Post XVII

Tony Mirabelli’s main research question is the paragraph about the menu.  His research question is “What is a menu and what does it mean to have a literate understanding of one?”  The menu is different for customers and the staff that works at the restaurant, but is it the bridge that brings the understanding of customer and staff together.  Not only does the staff have to understand everything on the menu, but they must know what substitutes customers can make and know many different techniques to prepare the same food item.  Mirabelli went around being a waiter at the restaurant so he could have quality interaction with the customers and the staff at the restaurant.  Mirabelli collected filed notes like interviews with customers and interaction between customers and employees.  I feel that Mirabelli discovered that a menu isn’t just something to read and know, but it is a person to person literacy that satisfies customer and staff interactions.  Communication is key when surviving in the food industry.  

Proposal

I plan examining the discourse community of the Ohio University Rugby Football Club.  Being a member of the team for about five seasons now, I whole heartedly feel that I am completely immersed as a fully fledged member of this discourse community.  The rugby team here at Ohio University is a tight-knit group of people.  Every member of this discourse community is has their own unique personality that contributes to the overall make up of the team.  I know every member of the team on a person level, from the coach, to the veteran players, to the rookies, down to the people who have tried out but never finished.  I also personally know many of the alumni that have played here at Ohio University.

            As I mentioned before the Ohio University rugby team is a band of colleagues that would fight their hearts out for each other.  Our motto for the team is “Friendship and Togetherness”.  We end every meeting, practice, and game with a chant of our motto.  In my final paper I will examine more closely how people stay committed to the team and motivated to keep battling through a long, grueling season.  We have many members of the team how communicate clearly the team’s goals and what we all should be striving to do.  I specifically want to look at how we keep each other all on the same page and striving for the same goals.  I feel like everyone on the team is their own motivational speaker throughout a unforgiving season of pain, strive, and triumph.  When you have been around the team for a while you buy into what is being presented to you.  For a newcomer, I would like to also examine how we bring that person into our rugby family and keep them with us throughout their years at Ohio University.

            A rugby team can field fifteen players on the field.  This obviously isn’t the total number of people on the team; the whole member count is around thirty to forty-five players on a team.  This being said, many people will not be starters or play on the A-side.  In the final paper I want study how we communicate as a team to those players on the sidelines.  Everyone is important to the Ohio University rugby team and how we communicate our message of commitment and motivation to those bench players is key to keeping everyone solid in this discourse community.

            I feel like the rugby team is an interesting discourse community, it’s almost like a family.  Analyzing this discourse is useful because we can see how people stay motivated and committed through the rollercoaster of emotions in practice, games, and off the field issues.  I would like to see how being on the rugby team helps me to stay or get into other discourse communities, or relate to them.  I feel like I can possibly add to Gee’s 6 characteristics.  I feel like our fans are about of our rugby discourse community, even though they’re not on the field with us.  They help to keep us motivated, they cheer us on, and they donate money and time so that we can achieve our goals.  They might not be battling with us on the field, but we accept them as family with us too.

            I plan on using Ann M. Johns section about the cost of affiliation to a discourse community.  I feel that everyone has given up something to be on the rugby team.  I also feel like Wardle’s three modes of belonging will be accurate for the rugby discourse community.  I think I can relate how messing one of those modes up will spoil someone’s outlook on what their role is on the team. 

Works Cited

Johns, M. Anne.  “Discourse Communities and Communities Practice.”  Writing about Writing. Ed. 

                Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 511-512.  Print

Wardle, Elizabeth.  “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces.”  Writing About

                Writing.  Ed.  Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s,  524.  Print  

16

Wardle describes how newcomers or rookies try to belong or get in a new community in, “Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces.”  The three modes are engagement, imagination, and alignment.  Newcomers go through these phases or modes to when trying to belong to a new community.

                Engagement is how a newcomer works with an older more experienced person.  This is can be how they interact or the relationship they have with each other.  Waddle believes that can be both positive and negative for a new comer.  Negatively, a newbie could feel lost or without a sense of purpose in this new community.This works perfect for the rugby team.   Everytime a new kid shows up to play they look absolutely lost when we start up a game of “touch” rugby. But the older guys direct them and get a feeling of what this new guy can do, and then go from  there.  Imagination occurs when the newbie starts coming into themselves and finds  out where they fit in in the community.  This is when a new kid has certain characteristics that fit a certain position on the rugby team.  We’ll do many drills and the more the newbie evolves the more we’ll know, and they’ll know about themselves.  This way we can see where they fit.  Alignment involves being able to find common ground with vets and to explain your opinions.  The newbie feels comfortable and prepared enough to start voicing their opinion and also agreeing with the vets point of view.  Alignment can result in a loss of self as well.    As for the rugby team, we all see how things are run and that’s the smoothest way to do things,  it’s like everyone is on the same page.

Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice

Swales and Gee are conversing about what it means to be in a discourse community.  Swales has 6 points about what a discourse community is, or what it means to belong to be in a discourse community.  These 6 points range from certain lingo a discourse community may use to what it take fro a discourse community to survive.  Swales points also mention what goals a discourse community have or are trying to accomplish.  Gee is a little more cut-throat with his views on a discourse community.  He says that you can belong or not belong to a discourse community.  Gee says that we mushfake or BS are way through certain communities, but not officially belong to that certain discourse community.  Unlike Swales who believes that we can kind of be involved in discourse communities.

I think that Johns major difference is she describes what sacrifices people need to make to be in a certain discourse community.  In WAW she gave 2 examples of how people lost or sacrificed their families or friends in academia to belong to a higher discourse community.  She also mentions things about conventionalism and anticonventionalism, she says that the longer a person stays in a certain discourse community, the more that the person can break the rules.  Johns also says that there are many discourse communities to belong to like, the arts, sports, and humanities. 

Post 15

I think that Gee is talking about the tests and trials that people go through to make sure they are ready for the next level.  The teacher or one with the most experience on the subject matter teaches the student.  If the student isn’t ready to take the next step they are forced to remain at that level until they are ready to move on.  When the student has understood all the lessons and passed all the test/trials, only then will they be able to move onto the next level.

I’m going to use an example of a math class that I took.  Every week we’d learn subject matter and be quizzed and tested on this throughout the week.  As the course went on we would build upon the lessons that came before.  The quizzes and tests kept us in line for the final cumulative test.  There were several stages in this course that you needed to understand to do well on the series of exams.  If you didn’t maintain a C average you were forced to take the course again.

Post 14

1)      A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals

*Swales is trying to say that people in the discourse community have a known agenda or goals.  Everyone knows whats intended or whats trying to be achieved without being said.  My example is our rugby team, the goal is to dominate and it doesn’t need to be said

2)  A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.

                *Swales is saying that members of a discourse community have their own lingo or inside language.  A good example of this is the inside jokes we have on our team, I would never use the same language around people of authority as I do with the rugby team.

3)  A discourse community uses its participary mechanisms primarily to provide info ans feedback.

                *I think swales is saying that member of the DC look for different outlets of info to better enhance themselves.  Like getting more opinions from different sources.  I think of this getting injured but getting second even third opinions from doctors, just to see whats going on,

4)A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.

                * I think this means that having one or more people with different talents to achieve goals or be more versitiile.  Again I go back to the rugby team, we have really fast kids playing the outside, the big trees in the front of the scrum, and the sure-tacklers at flanker.  All mixed together for a well oiled machine.

5)In addition to owning genres, a DC has acquired some specific lexis.

                * I believe this means a DC has its own Technical lingo that they understand.  Kind of like calling out plays for a quarterback. “roger” means the plays going right.  “Louie” means the plays going left.

6)A DC has a threshold level of members with a sutable degree of relevant content and discourse expense.

                *I think this refers to expiernce overall.  As time goes on people get older and know whats going on.  A veteran member of any kind of sports team will teach the rookies all they need to know

Pencils to Pixels

I feel that technology is shaping the future of the way we write, socialize/communicate, and learn.  Just look at our text lingo.  Sentences and words have been turned into acronyms nowadays.  I feel that using word to type up documents or to do assignments enables us to produce longer, quicker, and better products of writing.   Remember when we all had that handwriting class back in elementary school?  Slowly a computer class was brought in and programs like Mavis Beacon teaches typing were presented to us.  I have already taken 2 online courses here at OU so I can see that teaching and learning are already in the technology realm.  I feel that Baron likes the classical, sit down with pen and paper and create masterpieces, but he needs to realize that writing is headed to the technological age.

