SWA 10: Review Questions

1. My writing process consists of researching and outlining necessary material. Then I review and piece together my information to write my paper. Overall this helps me because I like to organized when I write.

2. Advantages of outlining like I said keeps me organized.

3. Thinking about the audience helps me revise to be more persuasive. Adding variety to my paper helps avoid being directed to a certain audience rather than appealing to everyone.

4. The exploratory paper is basically the summary of what you think the author is writing about. This will help pave the way to write in your own opinion because you get to agree and disagree with the author’s opinion.

5. Read critically 24 hours after writing to peer review, then seek opinion of classmates. Or get in groups and get a group opinion on your paper as you give opinions to others. This will give you ideas on how to revise your paper.

Children, Adults, Future

In ‘ We’re Scaring Our Children to Death’, Peggy Noonan expresses the political and cultural problems that scare our children.  The author explains that children have to be protected from certain things like terrorism, and for instance, the mass murders that took place at Virginia Tech.  Noonan criticizes television shows for violent programs that open up children’s imaginations to a technical fantasy world.  I believe that children very susceptible minds and will believe anything they see.  This article is directed mostly to the media and also in some degree to parents whom careless what they’re children see or hear on the news or radio.  Peggy Noonan compares and contrasts from when she was a child in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and the many duck-and-cover drills that they had to learn.  “But now of days it’s a million duck-and-cover drills, a thousand alarms, a steady drumbeat of things to fear”, Noonan admits.  Even if that era was boring as she says, it explains why the author would want to express her opinion on the matter.  Firstly she had some degree of experience of being frightened as a kid and secondly she probably has kids of her own that she feels strongly subjected to protect against the media and politics.

Another sub-argument Noonan discusses is how more and more children are being prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs.  Can there be a connection with Noonan’s argument and these prescriptions?  You’d might think so because when ABC did a child abduction special, reporter John Stossel asked children if they were scared of being abducted while they were sleeping.  Many kids said yes because they were scared of the unknown and not knowing what’s going to happen while they’re asleep.  The author would probably be very angry of this television special.  Why would our media deliberately try to scare children?  Is it to prepare for a tougher real world as they grow up?  This world we live in is definitely an adult world.  Our children are just a secondary thought.  Noonan thinks we care too much about money, even ourselves rather than our kids.

This rhetorical situation really has no affect upon me.  I remember my childhood and I can’t ever remember being ‘Scared to death’ of anything the media reported.  While reading this article, I never really agreed with the author’s opinion.  Children need to adapt to real world circumstances and why not ‘Scare them to death’, at least they will learn what’s going on with our ‘grown up’ world.

SWA #7

1. Library subscription databases: search through several years’ worth of articles from a large number of different print periodicals for information on your topic.

Academic Universe: ‘world’s largest scholarly, multi-discipline, full-text database’ for peer-reviewed articles from 4,000 periodical titles.

World Wide Web: Free and available to everyone.

2. Bibliography: alphabetically arranged list of evaluated sources into a computer file.

Annotated Bibliography: Helps you visualize sources, their basic content and reactions to them as a unit of information gathered in one place.

3. Is the source associated with an organization, is source listed under reputable domain, is source directed mainly to extremists? etc.

4. To make your research as efficient as possible.

5. Plagiarism is the copying of someone’s work without giving them credit. Compare your passage to the author’s and change if necessary to avoid plagiarism.

SWA 6: ‘Watching TV makes you smarter’

“Of course, the entertainment industry isn’t increasing the cognitive complexity of its products for charitable reasons. The Sleeper Curve exists because there’s money to be made by making culture smarter.”

I believe this quote expresses what do not understand when we watch television. It’s saying to us that when we watch tv, we learn without knowing it and we pay our cable provider for this. Our nation is a constant learning environment from which we can learn from one another and why not put that knowledge on television where we can all benefit from that information.

We’re Scaring Our Children to Death

Children, Adults, Future

In ‘ We’re Scaring Our Children to Death’, Peggy Noonan expresses the political and cultural problems that scare our children.  The author explains that children have to be protected from certain things like terrorism, and for instance, the mass murders that took place at Virginia Tech.  Noonan criticizes television shows for violent programs that open up children’s imaginations to a technical fantasy world.  I believe that children very susceptible minds and will believe anything they see.  This article is directed mostly to the media and also in some degree to parents whom careless what they’re children see or hear on the news or radio.  Peggy Noonan compares and contrasts from when she was a child in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and the many duck-and-cover drills that they had to learn.  “But now of days it’s a million duck-and-cover drills, a thousand alarms, a steady drumbeat of things to fear”, Noonan admits.  Even if that era was boring as she says, it explains why the author would want to express her opinion on the matter.  Firstly she had some degree of experience of being frightened as a kid and secondly she probably has kids of her own that she feels strongly subjected to protect against the media and politics.

