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Just as reflection can lead to reflexivity, so too can reflexivity beget action. It's making a difference, a change. Think about something you read, write about it, change your personal views on life as a result, and then speak or engage with others to make a positive change based on your new learning. You're in an ideal position to do this. You're gaining a college education, acquiring more authority (ethos), becoming entitled to more significant things in life. But with these privileges comes a responsibility in our democracy: When you see something that isn't right, that is a call to action. Become personally involved. Elie Weisel, Nazi death camp survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, points out that the most important "commandment" for us is the call to act on the view that the "opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." Weisel says that the worst atrocity and most inhumane thing someone can do is not act when you recognize the need. Of course, your action may not always benefit everyone (http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0391/9103029.htm). No doubt you've heard the phrase "you are what you eat." Well, in many ways, when we read something we're digesting it; when we think about something critically we're "devouring knowledge." Let's carry this metaphor (probably a little too far). Who is preparing all this "food" we're eating? Who is doing the cooking? Well, everyone we're in contact with. We are socially constructed, or more precisely, the traditions and institutions we value are really social artifacts that make us who we are. Most Americans, for instance, value concepts like individualism, freedom of speech, a strong work ethic, and freedom of religion. How are these artifacts a part of you? Do you belong to different subcultures which have taught you other things as well? How would you go about rethinking or "deconstructing" these influences? Perhaps a beginning point is to understand what subcultures are and which different subcultures you belong to (http://www.bsu.edu/classes/rice/handouts/subcultures.htm). This way you won't take for granted all the things that make you who you are, including all the tacit, underlying influences. What is an "authority" in a text? An authority is a person or office which is assumed to be reliable. You might appeal to a reader's sense of authority or ethos. For instance, if you're writing a research paper, you might want to back your points up by pointing out what some leading figure said about something that supports your claim. When you write "with authority," then, you're writing as if you're an expert on something. What does it mean when someone says "they're out of your league," or asks "well, isn't she a classy lady?" On some level, belonging to one class of people is really just connecting with a different set of artifacts in particular subcultures. That is, you're part of a certain class of people because you value reading and higher education (or, not). Language affects class in many ways (http://www.whitehurst.sbs.sunysb.edu/pubs/adrmchap.htm). And, of course, because you value certain artifacts of specific subcultures, you're entitled to different benefits than people belonging to a different class, as Robert Coles discusses. But on another level, class carries a negative connotation. Do the phrases "lower class" or "better class of people" mean anything to you? It depends on which relative class you're in, probably. "Lower class" can mean those who don't make as much money as another class, but it would likely then connote those who are less educated, have poorer living conditions, and fewer health benefits. But what about well educated students who don't make anything? Are they "lower class"? Class, then, doesn't necessarily equate to citizenry. Someone who doesn't make much money could contribute much to society, whereas someone who makes an obscene amount of money could do so by taking advantage of others. People who are wealthy are not necessarily a "better class" of people, although on some levels, those with more money may be considered "upper class." It's a loaded and somewhat subjective term, but there are many questions you can ask to begin to determine class (http://www.abacon.com/internetguides/soc/activities.html#twelve). This word works on many levels. It's that which combines things, things like ideas in sentences, between sentences, between paragraphs, between readings, and between what you do in class and what you do in your free time (http://www.cas.usf.edu/JAC/173/foster.html). For instance, WRA offers a number of "meta sequences" (544-553). These are ways of thinking about different essays so that the ideas build off one another. Building off of what came previously is what you need to do in your writing, too. See how this works at the Writing Machine (http://ec.hku.hk/writingmachine/bin4). Basically, you can repeat or reference ideas or specific words in order to transition between ideas (http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/style/cohesion.html). community service learning: 10, 348, 360-362, 408-423, 413-420, 538-539, 542-543 Reflection leads to reflexivity, and reflexivity can lead to making an active contribution to society (5). And we can learn in the process. Working in the community can be a very rewarding experience, and enable you to really see that learning in school is valuable and can be applied in real-world contexts. But as WRA points out, getting