Grant-Davie Comments

I commented on Donny & Una's blogs.

Rhetoric, Rhetoric, Rhetoric

After reading Keith Grant-Davie’s article about rhetoric, I have a better understanding of discrete situations. To me, a rhetorical situation is a situation where a person may say one thing to be polite, but is actually trying to alter the future by discretely hinting at another action while trying to be polite and normal. When a reader can understand rhetorical situations, he/she has a better understanding of why an author chose to write the way they did. As a writer, rhetorical discourse could be used to imply a small problem in the present that is hardly noticed. Being able to identify, understand, and use rhetorical discourse is a great addition to anyone’s writing skills.  

After finishing the article, I had to take a break and reread confusing parts of it. At first, I was still a little unclear about rhetorical situations until I went through the article again. This essay from Grant-Davie was a chore to stay awake through. By the middle of the article, I was fighting off saggy eyelids and a roaming mind. I found myself getting distracted easily because I was so bored during the reading. To me, the article could have been more concise and to the point, rather than be drawn out like it was. The article was very professional and could be difficult to understand due to the extensive vocabulary that was unknown to me. After making my way through the article, I can see why understanding rhetorical situations has a big effect on reading and writing publications.

Literacy Narrative Final Draft

My History of Literacy

When I was posed with the assignment of writing about my history of literacy, I thought it would be interesting to inspect my history of reading and writing and try to form connections to my current reading and writing habits. After digging deep into my memory and examining my writing, I found the difference between my beginning writing and my current writing; my current writing has detail and flow that did not grace my earlier writing. When I think back to my writing, I know I have improved tremendously due to experience and unrelenting English classes.

My parents exposed me to reading and writing at an early age. My mother was an avid reader and always carried a book with her. Although my father did not pursue reading as vigorously as she did, he understood the importance of being literate. As a baby, they would constantly surround me with tales of obscure cartoon characters and cute, fluffy animals. Reading seemed to be a benefit not only for me, but for my parents also. Reading to them was a way to relax and let the mind float into a different world after a long day.  Another thing my parents commonly did was lay out newspaper over the floor and set me in the middle of it. I loved looking around and seeing lots of pictures and articles around me. I would hit the paper with my hands and crawl around on it because I liked the pictures, but my parents thought it was due to my interest in the articles. What caught my attention the most was the interesting pictures strewn across the pages. I loved looking at pictures when I was young, but drawing was what I truly enjoyed.

I always enjoyed drawing because I could create any unique objects I could think of. As soon as I would grasp a marker, a grin would burst across my face. My love of drawing was very helpful when I learned how to write. I got used to markers and other writing utensils which made handwriting easy for me as I grew up. My parents possessed interesting placemats that had traceable letters and numbers and symbols on it. They would set a different placemat out for me every day so I could sit and trace the entire mat during lunch. To my disappointment, I was only trusted with markers or pens on a placemat. I had a habit of doodling on the walls, which my parents were determined to end. Around the house, I would use pencils to scribble illegible letters that looked more like pictographs than anything else. It was not until preschool that I was able to write legible letters and numbers.

Preschool was an exciting time in my life. I went to preschool for two years because my parents wanted to start my schooling early. In preschool, I was always busy doing some sort of activity, whether it was academic or not. Commonly, my class would write for a little bit and then go play. The preschool was very good at teaching academics while still keeping a fun atmosphere. I was well prepared leaving preschool and going elementary school. I went to a small school where everybody knew each other and the classes were rarely over twenty students. This was a great environment for learning because there was a lot of close interaction between the teachers and I. Reading and writing in kindergarten through second grade was very rudimentary. Teachers were worried about students learning the basics of reading and writing and were not worried about little errors. Commonly, there were vocabulary words that I would have to memorize for class. Teachers would constantly drill new vocabulary into my mind every day I went to school. I did not like learning vocabulary, but I did like seeing all of the new technology that I had never been exposed to. It was very common to listen to tapes of books in class and try to read along. There were large numbers of books and their immense stacks were visible everywhere. Blackboards and overhead projectors were integral parts of teachers’ rooms. The boards were always covered with chalk from overuse by teachers and students. The overhead projectors were not used as much as the boards, but they played a major role in learning how to read and write.

