Coaches can read, too

Establishing a territory

He begins explaining how important it is to be a football coach. he states that it doesnt matter what kind of football either; peewee to the NFL. He talks about what it takes to be a successful coach and what characteristics a coach needs to coach effectively.

Establishing a niche

He talks about what kink of skills a coach needs to coach a team effectively. what a coach needs in order to teach the team how to win their games.

Occupying the niche

for this he talks about how to put all the information that coaches have to good use. how a coach must read the other team and be able to tell their team what to do to effectively play against the opposing team. he must be able to call the plays so that the team can win.

Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers

It looks like Mirabelli's research question is something about the language that is used to communicate in diners, not only verbally but also written. he wanted to find out more about this language and specifically how it is used within the diner, both between the workers and between a worker and a customer. this is found in the literacy and contemporary theory section of the article.

the data that Mirabelli collected was "direct participation, observation, field notes, documents, interviews, tape recordings, and transcriptions"

He found that it is a lot more complicated than people think to be a waitress. it takes about 10 years to become an expert at it which is the same amount of time that it takes to become an expert at anything. He found that there is a different language that waitresses and people in restaurants use including the use of a menu, which is pretty much exclusive to restaurants.

Discourse Community Proposal

The discourse community that I will be examining is Camp Akita in Logan, Ohio. I began attending the camp the summer before 6^th grade and was a camper every summer through high school. Starting the summer before my sophomore year I began a program called L.I.F.E. Guard where I volunteered at the camp for two weeks every summer for four summers. The summer before my sophomore and junior years of college I worked at the camp as a counselor. And starting this past April I began working in the kitchen. Through out these years I went to many fall and spring retreats and volunteered in the non-summer months to help keep the camp beautiful.

Because of the fact that I have attended or worked just about every job available at this location I think that I know a lot about this discourse community. I am a member of this community and have been since 6th grade. The very first time I ever went to Akita was in 3^rd grade but I don’t think I joined the community at that time. Not only am I a member of this community as a whole, but I believe that I am a member of various smaller communities within the camp so I will be trying to explore a little bit of each of those communities.

I just want to learn more about how discourse communities operate and communicate. The concept of looking at a group as a discourse community is new to me so I think I will learn a lot from looking at something that I have known for so long in a new way.

I plan on citing Gee’s and Wardle’s articles in my paper as well as probably using ‘Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers’. I haven’t read the latter yet but believe that it will apply to my paper because I am going to interview one person from the kitchen at Camp Akita.

Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice

in the introduction both Swales and Gee give their viewpoints on what a discourse community is. Swales is a lot more lenient on what it means to be a part of a discourse community. he says that someone can be involved with a discourse community but not necessarily be a member of that community. Gee is pretty much the opposite. he says that someone cannot float between groups. and if they do they are mushfakes.

Johns talks about how people are born into some discourse communities and they have the ability to chose others that they would like to be a part of. she also says that discourse communities shouldnt really be called that but instead be called communities of practice.

Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics

He is talking about how we must be able to do certain tasks or have certain skills before we are allowed to move up to the next "level" in learning a discourse.

In my high school language classes (French) we had 4 areas of learning. Reading, writing, speaking and listening. we had to keep a B or better in each of these areas in order to not only pass the class but also be able to go on to the next level. if you did not keep your grade up to that level you were required to retake the class.

The Future of LIteracy

I think that i most relate to Brittney Moraski. Just like her family, i grew up knowing that education had an unspoken importance. I knew from a very young age that i was expected to go to college. her parents reading choices are very similar to my parents. my mom would always be reading novels and my dad read magazines and the newspaper every day. just like Brittney i relied on friends for my access to a computer. although we had computers at school, i spent the most time on computers at my friend Jessie's house or at the library. We did not get a computer at home until i was in high school. by the time we got a computer at home i was very literate. i used our home computer but knew enough at that point in my life that i didnt really learn much more from our personal computer.

Literacy Sponsors

My biggest literacy sponsors are my family and school.