The Future of Literacy

The case study that I feel most connected to from the reading was Danielle DeVoss.  My parents always stressed reading to me.  I remember my dad would always ask me to read the sports section of the newspapers with him.  I was very young so I thought it was a bit confusing that an article could start at the front page and then be continued somewhere in the middle.  I felt like reading the sports was boring when I was young, I much rather read the comic section.  My dad would tell me if I did a good job reading the sports, we could move on to the comic portion of the newspaper.  My mother and I made numerous trips to the library together.  She had tons of books I remember; she was in nursing school at the time so those books were a little to advanced for me at the time.  I would take out the same couple of books time after time.  I’d always check out the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” books.  The images and stories were so horrifying when I was young.  I remember the teacher used to let me bring the books in and after lunch, the kids in my class would sit around and read the book to each.  Every time was scary.

I have had many literacy sponsors in my life.  The biggest sponsor of this would have to be my parents.  I Believe that our parents are the first to educate us in our early lives.  They teach us things like manners and how to speak or language.  My father really pushed for academic success being that he never went to college.  My earliest memory was of him saying “get good grades and you’ll get to go to college.”  He still to this day calls me once or twice a week to check up on my academic adventures.  The next sponsor, I would say, would have to be schooling.  I attended both catholic and public schools through my years of elementary and high school.  I can say that the catholic schools taught me very good morals like how to be obedient, civil, and caring.  The Cleveland Public schools I attended were also nice.  Being smart and tough was a necessity.  Another main literacy sponsor I would have to say would be sports teams.  My parents put me in many athletic programs while I was growing up.  My coaches taught me the value of hardwork, determination, and consistency, though recently I’ve been struggling through the consistency part (earlier absences).

I feel that my access to these sponsors has been fairly adequate.  I mean they have helped a lot but it’s up to me to retain their lessons and learn as an individual.  I wish I was more technological savvy.  The Wiki assignment defiantly helped a bunch, but that is only a minor part of the whole technological world.  Recently, I’ve battling against self control.  But it’s a fight that I’m winning now.    

Wikipedia has always been a foreign realm to me.  That website was always the one that my high school teachers and most of my college professors told me not to use as a credible source of information.  I, in fact, as naïve as I was, thought it was just people, without the proper credentials, spewing out their opinions on a certain subjects.  After going through this interesting and eye-opening experience of creating a Wikipedia article, I realized that this website is a hub for all types of fantastic and useful information.  In this essay I am going to reflect on my experience with creating a fresh Wikipedia article.  This includes the many aspects of Wikipedia, how Wikipedia has enlightened me on writing, and how Wikipedia is helping to evolve the future of how information is transferred. 

            First and for most, creating A Wikipedia article was an illuminating experience, I got to see first hand the dynamics that make Wikipedia an internet marvel.  Wikipedia is like an informal encyclopedia, in an article in “The New Yorker”; Jimmy Wales suggests “Wikipedia is to Britannica as rock and roll is to easy listening,”(http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/06073fa_fact).  I felt like this analogy fit perfectly as well.

            One amazing element of Wikipedia is the Drawing Board.  This is like the headquarters section of Wikipedia. It includes information on how to use Wikipedia and on how to start your own article.  Also, the Drawing Board is the place where users can report abuse, vulgarity, and see copyright problem information.  When I first began my article this is where I started.  The Drawing Board led me to the Discussion Function of Wikipedia.  I needed to know if my article was notable enough to be on Wikipedia.  As I examined the guidelines on the Discussion Function I realized that it was time to create my article.  Let’s say that creating the article was fun and exhilarating, but when it got deleted I was mildly shocked and embarrassed.  Having been shot down by the Wikipedia guardians I jumped to the Discussion Function on my user page to find out why my article was eviscerated.  When I saw the reason why my page was terminated I went back and made improvements.  The second go-round was much better than the first, and I felt somewhat better.  In “Shitty First Drafts”, Anne Lamott declares “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.”(303).  This quote is exactly how my article went and with the many revisions I made my article came out decent in the end.

            In between all the clamor of the Wikipedia Drawing Board and Discussion Function I also visited the History Function.  In this section you can view the complete history on how an article started and how it looks up until this very day.  This is an amazing thing to see how article evolve over time.  I’d like to use my own analogy to describe how the History Function works for me.  Think of it as someone’s bare, hardwood floor living room.  The first step is to add a carpet, this is the first article created.  The room now looks better but it’s not enough, so you add all different kinds of furniture to the room.  You can constantly move the furniture around, add or subtract furniture until you feel comfortable.  But with a Wikipedia article the room is never finished, furniture can be moved and walls can be painted.  The same as information can be add or subtracted from articles.  This helped me to understand that though my article may not be perfect, others can go in and edit as they see fit.  This brings me to the Edit Function of Wikipedia.