actively involved in your community doesn't mean just going out into the community. Think of community service learning as a paper with a thesis. You have to find a problem and then come up with proofs which rectify it or prove your point. Just going out into the community is positive, but you need to do something while you're there. See this website for some great ideas: http://school.newsweek.com/pages/service.htm. There's an important difference between connotation and denotation. If you're writing something and your writing connotes (http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=connotation) something, you're implying that something is true. But this can be very different than the actual or denotative meaning of something. For instance, if I write "I get to stay up late tonight to write my most excellent English paper," the term most excellent might actually mean something else. That is, most excellent might really mean (denote) superb, right? But in this sentence, I'm using the term ironically. Most excellent in this sentence (connote) means "last second, probably not-so-good" paper. critical reading & reflection: 7 The readings in WRA and this companion website are complex. Some are more lengthy than others, but they are all very weighty in the concepts they share. Trust your personal experience and common sense to get through them. Consider rereading sections or entire essays. Underline key passages that you want to come back to. Write in the margins. And, most importantly, understand this process as knowledge work. That is, it takes serious time and concentration to critically read and reflect on these pieces. Many people don't dedicate the necessary time because there's no tangible immediate product (like etching out math problems on a piece of paper). The product is knowledge, and that's hard to recognize. cultural blindness: 81, 83, 206 I'm going to recycle an old cliche here to make a point. Please bear with me. You know the phrase "Is the glass half-empty or half-full?" What does it mean? It's not really asking you if you're thirsty. It's a question aimed at whether you see the potential good or if you're overwhelmed by the bad in life. But having a positive or negative outlook on something isn't always just a matter of attitude. You may simply be unable to see something. We're all blind, in a way (http://www.best.com/~cxarli/english/writing/blindness.html). And we don't often know how to train ourselves to learn how to see something we don't see. We may not be able to see some truth that's out there because of where we grew up, what religious or social traditions we value, or other personal experiences we've had. Leading a reflective lifestyle, being wholehearted and sincere to as many positions and views as we can, enables us to be more culturally aware. There's an important difference between denotation and connotation. Denoting refers to the actual meaning of something, out of its context (http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=denotation). For instance, if I write "I get to stay up late tonight to write my most excellent English paper,"the term most excellent might actually mean something else. That is, most excellent might really mean (denote) superb, right? But in this sentence, I'm using the term ironically. Most excellent in this sentence (connote) means "last second, probably not-so-good" paper.
There are big differences between editing and revision. Editing, really, includes changing words and phrases around, catching grammar irregularities, spelling, and things like that. But revision is really re-seeing your work. Both editing and revision are VERY important in good writing. This checklist might be useful as you work with your formal writing (http://www.gmu.edu/departments/writingcenter/handouts/check.html). One writing strategy that's useful when writing with computers is tracking the changes you've made between drafts. Open up your wordprocessing program and find information about tracking changes under Help (http://www.gpc.peachnet.edu/~drobinso/095/trackchanges.htm). David Mamet has referred to the film Schindler's List as "emotional pornography" (http://www.gadflyonline.com/archive/film/film-03-99.html). He suggests the film shows Hollywood actors portraying holocaust victims rather than the real thing, unfortunately preventing viewers from making wholehearted, reflexive connections to racist movements in contemporary society. If viewers see themselves as better than the villains portrayed in the film, they think "this could never happen here." How does "emotional pornography" relate to the corruption of the media (http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/v03/03-122.txt) or the importance of sharing more than feelings (http://www.geocities.com/thunderday_1999/feelings.htm)? Robert Coles defines "entitlement" as that which describes what "all quite well-off American families transmit to their children--an important psychological common denominator, I believe: an emotional expression, really, of those familiar, class-bound prerogatives, money and power" (50). It’s what your experiences qualify you for in life: certain jobs, certain qualities of living. But are we born entitled to certain things or do we earn everything? Are women born entitled to different things than men? What about race? What are you entitled to? Is this a good thing to strive for? Ethnography is a method of studying and learning about a person or group of people. Typically, ethnography involves the study of a small group of