My family has always been very into reading and everything that goes along with it. my mother began reading to me when i was a baby and read to me until i was able to read to her. She believed that it was very important to be able to read. School has obviously been a big sponsor. I remember in kindergarten, my teacher would read to the class but also read one on one with us. it was always very exciting to be able to have that one on one reading time with my teacher and i always felt very proud of myself that i could read to her. she did an amazing job of encouraging me to read and gave praise out often when i read well. both my family and school gave me academic literacy.

i think that the access that these two groups provided was more than adequate. because of these two groups i now enjoy reading everything i can get my hands on.

i cant really think of any literacy that i was denied. i think my parents did an amazing job of exposing me to different literacy and experiences. my school was very liberal and they were amazing at teaching me about different people and cultures and to that point literacy.

Project 2

When finding information for a research project or even information on something that I find interesting I generally look at Wikipedia first. This usually happens because it is the first link that shows up when I Google something. I also use Wikipedia first because I know that the information that is listed in the various articles will be well organized and easy to understand.

To begin with I thought that project 1 would be a piece of cake. How hard could it be to find some sources and write some words on a new topic? I ended up finding that this project was harder than I anticipated but the whole process ended up being kind of fun.

I started off local and discovered that Fox Lake near my house was not on Wikipedia. This seemed like an amazing topic at the time and I dove into finding resources for information on the lake. To begin with I found lots of information and quickly put together a draft of an article. Using the code from Stroud’s Run state park my article looked pretty good.

After using all the information that I could get from a State of Ohio website I realized that that was all the information that was out there on the lake. All the other websites had taken information of the State of Ohio website, sometimes word for word, and used it in their webpages about the lake.

This became a roadblock. I only had 350 words and no more information that I could find on the lake. I tried my hardest to search for more information but came up with nothing. There just wasn’t enough going on at this location for anyone to write anything new or unique. I knew that something had to be done and with just a few days before the due date I changed topics.

Although I had some of the same problems with finding unique information on different websites, I was able to find much more information on my new topic, Camp Akita. Because it was a better-known place there was even a Columbus Dispatch article about it.

Once I began to write I found this article a lot easier to write. Because I knew a lot about Camp Akita I was able to add a bit to the information provided and was able to make sure that anyone that read my article would understand the information and get a feel for the camp.

At the end it seemed like a mad dash to get the article done. I was able to write the article quickly but getting all the code put together and making sure that when it was posted that it looked good took time. I didn’t originally anticipate that putting in all the code and links would take so much time so I felt hurried in the end.

It was nice that we had lab time towards the due date so that we could talk to our classmates and ask them questions about code and layout that they had already figured out. That was a huge help and made my page look a lot better and flow really well.

My article is still up and it does not seem like it will be taken down in the near future. I thought that this was a very worthwhile project. I have never worked on a paper like this and I think it helped open my eyes to a different world of information. I was always told that Wikipedia is unreliable and I believed it but now I feel different about the website. I am now able to trust the information that I find on it and although I do not think I will be listing it as a reference for an academic paper I will definitely use it in my daily research as a reliable source.

I definitely learned how to better summarize information by doing this project. This project helped me to take the information that I was reading on various websites and put it together into one coherent document. I really had to focus on the information that I was reading and change it so that it was in my own words without merely copying word for word from my sources.

I didn’t do much quoting in this piece of writing but I did think hard about where direct quotes would go. I also made sure that I wasn’t using too much quoted information because I wanted the article to be in my voice and not the voice of the writers that wrote the references that I used.

The book Writing About Writing says that tone is “a reader’s judgment of what a text sounds like, sometimes also termed the dominant mood of a text” (733). I wanted to make sure that when I was writing this article that I had a grip on my tone. I wanted to make sure that my tone was kept very informative without sounding boring or like a lecture.

I learned even more that writing is intertextual or that “texts are made up of other texts” (WAW 726). In order to write this article I had to take information from other places. I did rewrite the information and make it mine as much as I could but really there is no way to truly do that when writing a research piece.

Wikipedia is changing information and the way that we receive it. You can type just about anything into Google and the 1^st website that comes up is almost always Wikipedia. I don’t think there are any other websites that can claim that. This makes Wikipedia accessible to anyone that has the internet.

