Unit 3: Final Blog

I can't believe that it's time to reflect on the whole semester already! Where has the time gone?! There has been multiple ups and downs for me in the process of each of the Units, though I have found success in all three of them.

Beginning with unit one, I must say, I thought this was an exciting first project when we were told about it. I have always been a fan of writing small articles. Throughout high school I was in journalism and went to IHSA sectionals and state for writing articles, so this was something I was very familiar with. Although this was something that I was used to writing, and knew what I was doing, I still encountered a problem that I had to find a solution to. I had trouble with the person I had planned on interviewing, though I was able to work through this and it had become an accomplishment. Looking back on my first blog for this unit, I mentioned that my goal was to successfully create a "good" article on my topic. Now, I believe that I did reach my goal, along with finding out other successes. Feedback totally opened my eyes. Before, "feedback" was always known to me, as correcting grammar and pretty much making sure that it followed that 5 paragraph essay rule. Now, I have come to learn that it is much more than that. It is looking into the paper, finding the meaning and reasoning, and focusing on it's parts and it's sense. I was actually surprised to to hear for Nicole not to even pay attention to the grammar issues, that we are looking for more than that. This feedback and analysis process was something I used throughout the entire rest of the semester.

On to unit two, we had to create a juxtaposition piece. Not only that, but as a group project. I haven't always been too fond of group projects, not to mention I had no idea what the whole concept of the project was! Soon enough I found out that we would be working with different genres, such as sidewalk chalk, diary entries, and/or even post it notes. Learning that the language of each one of those all had their own characteristics certainly amazed me. I loved how we broke apart and analyzed each of the genres and looked into what would happen if we broke a certain criteria of the genre. This later on helped me with my theatre class paper. We had to look into and write about the elements of theatre. I dissected each of the elements and then broke one. It totally changed how a theatre play would go, or what the reaction would be if one of those elements were missing. As you can see, this unit helped me not only for this class, but for another as well. As for the group part of this, it ended very successful.

Finally, unit three was a bit like unit one, in my opinion, but in a more professional, scholarly way. This article was a bit more difficult for me. I figured that I would just create what I could for the rough draft, and then go from there. The individual meeting with Nicole helped a lot. I found that I just need to expand more on my writing. I do agree, and feel that I learned greatly from that. Once again we worked with peers and got feedback, which like I said before, is one of the most important things to me now. In the end, I was happy with what I created. I got to focus on one thing, blogs, which I had just found out about in the beginning of the semester, so in a way I got to reflect on my learning process, which was very interesting.

To conclude, overall I have learned an outstanding amount, not only about standard english but that there is so much more to it than what was maybe learned in high school. I feel that we expanded a lot in  this class and that we worked with stuff that I hadn't even heard of before. I consider all of this a learning process since I constantly was learning and finding new ideas every day. Another thing, that there are no set standards to writing and creating a piece. There are so many types of genres and each have their own set of criteria. Setting up and creating a rubric is a great way to find each of these criteria. Those are just a few things that I learned throughout this semester. It makes me want to stay and find even more that I did ever know about. I feel this has been a very successful course for me. This will all be carried with me the remaining time of my college career and life as well.

As a final note, something that I found very interesting is the way that my first blog looks compared to my final one. As we know, there is no set way to create a blog post, though I feel like I found a "correct" way for me to write one. My first was just one huge paragraph rambling on, and now looking, I have multiple paragraphs, each time, I am expanding my ideas and writing even more.

GRWJ Topic

1. The general topic that I am interested in writing about is blogs. 2. I just want to explore the actual point of blogs and the ways they are used, mostly opinion. 3. I just recently learned how to use blogs and could use a lot of personal experience on this topic. 4. Visually, I will show screenshots of my blog itself, or examples of blog posts. 5. I am not sure what my citing research will be yet.

This is still all an idea until discussed more to make sense.

Ten Characteristics GRWJ

Both
-Had others review their writing to approve
-Required much research
-Used other types of genres such as scholarly journals to support their information
-Use ISU resources (students and/or graduates)
-Pictures were used related to the topic discussed
-Descriptions of the authors following the articles
-Education related, whether it was english or another subject
-Introduction from author in beginning
-Formal language. Broken down in paragraphs with topics and headings.
-Illustrated examples of academic explanations

Final Learning Blog: Unit 2

This unit has been very beneficial to me, both in the learning process, and with work in other classes. We started out Unit 2 by taking a simple type of genre and changing a known aspect of that to an unfamiliar or unusual form. I thought that working with this type of experiment would be an awesome group project, and I was right. I had a lot of fun working with my group members to research such genres. There was humor with the confusion and reactions, and as a group, we ended up with a lot of good, useful, and helpful information. It brought a great opportunity of working with communication with group members and others.