subjects in their own environment. Rather than looking at a small set of variables and a large number of subjects ("the big picture"), the ethnographer attempts to get a detailed understanding of the circumstances of the few subjects being studied. Ethnographic accounts, then, are both descriptive and interpretive; descriptive because detail is so crucial and interpretive, because the ethnographer must determine the significance of what she observes without gathering broad, statistical information. Clifford Geertz, whose thoughts about culture are excerpted in the "Other Important Definitions of Culture," is famous for coining the term "thick description" in discussing the methodology of the ethnographer (http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/glossary/ethnography.html). This is one of the three appeals you can make to your reader (see logos and pathos). If I were to write something like "Captain Kangaroo makes it clear that the war in Bosnia affects us all," would you believe me? Why? Well, it's pretty obvious: Captain Kangaroo is not an expert or leading authority on Bosnia. But if I wrote something like this my reader would be a little more convinced that what I'm writing is true: "Henry Kissinger continued to offer advice regarding the Bosnian Conflict to our nation's leaders in the early 1990s." This is ethos, an appeal to reader's sense of authority or good character (http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/index.html#ethos ). Have you seen websites which do this? I'd say a website that has a picture of a rock singer or refers to people that commonly come to mind when talking about a subject is using ethos (for instance, when I think of peace I think of Ghandi, Weisel, or Mother Theresa). Can you establish your own ethos, credibility, or reasonableness as the writer? It's certainly something that's valuable out in the real world (http://archives.chronicle.duke.edu/story.php?article_id=17257). Exposition is often understood as telling your readers what's going on rather than showing them. For instance, here's an example of telling readers something: "The cat remembered where he left his shoelace and felt he had to run and snatch it before his brother entered the room." And this is an example of showing: "He sharpened his claws for a few brief moments and then raced around the corner of the futon to snatch his favorite toy." The expository essay, then, is one that "is to explain, or to acquaint your reader with a body of knowledge" (http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/ExpositoryEssay.html). You demonstrate your knowledge to a reader by explaining the topic. When you add a position statement or a thesis, though, then your knowledge has to be worded in such a way that convinces your reader of something. You're providing an opinion that you have to prove. This is a persuasive essay. Many students are asked to write a persuasive essay, proving something, and fall into the "plot summary trap," and only share knowledge about a subject. Writing fiction is often a release for many people. Fiction provides a space for people to relate concerns, express rage, investigate ideas, and more. For Updike, "the fabricated truth of poetry and fiction makes a shelter in which I feel safe, sheltered within interlaced plausibilities in the image of a real world for which I am not to blame" (36). Some theorists and literary critics believe there is nothing but fiction. History is fiction, in a way, because it includes subjective perceptions. Fiction can be stranger than truth, according to Mark Twain, but it can also direct us to truth. Writing in general is a way to concentrate our thinking.
A Directing Title: Perhaps Something Separated by a Colon Start off broad, capturing a wide audience. For instance: "Many American short story writers have peculiar styles and use interesting metaphors." Then narrow it: "Two such authors are Hemingway and Carver." At the most narrow point is your thesis: "By examining writing style and the use of water as metaphor in Carver's "Cathedral" and Hemingway's "The Big Creek" it becomes clear that ________________________." That was all in the introduction. And, there was no particular information about the stories or writers in there. That's what the body paragraphs are for. You've captured your reader by starting off broad and narrowing their interest to YOUR topic. If you started off with your topic, it wouldn't have been interesting for your reader. Now each of these paragraphs should in some way relate back to your thesis; in particular, the ________________________ that you came up with above. Each paragraph, really, is like a mini-funnel, with topic sentence, leading your reader in, and then extending or transitioning into the next paragraph. If you're doing something like a compare/contrast, choosing a logical structure in the body, like we'll do in the argumentation essay, this is very important. The reverse works for the conclusion. That is, don't offer any new information (that's the body), but you might include a brief statement about each paragraph/idea you had in your essay. Then, and this is really important, extend your essay to make it important for your readers to continue to think about it or apply your message in their lives. Example: "Although not all short stories use the same metaphors and although every writer uses different styles, reflecting on the underlying meaning as I've done here is very illuminating." This can mean two things. First, re-reading your work aloud before