Because Wikipedia is free, anyone can use it. If you were to buy a printed encyclopedia such as Britannica, you could end up spending hundreds of dollars on something is practically the same as the free Wikipedia. I think that having Wikipedia is a huge advantage for everyone, not only students. Wikipedia makes information available to the masses that in the past would have only been available to academics or those with access to libraries that carried encyclopedias.

I know that professors tend to look down upon Wikipedia but I believe they do this because they do not know that Wikipedia is just as reliable as Britannica. Both encyclopedias have mistakes including actual errors, omissions and misleading statements. When it comes to numbers they are almost the same. “All told, Wikipedia had 162 such problems, while Britannica had 123. That averages out to 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia” (cnet).

Wikipedia makes it possible for everyone to add to their knowledge of the world. It provides a very accessible place for people to not only receive new information but also share the information that they have.

I truly enjoyed writing this article and plan on checking on it periodically to make sure that it is still posted on Wikipedia and to see if anyone has edited it. As new information comes in I plan on adding to my article to make sure that it is always up to date and correct. Although this projects was more complicated than I originally anticipated I am glad that I got the opportunity to write for such an amazing database. I hope that other people will be able to learn how valuable Wikipedia is.

References:

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. Writing About Writing: A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. Print. 

Terdiman, Daniel. “Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica.”  Cnet News. CBS Interactive, 2011.  http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html                                                                                       

Shitty First Drafts

Lamont's assumption is that established writers are able to sit down every morning and write amazing pieces that only take one draft and are perfect the first time. that they dont need to re write anything because the first draft is a perfect piece of writing. i think that it is prevalent because as the reader we dont get to see the behind the scenes parts of the writing process. all we see is the finished process so we assume that that was the first draft and that it came out of the writers brain exactly how it is on the page. the actual process of writing is writing a quick first draft to get everything on paper. then going back and tweaking the paper to add and cut items to make it better. then go back at least one more time to finish up the paper and make sure that everything is where it should be.

Wikipedia allows us to access the shitty first drafts through the view history tab. i think this is helpful because it allows the reader to see exactly where the piece of writing has been and where it started. it lets us see the shitty first draft that in other mediums we would not be able to see.

Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision

I think that the revision that is closest to what i do is "fixing things". i tend to write an entire piece before going back and "tinkering" with it until it is complete. or as complete as i can make it and feel somewhat satisfied. when i write i try to get straight to the point without adding too much extra. so it is not often that i need to use "cutting" in my writing. but some times i do find that there are pieces of my writing that need taken out so that the point that i am trying to make can become clearer.

when looking at the tabs in an article we can learn where that article has been and what has happened to it in its past. we get so see how it all started and the steps that people took to get it where it is today. we also get to see how people feel and interpret the article. they enrich our understanding because we get to see the background of the article that we usually dont get to see in writing. we get to see the whole process from start to finish.

My Wikipedia page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Akita

Toward a Composing Model of Reading

i think that i did a pretty good job in my article using each of the five functions that Tierney and Pearson described except for aligning. i do not believe that i accomplished that as much as i could but i think that is because i do not know who specifically my reader is so i dont think i can really align myself with them.

Planning: in planning for this projects i pretty much decided what i wanted to write about by searching wikipedia and checking if there was already an article listed for the topic and thought about places that i could get the information for my project.

Drafting: Because i changed topics half way through i did not use my usual drafting process. i didnt have enough time to take a break and go back to my draft later so my drafting process was shortened. this time i wrote, took a quick break and edited what i had written earlier.

Aligning: i dont think i did much aligning. when i was writing my article i did make sure that someone that had never heard about my topic would understand everything about it but that is as far as i went. i didnt really think about the reader beyond that point.

Revising: because i didnt have much time by the time my article was completed, i didnt do much revising. i was able to revise just before submitting.

Monitoring: i used this when i realized that i needed to change topics. i knew that there wasnt going to be enough information to write the paper that i wanted to so i changed topics to that i could write as well as i would have liked.

if it turns out that porter is right and intertextuality makes writing unoriginal then no piece of writing can truly be autobiographical. although murray makes good points to the fact that no matter what you are writing about and no matter the final content of your writing, you put your personal style and voice into the writing which makes it autobiographical. but if you are pulling quotes from other writing or taking and using ideas from other writing it changes the writing and gets rid of the autobiographical voice. taking pieces or ideas from other writers throws originality out the window.

when you take information from other pieces your voice can still be heard in between those added pieces but i think that the effect that a personal voice adds is lessened. because individuality is compromised, the pieces strength is also compromised.