            The Edit Function serves as a tool for people to go in and change things around in an article.  Throughout creating my article I continuously went in and used the Editing Function.  This constant revision was a main stable in my Wikipedia experience.  In “Toward Composing of Reading”, Robert J. Tierney and P. David Pearson note “Thus a writer will repeatedly reread, reexamine, delete, shape, and correct what she is writing” (184).  I was constantly going back and making little improvement here or there, whether it is taking information out, leaving it in, or adding it to my article.  Overall, the process of creating a Wikipedia article was enjoyable, but at times it was a little frustrating also.

            Even though Wikipedia is like an informal encyclopedia, it does have guidelines that one must follow.  These guidelines stick to the more “traditional” way of writing like proper citing, summary, and source retrieval.  I discovered that finding credible and noteworthy sources are a must for Wikipedia or any type of writing and reporting you do.  Another gift of knowledge that the Wikipedia experience has bestowed upon me is the accuracy of citing sources correctly.  After the guardians of Wikipedia cut me down I went back and did some touch up on my citing skills.  I discovered that all quotes and uncommon knowledge to a person should be citing properly.  Another thing that the Wikipedia guidelines stressed was taking a neutral tone or position.  Your article had to be clear of any bias towards the subject you are reporting on.  Wikipedia gave me a helpful little lesson in writing neutrality.  One of the biggest things that Wikipedia improved was my ability to summarize correctly.  I did not copy and paste my information nor did I change some of the words around from the original text.  Creating the Wikipedia article helped me to read, analyze, and put the information into my own words.

            Wikipedia is an Amazing phenomenon.  Wikipedia showed me that writing can be a collective, social, and multi faceted thing.  Socially, Wikipedia is amazing for transferring information and disputing about certain issues.  I never realized how much people knew about things that might not even matter.  People from all walks of life have a say on Wikipedia.  We can see how a text evolves and how the collective community tries to improve upon things written in Wikipedia.  There are so many phases in writing on Wikipedia.  I couldn’t just slap information down without the proper things in place.  Though these rules may be tough, they are also a necessity for any good writing piece.

            I believe that Wikipedia will help to bring about a renaissance in knowledge distribution in the future.  Wikipedia brings everyone together to discuss all types of information.  I love the Wikipedia slogan, “Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia”.  This brings useful and reliable information quickly to those who do not feel like opening an encyclopedia.  Jimmy Wales claims that he wants to, “distribute a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language.”( http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731fa_fact).  Imagine that, everyone around the world working together to distribute and improve the quality of information being displayed on the internet.

            I feel that this is another fantastic way to dish out information.  I love the idea of having Wikipedia and the encyclopedia working together to keep the flow of accurate knowledge going.  Each outlet has its own advantages and disadvantages, but if we use both correctly, we all will benefit from the sources and knowledge that is at our hands. 

Works Cited

Lamott, Anne.  “Shitty First Drafts.”  Writing About Writing.

 Elizabeth Wardle and Doug  Downs.  Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011.   303.  Print.

           

Pearson, P. David and Tierney, Robert J.  “Toward Composing a Model of Reading.”   Writing

            About Writing.  Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs.  Boston:  Bedford/ St. Martin’s,

            2011.  184.  Print

Schiff, Stacy.  “Know it all:  Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise?.”  The New Yorker.  The New

            Yorker.  31 July 2006.  Web.  9 Oct. 2011.

           

Shitty 1st Drafts

I believe that Lamont is trying to get her audience to realize that even the greatest writers have trouble starting.  She says that writers just don’t go to their desk, roll up their sleeves, and jump right into creating a masterpiece.  She does not want us to assume that writers can just spit great pieces of writing; instead you go through the grueling process of writing drafts.  She believes that the first stages of the drafts are like children, reckless and not held at fault for any of their mistakes.  Lamont feels like you just need to get something down on the page, just get the gears moving.  I think she says something like the first six pages of a draft might suck but somewhere in there those lines there is a beautiful beginning.  I also think Lamont feels like the process of writing is blocking all those little voices out in your head that distract you.  She goes on to extensively explain the way in which she does this…

                I think Wikipedia allows us somewhat to make a shitty first draft.  I mean there is that option to put your article up for review, but I feel like that kind of hurt my article in the long run.  I felt like the first article I submitted was way better then the second, but that how the Wikipedia guardians go I guess.

Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts

Barbara Tomlinson uses many metaphors to describe the process of writing in “Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts”.  Though I understood mostly all of her metaphors, the one about “refining ore for casting” jumped out to me the most.  It seems like whenever you start off with writing, you have this uncovered jumble of ideas, though they may be good are not ready for final submission.  You need to polish off or “refine” to get that final product that you are looking for.  The View History tab in Wikipedia enables us to view the previous submissions are articles.  We can learn valuable information from the view history  tab, we can see a constant revision process going on there.  I feel like the saying “you learn from your mistakes” fits in perfectly for this particular section in Wikipedia.  I feel like this section helps me take criticism about writing.  It was a little frustrating at first, but all in all the scrutiny faced on the discussion board aided my revision process.  I mean if we sift through the view history pages, we can see what is left and what was taken away.  This in turn enhances our ability to recognize what the Guardians of Wikipedia are looking for, and staying within our own writing style.Tunm

"Toward Composing a Model of Reading"

I believe that we have hall used the five functions of writing which Tierney and Pearson talk about.  Those five functions of writing are planning, drafting, aligning, revising, and monitoring.  I want to say that I used all of these functions in some way or the other but I am not very sure…so let’s see.

In the Wikipedia process, I know I used planning but not as in depth as Tierney and Pearson describe it as.  I simply heard about my subject and ran with the idea. I don’t believe I did any self-questioning about the topic but I did have to evaluate the Knowledge I had on the subject.  I really do feel like I accomplished the aligning phase, I feel like my page flows with the information presented.  My first submission of my page to the Wikipedia Guardians was my drafting page, I took their feedback , revised the page for citation errors and other things that needed to be worked on in my page.  I honestly felt like the revising stage was the most frustrating.  I would feel like my article was 100% ready to go, then I’d submit it for review and have to go back and take care of more things the Wikipedia elders didn’t approve.  After all this I feel like a was constantly monitoring my page.  I think these five functions of writing can go in sequence, but I also feel like the five functions can repeat and overlap themselves as well.

Post #2

I feel that Williams wants us to writing errors as "social constructs" because errors in writing are inevitable.  We need to accept that no piece of writing is going to be perfect.  There will always be someone sifting through writing and snuffing out the grammatical errors in it.  Within the realm of writing, I feel like he wants us to understand that these errors are acceptable.  After all, Williams admits that his writing actually has some errors within its lines.  I think that people view Wikipedia as error prone because, not everyone who uses posts and or edits that websites pages are not English scholars.  If we think about it, there are thousands upon thousands of people who can post/edit about a certain scientific fact, but when you get into the Encyclopedia, its information was put together by a few elite…but they are scholars, keep that in mind.  And see with Wikipedia, error and fault are allowed to happen.  With the Encyclopedia, I’m sure there are mistakes, but these are much more condemning.  I believe that Wikipedia goes under so much scrutiny because of how many uncredentialed users post on its site, even though the information is spot on correct.  Let’s say I knew how to teach or instruct our ENG 308j class, everyone would still feel much better if Matt taught it because he is more qualified.  I think Williams can help us answer this question.  Thousands of people trudge through Wikipedia and are looking for mistakes, I believe Williams states that “if we go looking for mistakes, we will find mistakes.”  No one wants to call into question the reliability of the Encyclopedia writers/creators.

Introduction

This is a little about me, my previous experience’s with other English courses and how I feel about ENG308J.

My name is Ryan Miranda and I am from Cleveland, Ohio. I am a junior here at OU and I’m studying Soc/Crim and Psy. I play rugby here and I enjoy fighting video games a lot.

I did not take ENG 151 here. The most rewarding thing about my previous English courses was that I learned the basics of writing and citing.  The thing I was liked least was that these classes met once a week for three and a half hours.  These courses lacked a student to student and teacher to student relationship.  We didn’t partake in any group activities so it felt like I was constantly meeting with strangers. 

I really like how this class is set up.  I feel like we’ll get to know each other through blogs and peer reviews. I feel like the assignments will encourage interest, attendance, and participation.  I hope 308J helps me to understand blogging or social tech. writing.  I don’t have a facebook so I am kind of out of the fray with this type of writing.  I hope I am able to work these websites and posting thing correctly.