you turn it in is an absolute must. Read your work aloud as part of your regular revision process. This will allow you to see new things by using your ears. You'll discover things that you think you wrote but didn't, and you'll find things missing. Second, as you read your piece, make sure it's your voice that you're using. You don't want a bunch of words in there that you would never use in a million years. And it's not appropriate to just use a thesaurus to "spruce" up your writing. If you're not using your voice in your writing, it's almost a form of plagiarism. In the least, it's like wearing a tuxedo or fancy dress to a supermarket to go grocery shopping. Others will find it very odd, and you will definitely not look like you're supposed to be there. This is a term similar to "self." It's the answer to the question "Who are you." But, a person's identity has to do with who is doing the identifying. That is, when someone looks at you, they're looking through a specific set of lenses. These lenses dictate their perception of YOUR identity. individualism & collectivism: 151 We are at once individuals and part of a social composite. That is, we define ourselves and others help us define ourselves. What is individualism? It is that sense that we want to be unique, that if we work hard we can make our own way. What is collectivism? This is how we build off one another's knowledge, how we work together to combine our efforts. We use artifacts to do this. We must value both of these forms of living in order to successfully define ourselves: "On the one hand, we have our traditional belief in the self as a free agent (itself a socially constructed belief), and on the other the idea that the self is a social construct, a loose collection of socially defined roles" (151). There are many different kinds of journals, each with their own values. These include the dialectical notebook, the reading-response journal, the dialogue journal, and the triple-entry incident journal. They can be used in all stages of the writing process but are most commonly used as a prewriting strategy. Journaling is extremely valuable because it enables us to manifest or thinking. Once our ideas are down, we can step back, reflect on them for a little while, and tackle them from another angle. It's called metareflection: reflecting about thinking. Reflecting about a text gets you one step, journaling (writing down your reflections) gets you another two steps, and revisiting your journal probably gets you another three. It really is valuable for critical thinking. This refers to a few things. Think about how you learn. You know something, then you go out and find something new, and apply what you're learning to something you already know. You associate the unknown to the known so that you can remember and categorize new knowledge. This sort of thing happens all the time in English. You often write essays of increasing complexity, building on what you learned previously. And this kind of thing happens inside your writing too. You know, transitioning? You link one concept say from the previous paragraph to the next. Or, and this is the linguistic definition of the "known-new contract," you link one part of a sentence to the next part. For example: "It is terribly cold here, a cold that freezes you to the core." The description of the cold is linked to the previous clause, the clause that indicates where the cold is. Wait a second, I just did it again! This is the word. That is, logic. You know: structure, order. This comes necessarily after that. Why would you need to use this form of appeal over, say, ethos or pathos? Well, ethos is an appeal to authority and pathos is an appeal to emotion. But some people need logic. Think about a thesis. How does that work? You start off broad, usually, then narrow or funnel in to a point. That's a logical structure right there when you think about it. We use logic more often than emotion or authority in much of our academic writing. Of course, these appeals aren't mutually exclusive. This type of writing differs from exposition and description in a few ways (http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTStreamConNar.html). Basically, narratives are stories that "show" rather than "tell." Some description is usually found in narration, but what is always there is some sequence of events. Have you ever felt like an outsider? Maybe others made fun of you because of your identity or what they knew and you didn't. This is "otherness." In this situation you're in the realm of "the other." Now, oftentimes we put people in this realm because we don't understand them or their culture or the social artifacts they relate to. Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Consider "otherness" as you read the essays in this collection. You've probably already been taught that an outline is an important part of writing. But you may not practice outlining. After all, it takes time away from the end product, the paper, what you're turning in. But believe me, outlining can really be useful. There are many different kinds of outlines (http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/outlines.shtml). Let me tell you about one. Instead of outlining before you write, outline your essay after you get your first draft done. This is VERY useful. This will show you where you've gone off on tangents, where you have holes in your arguments, and where you need to shift things around. There is a lot of critical research on using computers to write, and many people