By fifth grade, I could write descriptive essays and read books. I could tell that science and math were my strengths and English was my foe, but I still dealt with it as best I could. My writing told a lot about my strengths and weaknesses. I had a good vocabulary and great ideas, but my pencil could not portray them as they unfolded in my mind. My grammar was the weakest point of my English. I could write in fluent cursive, but my grammar skills still lagged behind everything else. I was exposed to whiteboards and projectors during this time. They were helpful tools in the classroom because they helped me pay attention more. I would always get excited when I was able to use new technology because it would fascinate me.

The next three summers after fifth grade, my parents decided to make me complete workbooks over the summer that included math, science, English, art, and geography problems. I despised those workbooks with a passion unlike anything else at the time. It was the worst punishment I could think of, yet I was being forced to complete daily assignments before my dad would get home from work. I would whine and complain about the workbooks, but they were a large help in my education. Over the summers, I would start to learn things covered in the upcoming school year rather than lose some of my education I got the past year. Writing letters and e-mails also helped with my lacking English skills. I would write the letters and then have a parent check it for correctness. These letters and e-mails not only helped my grammar, but they kept my relatives in touch with me.

By eighth grade, reading and writing assignments were becoming challenging. The writing was expected to be proper MLA format and the papers were about more challenging topics and labs. The writing started to apply to real life situations where proper looking papers were necessary. Reading was done mostly out of textbooks. The reading was challenging and held many unknown words, but I managed to pick my way through the reading. Technology took another leap forward with smart boards and video projectors. These tools were a nice way to spice up learning in the classroom. High school flew by for me, but I did learn a lot to prepare myself for college and the real world. In high school, I was independent with almost all of my work. Most reading and writing assignments are not aimed at teaching English anymore. They are focused around other topics such as science, history, and social studies. In high school, English students learn techniques, tools, and rules to write good, professional papers. These skills are designed to prepare students for college level writing.

Now that I am in college looking back at my history of literacy, I can see all of the phases of writing I have been through. All of my previous education led up to this point in my life: college. My writing now is proper, but by the end of my college degree, my writing will have become even more professional. Good writing, I have found, flows together well and paints a scene in the reader’s head. The vocabulary is varied and the sentence structures are never the exact same. I think the toughest part of writing is figuring out what not to write. It is easy to write long, descriptive paragraphs, but it is a challenge to describe the same object with a single, well organized sentence. When I write a paper, I start with an outline to guide my writing so my writing is more guided. With an outline, I can see the basic layout and balance of my paper. I tend to write more precise when I have an outline to follow. Once I have an outline to follow, I sit down and get a rough draft of the paper. I try to have music playing softly in the background. If it is completely silent around me, my brain roams around and I get distracted. With music, I am more relaxed and can write easier. With my rough draft done, I start to edit and revise it until I am happy with the final product. I follow this procedure for papers because it is how I get the best product.

When I look back on my literacy history, there is a long chain of events that led me to where I am now. Every reading and writing assignment has helped me become the reader and writer that I am today. My current writing has flow and character unlike anyone else. My writing, I have found, has an identity that nobody else can replicate. My reading and writing skills are unique due to my reading and writing history.

My History of Literacy

When I was posed with the assignment of writing about my history of literacy, I thought it would be interesting to inspect my history of reading and writing and try to form connections to my current reading and writing habits. After digging deep into my memory and examining my writing, I found the difference between my beginning writing and my current writing; my current writing has detail and flow that did not grace my earlier writing. When I think back to my writing, I know I have improved tremendously due to experience and unrelenting English classes.

My parents exposed me to reading and writing at an early age. My mother was an avid book reader and always seemed to carry a book. Although my father did not pursue reading as vigorously as she did, he understood the importance of being literate. As a baby, they would constantly surround me with tales of obscure cartoon characters and cute, fluffy animals. Reading seemed to be a benefit not only for me, but for my parents too. They wanted me to be comfortable around reading and one day find pleasure in its pursuit. Reading to them was a way for them to relax and let the mind float into a different world after a long day. Another thing my parents commonly did was lay out newspaper over the floor and set me in the middle of it. I loved looking around and seeing lots of pictures and articles around me. I would hit the paper with my hands and crawl around on it because I liked the noise, but my parents thought it was due to my interest in the pictures.

