to stop smoking or eating unhealthy foods by exagerating what might happen to you if you don't. It is simply done by everyone everyday.

First Wiriting Topic

All kinds of professionals have a majority of their work fall in the writing category. You have the basic journalist/author as the mot obvious examples, but you can also get really technical and mention the court stenographers or the secretaries of the world. Many more job titles out there have writing as a main task however. All PR and Advertising majors need to learn many different styles of writing to meet the varied needs of their clients. Engineers must write down client information and make notes. Lawyers must plan their entire court case from the moment they are handed the papers for it. Teachers need to write lesson plans of every single one of their working days. Writing is a major part of society, even if it is in the form of typing, like a web page editor or a blog manager. Everyone needs to learn effective means of persuasion through the form of writing.

In-Class Assignment #1

1. Jack Selzer wanted to examine the technical styles of an engineer because in the past, only professional writers and students have been studied. This limited view left little real world applications for the rest of society. Jack wanted to study an engineer's technical writing to give society a more complete view of technical writing in general.

2.A. I find it very interesting that he was unique enough to be one of the first researchers to stray away from the simple examinations of professors who must write every single day. His one oringinal idea could lead to a more in-depth many more examinations of multiples of jobs. People can read his research and have a better understanding of a job skill, and at the same time think, "If there is this much technical writing for an engineer, I wonder how many other jobs have a surprising amount technical writing."
2.B. I was convinced that his findings were true when he explained why Nelson doesn't do a lot of revising, but instead gathers good information at the beginning, finds what hsi client would enjoy, and makes all decisions afterward that coincide with his originial decisions.