Blog Week 4A

 

Cause and effect describes how something happens and analyzes what other things, or factors, were around it to make it happen. Cause and effect allows us to predict the outcome and predicts what is going to happen next. Throughout all of lives and any story that we read, cause and effect is something that is always going to happen or be in the stories.

There are several things that must take place for cause and effect to occur. All of these factors act together as a causal chain. If one thing happens then something will be the result but what had happened before the incident? For every action there is a reaction. For example, things that lead up to the main cause are called contributory causes. That is like the weather to a car accident, the stove being too hot so there for a child burns his hands, this leads to the main cause, which is the car accident, the speeding ticket, or the child burning their hand, which leads to the immediate cause, which is the burnt hand, the speeding ticket. In being able to be a great writer one must comprehend that cause and effect that occur within the stories that we read or papers that we write.

Blog Week 3B

As we all know when we do peer-reviews it is only a draft that the author is working on. It is important to do peer-reviews because I believe when you do them; they catch things that you might not, like punctuation and logic order. Your peers can tell whether your paper is clear and in logical order, or if it was just thrown together without making any sense.  They are the ones that can tell you if something works in your essay or if it does not. Peer-reviews are just another pair of eyes that can catch any mistake that you have made without realizing it.

When reviewing your peer’s papers it is important to write your critics in a way to benefit the writer. We do not want to offend the writer, or make them feel like their work has not value.  We simply want to catch the mistakes they have made without changing what they are trying to say.  Over all, we as critics, have the responsibility to tell the writer what she/he lacks and need work on as well as what they are doing right.

Blog Week 3A

The various rhetorical tools used in the Zambreno article are the Mutability or Plasticity, the Piecemeal, the Windows of opportunity, and the Open-ended closure.  These things are all important to the way people write narratives. The Mutability or Plasticity tool is used when an old story has been edited or omitted for new audiences to hear or read. The story is molded to fit the audience.  When using the Piecemeal tool one is gradually building onto a story that is already out there. It is a story, made up of different stories that have already been told.

                The Window of opportunity is slot holes in stories that may be filled in by old stories, new stories, or by the readers mind. These gaps usually impact human tendency to finish what is unfinished. When there are gaps in the story, it forces the reader to research the topic so they can fill in the gaps. This produces new stories from that specific reader’s point of view or imagination. When using the Open-ended closure tool is something like the Window of opportunity tool but it differs in that the open-ended closure is what happens in the end of the story, rather than in the middle. The open-ended closure tool is what happens when the author of the text does not warp things up. The reader is left wanting to know more about the story, which causes the reader to go out and research the topic. But in this case, if the reader wants to know more about the topic they are going to have to search. If they fail and cannot come up with anything, it is left to them to use their imagination to write a story themselves.

Blog Week 2B

The three the rhetorical tools that we use to help us write a narrative are the rhetor, the text, and the audience. While the rhetor, author or speaker, has to learn about his audience, it is also necessary for the audience to understand the rhetor.  When both factors understand each other, it is easier for a text to be build or written.  Once the rhetor understands the audience they are trying to reach, it is easier for the rhetor to write or build the text.  The same is for the audience. Once the audience understands the rhetor, it is also more likely that they will understand the text and the timeframe in which it was written.

The rhetorical elements found in narrative writing can also be described as beginning, middle, and end.  The beginning of a narrative starts off establishing the setting and where and when the story takes place. The beginning also introduces the characters and a conflict that is present. The middle of the story analyzes individual characters, as they are classified as major or minor characters. It focuses on the characters personalities and how the characters respond to the problem. In the end of the story there is an action taken by the characters to solve the problem, and there is also an outcome, what was the result of what the characters did to resolve the problem from the beginning of the story.

Blog 2A- Narrative

A narrative, also known as storytelling, is way to express things that we have learned or have experienced in the past. Narrative stories can be told in the past, present, and future, but has to follow logical sequence. When we tell stories, it is easier for us to follow and understand if it is logical order. Flash backs, or past tense, gives us a reason as to why a specific thing happened. A problem that might accrue while in this tense is coming back to the story that you began with.

 

While writing a narrative, there are three main Rhetorical tools that we can use to help us.  The first one is rhetor, that is the writer or speaker which is telling the story. The second one is the text. When the rhetor is writing the text it is important to know who they are speaking, writing, to in order to speak to that audience level. In the text, they have to be able to speak their language. And the last one is the audience. The audience understands a specific text if they first understand the author. Once the audience knows a little bit more of the author and that author’s time frame, the text will be much easier to read.

Blog Week 1A

The Writing Process and Basic Essay Structure

In the writing process, we start off with the body, which consist of brainstorming through some ideas we would like to write about, choose one topic and gather all the information we know about that specific topic. Then we write the conclusion. The conclusion consists of a summary, in one or two sentences of what was said in the body. It also consists of a call to action. The call to action is basically telling people what you want them to do or what needs/should to be done next. After we write the conclusion, we then write the introduction. The introduction consists of a thesis statement, road map- the main points in the essay, and a transition sentence to into the body paragraphs.

In the essay structure, there will be an introduction- telling the reader what they are about to read with a thesis statement, a body of paragraphs- an explanation of the main points, and a conclusion- restating the thesis statement, a summary of what was said in the bodies main points, and a call to action.