highlight different ways you can organize ideas with computers and outlines (http://corax.cwrl.utexas.edu/cac/archives/v8/8_2_html/8_2_3_Kozma.html). Get in the habit, for instance, of copy/pasting ideas from the Internet (with their sources or else you'd be plagiarizing), into outline notes. An Online Writing Lab is an online site where you can gain invaluable suggestions about writing in areas YOU really want to work on, like word choice, commas, and cohesion. You can also submit your work and gain cybertutor response. Two recommended OWLs are at Purdue (http://owl.english.purdue.edu) and Washington State University (http://owl.wsu.edu). When you write you always have to keep your audience in mind (http://humanities.byu.edu/MLDB/rhetrook.htm). And depending on the subject matter and the audience, you might want to use an emotional appeal. For instance, if I were writing about the Columbine High School shootings and the book She Said Yes, I may want to use pathos as opposed to appeals to reason (logos) or credibility (ethos). We're all here to become better writers, right? This isn't a clinic, where we fix writing. This is a learning environment where we learn how to write better. That way, you can take something meaningful away from the learning environment (knowledge) as opposed to something less meaningful although temporarily useful (a well-written essay). Be sincere, wholehearted, and open-minded in your response to others' writing. If you critically reflect on what you're doing in this process you will better your own writing: offering positive and constructive feedback often results in mastery of the concepts themselves. All writing is some form of persuasion. That is, by the very act of reading someone is being persuaded that the ideas you wrote have some sort of meaning. Of course, the trick is to find the most persuasive combination of strategies to meet the needs of your particular audience. WRA discusses very clearly a number of these techniques, and you really should learn how to do them and when to apply them: Aristotle's three appeals (ethos, pathos,logos), voice, and tone. You might also consider the effect word choice and length variety has on your readership. Copying someone's work or ideas is not a way to save time. In fact, it's a waste of time. You're in college because the things you study are useful in life. Now, if you fail to learn something by taking a short-cut, you're wasting your time because you will have to learn it at some point. And if you don't learn it, you'll have trouble later. Big trouble. Plagiarism doesn't just mean taking someone's words or graphics. If you don't come up with an idea, then you need to reference where you got it. Ask your teacher what it is, exactly, if you're confused. As this website points out, "postmodernism" is a difficult term to put a finger on (http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html). It involves a blurring of ideas and identities and cultures and perspectives. It's what happens when the melting pot mentality of many Americans blurs how you feel about yourself. Postmodern works tend to be reflexive, questioning their own being and construction. Some writers believe our society became postmodern after the dropping of the atomic bomb. With mass destruction there's the realization that at any given point we could be exterminated. What are we to do, then, as we await this possibility? Well this is a no-brainer. Prewriting is what you do before you write. Well yes. It can be more than that, though, too. Prewriting, really, happens throughout the process of writing. You are always already prewriting, thinking about how something sounds, how it logically fits or ties into everything else, etc. There are some very valuable prewriting strategies that can be used at other times in the writing process than just the beginning, for instance, outlining. Another really valuable thing you can do is spend some time surfing the Internet. Look for ideas, narrow your area of inquiry, maybe even find some good websites that can be used as references. This is when one person thinks he or she is superior to another person because of race. Racism is ignorance. Ever notice getting something out of a piece of writing that another person didn't get? This is reader-response theory: A reader's experience is important to the meaning of a text. We are selves and we are also socially constructed. That is, knowledge is made by bouncing ideas off one another. Careful consideration. This leads to reflexivity, which is changing based on reflection. The book uses a mirror as an example to explain it. In a mirror you see both you and what you're wearing (clothes and expressions). You have to look at you in the context of something you're wearing. We're always doing this: considering who we are based on some experience or while we're in some situation. Well, not always. Reflection takes practice. Reflective, life-long learning is a goal we might all strive for. reflexivity: 3-5, 262-263, 326 If reflection is careful consideration, reflexivity is changing based on it. This can lead to action: changing something in society based on who we are and what we think is best. After all, society is just a composite of who makes it up. There's a big difference between editing and revision. Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has some very strong and useful thoughts and directions about making your writing better through revision (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/revise.html). Basically, revising is the process of re-visioning or re-seeing your work. This isn't just changing words around here and there. This is digging in, re-focusing, thinking about weaknesses and strengths your essay may have, and then really making changes. Both editing and revising are necessary processes to good, quality writing in composition. self: 20, 62-64, 72, 84, 150-152, 262-263 The definition to this word is in the answer to the question "Who are you?" Now, when you think about it, that's a very hard question to answer. There's your name, your gender, where you live, what you do, who you hang with, the work you're involved in, the types of things you eat (you are, afterall, what you eat), and much more. And all of these things have underlying factors. For instance, if you're a guy, there may be a whole set of responsibilities that you assume because of your gender. Same if you're a girl. So, there's a lot involved in "self" or identity. As WRA points out, the self involves "a range of possibilities--physical, familial, political, cultural, and so on" (20). Make sure you read these pages. They're very well written and define some key terms for you. With "social artifact," you have to think about how it is you come to learn something. Learning is ALWAYS a two-way street. Say you're sitting at a lunchroom table and someone comes to speak with you. They tell you something. It's a two-way street because your decision to sit in that particular room, what's on the table in front of you, and most importantly, who you are, affects what she tells you and how the person presents the information. We make meaning in life through interaction. We interact with not only people, but things. A social artifact is something that results through interaction. We are always already interacting. You might think about the traditions and institutions we have as social artifacts. society: 27, 50, 68, 76-77, 84 A society is a group of people who share similar social artifacts. A society doesn't have to be those who live in a physical location. In fact, those who live in the same location may belong to multiple, disparate societies. How does society relate to culture or subcultures? What is cultural blindness? The structure of something is its configuration, organization, or arrangement. It's how the parts make up the whole, and how the whole demands what parts are used. A great way to get at what the structure of something you've written, is to compose an outline after writing it and think about how you use appeals like ethos, pathos,logos. Do you organize your paragraphs point by point or theme by theme? This can refer to the type of works cited and the bibliographic format you use. Are you using MLA-style to document your sources, for instance? Style can also refer to the way in which something is said or done (as opposed to its content). Is your writing probing, descriptive, esoteric? Is it persuasive? If a culture is a large group of people with like ideas, then a subculture is simply a smaller group that has like ideas that others in the general culture don't necessarily have. You can find a list of different subcultures at . No doubt you belong to a few of them.
The editors of WRA point out that "subjectivity is the process of the self knowing itself; the self is somehow aware of its existence, and this awareness is called subjectivity" (112). This is a great definition. But you know what? It means something else, too. If you have a subjective perspective, it means you're in some way relating your views or perspective to your claim. Of course, we can never be completely objective, but which one of these two sentences do you think is subjective? 1) The Portland Trailblazers are simply the coolest professional basketball team ever; or 2) The Portland Trailblazers have some of the top-ranked players in the NBA. If you're reading this, you already have considerable technological literacy. And it's likely that you will continue to practice reading material online for academic, work, and recreational purposes. For many, knowing how to use computers is fast becoming a necessity and not a luxury. And technology refers to other things besides computers too. But just as you learned how to form different letters when you were younger, you're now learning how to use different tools and navigate your reading environments to different locations. Literacy instruction today is married to technology because we rely on different forms of technology in how we communicate in society. It's pretty simple, really. You have "A." You have "B." "A" relates to "B" in some way. That's all there is to it. There's this, there's that, and this relates to that. Now this and that may be theory and practice, idea and example, or apples and oranges. These are pretty well factual, or things you describe. But how this relates to that is something a little more developed. In fact, the rest of your persuasive essay should work to prove and explain your opinion. A thesis is an opinion, needing to be proved. If you're only stating a fact, like "Oregon became a state in 1867" (I think that's right), then you really don't have a thesis. Something like this would be an opinion, and a thesis: "Even though Oregon became a state on the books in 1867, as a territory it had more political importance to the nation than California." You have "A" (Oregon as a state), you have "B" (Oregon as a territory), and you have how "A" relates to "B" (Oregon was more politically important to the nation as a territory than California). Now, of course, this is an