Another sub-argument Noonan discusses is how more and more children are being prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs.  Can there be a connection with Noonan’s argument and these prescriptions?  You’d might think so because when ABC did a child abduction special, reporter John Stossel asked children if they were scared of being abducted while they were sleeping.  Many kids said yes because they were scared of the unknown and not knowing what’s going to happen while they’re asleep.  The author would probably be very angry of this television special.  Why would our media deliberately try to scare children?  Is it to prepare for a tougher real world as they grow up?  This world we live in is definitely an adult world.  Our children are just a secondary thought.  Noonan thinks we care too much about money, even ourselves rather than our kids.

This rhetorical situation really has no affect upon me.  I remember my childhood and I can’t ever remember being ‘Scared to death’ of anything the media reported.  While reading this article, I never really agreed with the author’s opinion.  Children need to adapt to real world circumstances and why not ‘Scare them to death’, at least they will learn what’s going on with our ‘grown up’ world.

Fade to Blonde Argument

In Alvarado’s essay she explains how having latino women who dye their hair blonde are automatically treated different. With her own experience, the author quotes this, “If white women can change their hair color the way they change their lipstick-with complete impunity and no worries over ‘correctly’ representing their community-why couldn’t I?” What she means by that is when latino women dye their hair, they are looked down upon as say whores upon many other people. Many think of blonde hair beauties as white women but not anyone of a different race. When the author had blonde hair she was misinterpreted as a stripper. Basically what she’s saying is that latinos can’t go ‘fake’, like most white women, so Miss Alvarado chooses to reconcile her culturally imperfect hair color back to being a brunnette.

TRACE Discussion Essay: ‘Shootings’

Text- Overall the text is criticizing the gun laws around the world; using many examples from past events and what lawmaking decisions can be made in order to prevent the next shooting.

Reader- This text would appeal to people who are for tougher gun laws undoubtedly. I think the author is trying to envision an audience that has had enough of seeing anyone buying guns that are used for none other than to kill people.  Also I feel that the author has a great deal of sympathy to the victims’ families and anyone else who have been affected by gun violence.

Author- Like I said I think that the author cares a lot about the victims’ families; he expresses his outrage to gun stores selling guns to people who have a mental illness. Also the fact that anyone can walk right into a store and buy a semi-automatic weapon without being checked is what bothers the author the most.

Constraints- Undoubtedly as a nation, we saw what happened at Virginia Tech and were stunned by the news of a shooting. I was very angry to hear this news because all of the news stations found the video recordings of Cho Seung-Hui’s final words of anger towards people who he called ‘snobs’ and ‘rich kids’.  I don’t think anyone could feel sorry for a person like that when no one bothered him or gave him any reason to be angry. The author of this text probably feels the same way that anybody would.

Exigence- I think the text is a very convincing subject for us to discuss and see what we can do to change or improve gun laws. The author convinces the audience to see his point of view. 

Rhetorical Analysis for ‘Shootings’ by Adam Gopnik (2007) in CR page 124-126

Argument Style

Preston Sollee

English 101, Section 33

9/5/07

SWA 3: Exercise 2a, EA pp. 20-21

Human nature is to disagree and have conflicts/arguments. There are many different ways of arguing a point to get your audience to listen. I see myself as a negotiator rather than an arguer. I use both consensual and adversial techniques to back my claim. I believe I can be very helpful as a teacher in expressing to my students a different way of thinking and seeing both sides of the fence persay of an argument.  

Mcbryde Quadrangle Guide

•    Upper class, freshman dorms for males.
•    Capacity of up to 346 residents.
•    $1,725 a semester, $3,450 a year.
•    Refrigerator, microwave, two beds, two dressers, two desks in every room.
•    Cable TV (along with premium channels such as HBO)
•    Internet access.
•    Visitation- any time you want as long it’s ok with roommate and no disturbance to anyone else.
•    A resident can have any gender visitor over to visit.
•     No pets, furniture, heaters, or halogen lamps.
•    Key is used to enter the hall and dorm room.
•    Smoking is prohibited inside dorm, but smoking is acceptable outside the building in the patio area.

About me

My name is Preston Sollee and I’m from West Columbia, SC. I love sports: mainly football and baseball. I just graduated from high school and attend the University of South Carolina. As a writer I feel that certain topics tend to jump out at me and I want to express them on my blog. As I said I love sports, which is something I like to write about. Also I like to write on opinionated topics like abortion and alcohol/drugs.

My favorite website is facebook.