What construct is Murray asking you to reconsider?

Murray is asking us to take another look at all writing and to see that no matter what the piece is about it is autobiographical. he wants us to see that because everyone is different and has a different "thinking style" and "voice" that this turns their writing (no matter the topic) into autobiographical writing. if someone else had written the paper in their own voice or style it would be completely different and only reflect the writer.

How might we apply his ideas to the kinds of writing we find on Wikipedia, or any encyclopedia?

Each of the articles has a different author. this means that each article is an individual's autobiography. each article is written in a different voice and reflects a different style. although when you read the articles they all seem to be written by one person, if you look closely you can see tiny bits of personal opinions and life stories.

Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents

What is a rhetorical situation and what are its constituents?

A rhetorical situation is “the context in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse” (104). It is also known as “a situation where a speaker or writer sees a need to change reality and sees that the change may be effected through rhetorical discourse” (105). The constituents are those people and things involved in the situation.

How can these constituents be defined? What is a compound rhetorical situation?

The constituents can be defined as exactly what they are. The writer, the reader, others that are involved, the situation itself, objects and the relations of all of those things.

A compound rhetorical situation that involves one subject but more than one rhetor and more than one audience member.

how is it useful for college student writers like yourself to be aware of the rhetorical situation and the constraints it creates?

If a college student is aware of rhetorical situations and the opportunities that they provide they will be able to write better for their audience. If a writer is aware of the situation and constraints then they will be able to write better for the audience that they are writing for ie their peers or professors. If one is aware of the audience they are writing for they should be able to get better reactions from the readers.

The Phenomenology of Error

In "The Phenomenology of Error," Joseph M. Williams argues that writing errors should be seen as "social constructs." What does he mean by this?

He means that people should essentially worry about when they make grammatical errors because other people in society will judge them for the errors that they make. Although he doesn’t say that people should correct others when they make errors, it would be pointless for grammar errors to be a part of social construction if there wasn’t someone there to make sure that people followed it and then punished when someone went against the rule or made an error.

Further, how might we apply this realization to the negative reception of Wikipedia and its characterization as inaccurate and error-prone?

Because of the way that society functions and sees errors and social constructs it makes sense that people are weary of the validity of Wikipedia. It has been drilled into our heads for years that information on the internet is hard to trust and Wikipedia should really never be trusted or used as a reference in an academic paper.

A 2005 study of Wikipedia's accuracy found that "Wikipedia scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors" ("Reliability of Wikipedia"). If we trust this research, why is Wikipedia being subjected to so much criticism while Britannica remains mostly undisputed? Can Williams help us answer this question?

I think that the reason that there is so much criticism surrounding Wikipedia is because “regular” people are allowed to contribute. If you look at the writers and editors of Britannica it is a list of reputable people. But if you look at the writers and editors of Wikipedia it is a list consisting of just about every kind of person you could think of. I think because Wikipedia doesn’t have the credentials that Britannica has people are weary of it and its validity.

Introduction

This is my blog for my writing and rhetoric class with Matt Vetter.

I am a psychology major from Columbus Ohio. I went to Columbus State for freshman and sophomore year. I took freshman writing at Columbus State and it was very beginner writing. It ended up being easier than high school English. It was rewarding to edit and review my classmates work and be able to help them as well as get feed back from others so as to make all of our writing better. The least rewarding part was that the prompts were very simple so I don’t feel that I grew as a writer from taking the class. Because the prompts were so simple I don’t think that the class could have really be made more challenging unless the entire structure and assignments were changed.

I like that this course is technology based. It is going to allow us to learn about a different side of writing as well as how to write better using formats that I am not used to using. This will be totally different than any other writing course that I have ever taken because of all of the technology.

I hope to be able to learn and grow as a writer by using these new formats. I am a little apprehensive because again this is all so new but I plan to work hard to do my best and learn as much as I can.