I always enjoyed drawing when I was a baby. As soon as I would grasp a marker, a grin would burst across my face. My love of drawing was very helpful when I learned how to write. I got used to markers and other writing utensils which made handwriting easy for me as I grew up. My parents also possessed placemats that had traceable letters and numbers and symbols on it. They would set a different placemat out for me every night so I could sit and trace the entire mat. To my disappointment, I was only trusted on a placemat with markers or pens. I had a habit of doodling on the walls, which my parents quickly halted. Around the house, I would use pencils to scribble illegible letters that looked more like pictographs than anything else. It was not until preschool that I was able to write legible letters and numbers.

Preschool was an exciting time in my life. I went to preschool for two years because my parents wanted to start my schooling early. In preschool, I was always busy doing some sort of activity, whether it was academic or not. Commonly, my class would write for a little bit and then go play. The preschool was very good at teaching academics while still keeping a fun atmosphere. I was well prepared leaving preschool and going into kindergarten.

I went to a small elementary school where everybody knew each other and the classes were rarely over twenty students. This was a great environment for learning because there was a lot of close interaction between the teachers and I. Reading and writing in kindergarten through second grade was very rudimentary. Teachers were worried about students learning the basics of reading and writing and were not worried about little errors. Commonly, there were vocabulary words that I would have to memorize for class. Teachers would constantly drill new vocabulary into my mind every day I went to school. I did not like learning vocabulary, but I did like seeing all of the new technology that I had never been exposed to. It was very common to listen to tapes of books in class and try to read along. There were large numbers of books and their immense stacks were visible everywhere. Blackboards and overhead projectors were integral parts of teachers’ rooms. The boards were always covered with chalk from overuse by teachers and students. The overhead projectors were not used as much as the boards, but they played a major role in learning how to read and write.

By fifth grade, I could write descriptive and informative essays and read books that were not all pictures. By this age, I could tell that science and math were my strengths. English was my foe, but I still dealt with it as best I could. My writing told a lot about my strengths and weaknesses. I had a good vocabulary and great ideas, but my pencil could not portray them as I saw in my mind. My grammar was the weakest point of my English. I could write in fluent cursive, but my grammar skills still lagged behind everything else. I was exposed to whiteboards and projectors during this time. They were helpful tools in the classroom because they helped me pay attention more. I would always get excited when I was able to use new technology because it would fascinate me.

The next three summers after fifth grade, my parents decided to make me complete workbooks over the summer that included math, science, English, art, and geography problems. I despised those workbooks with a passion unlike anything else at the time. It was the worst punishment I could think of, yet I was being forced to complete daily assignments before my dad would get home from work. I would whine and complain about the workbooks, but they were a large help in my education. Over the summers, I would start to learn things covered in the upcoming school year rather than lose some of my education I got the past year. Writing letters and e-mails also helped with my lacking English skills. I would write the letters and then have a parent check it over for correctness. These letters and e-mails not only helped my grammar, but they kept my relatives in good moods.

By eighth grade, reading and writing assignments were becoming challenging. The writing was expected to be proper MLA format and the papers were about more challenging topics and labs. The writing started to apply to real life situations where proper looking papers were necessary. Reading was done mostly out of textbooks. The reading was challenging and held many unknown words, but I managed to pick my way through the reading. Technology took another leap forward with smart boards and video projectors. These tools were a nice way to spice up learning in the classroom. High school flew by for me, but I did learn a lot to prepare myself for college and the real world. In high school, I was independent with almost all of my work. Most reading and writing assignments are not aimed at teaching English anymore. They are focused around other topics such as science, history, and social studies. In high school, English students learn techniques, tools, and rules to write good, professional papers.

Now that I am in college looking back at my history of literacy, I can see all of the phases of writing I have been through. All of my previous education led up to this point in my life: college. My writing now is proper, but by the end of my college degree, my writing will have become even more professional. Good writing, I have found, flows together well and paints a scene in the reader’s head. The vocabulary is varied and the sentence structures are never the exact same. I think the toughest part of writing is figuring out what not to write. When I write a paper, I start with an outline to guide my writing. With an outline, I can see the basic layout and balance of my paper. I tend to write more precise when I have an outline to follow. Once I have an outline to follow, I sit down and get a rough draft of the paper. I try to have music playing softly in the background. If it is completely silent around me, my brain roams around and I get distracted. With music, I am more relaxed and can write easier. With my rough draft done, I start to edit and revise it until I am happy with the final product. I follow this procedure for papers because it is how I get the best product.