opinion. Have you ever read someone and somehow just knew what the author's side was? This is called tone. This is where the author has provided some subjective perspective or an attitude to the writing. What's my tone here: "WRA is a valuable resource in composition instruction today"? Think about the term "valuable" in this sentence. Now, voice is a little different, but also something that you must infer from what you're reading. Inferring is like reading in between the lines. You've heard the phrase "it's such a tragedy!" What does this mean? A tragedy is characterized by disappointment. It's usually when a protagonist (main character) is involved in a morally significant struggle that ends in ruin. The person must often decide between lesser evils. There is catharsis. This is a form of purgation, a purifying or cleansing of the emotions. By watching or experiencing something tragic, the reader or audience undergoes a catharsis of sorts. "You know what happens to women who go into the city late at night," for instance. This is something the protagonist has to learn the hard way in "Roman Fever." Simply put, something that connects one thing to another. This could be a transition from one part of the sentence to another part, as in the known-new contract, or from one sentence to another, or from one paragraph to another. You can make transitions between essays you write, transitions between essays you read, and transitions between courses you take. You can transition from ideas to informal writing to formal writing, as well. Yeah, it's just what you think: a shape with three points. We often talk about the rhetorical triangle in writing. Imagine at the end of the three points a reader, a writer, and a text. If the text changes, then it will necessarily change the experience the reader and the writer has. This works in every permeation you can think of. It's important because ALL writing is rhetorical. That is, all writing is shaped because of some intended audience, even if the audience is only the writer herself. Perhaps one of the most useful things when you sit down to write something is figuring out, first, exactly who your audience is. In the last five or so years, graphics and page design have become more important in composition studies (http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~candc/announce.htm). "Synchronized hypermedia" is the latest term, meaning we can read sounds, graphics, and text in specific orders and specific compositional arrangements. Think about it. When you drive down the road what do you read? You read the sounds of oncoming cars, certain kinds of dashes on the road which tell you if it's one or two way traffic, and signs that have specific colors, shapes, words, and icons on them. You read all of these things at once. Teachers are now finding that it is important to not only teach students how to read all of these things and pay attention to their impact on you, but it's also important to know how to compose or write multi-modal compositions (http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/Robert_Root/Background/Visual.htm). Visual literacy isn't just adding pictures: it's using text and graphics together with page layout design to describe and effectively communicate ideas from your head to your reader's head. High school students often are trained to write for one audience: the teacher. You may have been told "it is not proper to use 'I'" in your writing. This may be appropriate in some forms of writing, but it is not appropriate in others (http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTVoice.html). In fact, in real life, you write for different audiences, using different appeals (like ethos, pathos,logos), and sometimes you really should tap into your personal voice. Your experience is valuable; the way you speak is valuable. And there's the way you speak with your friends, and the way you speak with your teachers. But there's also active and passive voice (http://www.d.umn.edu/~dmorriso/readablewriting/ActivePassiveVoice). Basically, think about voice in terms of what kind of language you use in your writing. You wouldn't talk to your best friend in the same way you talk to a teacher, right? This is because you're using a different kind of voice. The situation calls for something different. All writing is situational (rhetorical). Voice, then, is "our sense of the person behind the words" (15), and something a little different than tone. |
Good writing is all about getting an image or idea from the writer's head into the head of the reader. To do so you must be precise in how you describe the image or idea. Write as if you don't already know what it is you're thinking about. That is, if you didn't know what a banana split was, what kinds of details would you need to get a clear picture of what it is? This is harder than it seems because as writers we often take for granted that our audience understands what we mean. Choosing specific words is the trick, and one of the most important things in good writing. Think about what you write. For instance, a banana split is a bowl of scooped ice-cream, cool-whip, a banana, and a cherry. But with that description you really don't know how big the bowl or scoops are, how each of the ingredients fit together, what kinds of ice-cream are involved, or the shape and size of the banana and cherry, etc. Capture an image of something in your head and then describe it precisely. What else is there?
This is a useful structure to think about using in persuasive
writing.