When I look back on my literacy history, there is a long chain of events that led me to where I am now. Every reading and writing assignment has helped me become the reader and writer that I am today. My current writing has flow and character unlike anyone else. My writing, I have found, has an identity that nobody else can replicate. My reading and writing skills are unique because of what I have experienced throughout my life.

Comments

I posted on Danny and Una's blogs.

Writing Technology

I commented on Jake and Joe's blogs!

When I was younger, my parents taught me how to read and write at home. I never used hooked on phonics or any other type of program. I learned how to read and write by doing it. I can vividly remember sitting down to the dinner table at age three writing out the alphabet for practice. I used to write in pencil because it was the best technology my family had at the time. Over the years, technology has made a giant leap forward with the invention of computers, typewriters, cell phones, and many other things. I was lucky enough to experience all of these forms of writing technology.  This technology changes the way people communicate whether it be through text message or e-mail. Different technologies work better for certain people. Thus, a broad spectrum of writing technology exists and new technology can certainly be expected to appear in the near future.

Barron’s essay talks in greater detail of the writing technologies and how they have evolved throughout the generations. In the essay, Barron accompanies the text with illustrations that explain and show examples of the main points of the essay. The picture of Abraham Lincoln and Marilyn Monroe shows how forgery can be produced using simple, everyday technology. Marilyn and Abraham did not live during the same generation, so the picture must have been tampered with. Some of the other illustrations show examples of Sumerian encryptions on clay tokens. Illustrations like these used to be early forms of writing. Pictographs were implemented when an alphabet was nowhere in sight. The pictures may not be technological, but they still are a form of communication. The idea of using images was resourceful, but cannot be thought of as technology. In this example, the technology would be the utensil used to make the images, not the images itself. From Barron’s essay, readers can better understand writing technology and how it has evolved and affected writing.  

Sponsors of Literacy

Deborah Brandt’s article “Sponsors of Literacy “is written to show the importance of literacy sponsors in people’s lives. Throughout the reading, I found many interesting facts about sponsors through Brandt’s research. Brandt stated a literacy sponsor is “any agent, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy and gain advantage by it in some way”. Sponsors, as I think of them, are people or companies that either help or stop people from becoming literate. In my life, my parents and my schools have been my sponsors. From an early age, my parents would read to me so I would get comfortable with it. Being exposed to reading and writing at a young age had a profound effect on my English skills.

Malcolm X and Sherman Alexi both had literary sponsors throughout their lives. For Malcolm, prison became a sponsor of literacy. He learned to read and write from a dictionary to keep himself busy and out of trouble. Mr. Elijah Muhammad could also be viewed as a sponsor for Malcolm X. During their multiple communications by mail, Muhammad influenced Malcolm enough to make him want to study literacy more in depth. Sherman Alexi’s sponsor of literacy was his dad. He owned many books and gave Sherman the love of literacy that he holds today.

I believe race and class can also have a major impact on literacy. Branch, being the majority race, found it easier to find multiple sponsors than Lopez. She had to work her way towards literacy while Branch found it easy. Being white, he was part of the upper class and was constantly surrounded by literate people. Lopez was in the opposite seeming situation, but still managed to find sponsors. This proves that while race and class may affect your ability to get sponsors, it cannot stop someone who has the will to find one.

My Voice

When I was posed with the task of recording myself read aloud a passage, I thought I would not be very surprised. I was very wrong. When I listened to myself, I was constantly thinking about how deep my voice sounded. I know my voice is not profoundly deep, but it was still a surprise for me. During every day hustle and bustle I never could pick up exactly how I sound, but the microphone on my laptop changed that.

The actual reading was fairly complex and hid many complicated words within. When I came to a word that appeared foreign to me, I would stumble through it the first time. I would stop myself and try it until my grammar was correct. A couple times I got lost in the text, although I would resume as soon as I located the right position. About half way through the piece of literature, I started having thoughts of boredom and my mind drifted towards the night ahead.

My Intro

My name is Ian Ross and I am from Billings, Montana. I came to MSU for mechanical engineering. I enjoy mountain biking, skiing, unicycling, and alost anything outdoors. I am outgoing and love trying new things. I am excited for college and can't think of anywhere else I would rather be.