Not only did learning about this juxtaposition concept help me with the group project, but also in another class. I actually had to write a paper on a certain aspect or theme in a class. I took what I knew about changing a specific part of a type of genre, in this case, a play, and found out how others would react to this change. Specifically, I found how much of a difference it would make if characters, language, or even a theme was changed in the play. How the play would not be complete without characters, sound, or background. This worked great for my paper and probably something not seen written a lot.

Clearly, this main juxtaposition concept that we worked with, could work in many different ways and help in other classes as well. The idea of taking something known and ordinary and changing a main part to something unbelievable can bring great reactions. I have enjoyed what we have learned in Unit 2, and know I will take this with me after english 101.

It's amazing how society is conditioned to believe or think one thing should be only one specific way and if changed, or different than that "known" way, then it is wrong or unbelievable.

Halfway Learning Blog

I am going to start off with the topic that was asked at the beginning of Unit 2, what is standard english? When asked that, a lot came to the top of my head. And then I really had to think about it, what do I consider standard english? Then again, what would other people consider standard english? I decided to ask another person what they thought and compared it to my own thoughts. They replied to the question as "standard english is the correct grammatical rules for everyday speaking and writing." As said before, I thought that it was just the common/known way to speak or write. It is obvious that everybody is taught different and that "standard" or the "common" way isn't always the same in everybody's perspective.

This leads to the thought of different types of genres and their standards or criteria. I think that this is very interesting in many different ways. For example, sidewalk chalk. Sidewalk chalk is known to be short, attention getting, in very public places, usually written by a member of a group or team, and for the audience of many different types of people. Then there's the genre of post it notes, or a recipe book, or even a birthday card. All of this is very interesting to me, once taken the time to figure out that there is criteria and standards for every type of genre.

Finally, I feel that this project and group work will be another great experience. To work with one certain genre, then break and change a certain part of it, is something that i have interest in. I enjoy working with this type of work in english class. It puts a whole different outlook on things, and the way you see different genres. Breaking each down and experimenting what changes can really do, is a great idea and I can't wait to further on with this project. 

Standard English Questions.

1. When a person speaks or writes in Standard English, it is known as "common" or "proper" English/writing. This includes correct punctuation and grammar.

2. I think that Standard English became well known when it became common for everybody in time to begin writing and speaking in a certain way, or what became the "correct" way. When it became important for everybody to learn to read and write.

3. I think there are specific times and places that Standard English must be used compared to times that it is not required. I feel that things are always changing, and not everybody is taught the same exact way. Therefore types of English and speaking are used and changed at different times.

4.I feel there are many different aspects of a "good"writer. There are so many different parts to a written element. Though, I do feel that to have a good written item, a person should have a certain way of organizing their paper, how they got their thoughts and ideas together, how they got their information and facts, and how they plan on writing their paper. There are so many parts to actually completing something that you have written, so "good" can not be determined until all parts are analyzed.

5.    I think that a "bad" writer just has no idea where they are going with what they want to say. Their work does not make sense and things are just unorganized. 

6.    Everybody makes minor mistakes almost every time that they speak. It is so easy to not catch yourself making a small grammar mistake such as saying "me and Paige", instead of "Paige and I". Usually I find people correcting others depending on the situation, but everybody makes mistakes in Standard English. There are "common" English mistakes like saying ain't. Multiple people will complain when you use that word.

7.    Along with the typical research papers, I feel that students should work on multiple genres that are not common. For example, newspaper articles, or blogs. These are two that are not taught and worked with very commonly, but now that I have worked with both recently, it has helped and taught me outstandingly.

8.    I believe that Standard English can mean correct English, but it doesn't have to. English is always changing, and everybody has different views on what is common or correct, even what is standard. There are many mistakes when speaking or writing, that not everybody can correct or make perfect.

Factors in CHAT continued. 2-17-12

5. Activity: Actual practices that people engage in as they create a text.

• I spend time looking up sources and other articles. After, I took the time to create my rubric and write my article. In between that, I stopped and took a break on the internet, and then went back to work on my project.

6. Ecology: Environmental factors.

• While writing my article, I had music playing in the background, like I always do while doing homework. 

7. Socialization: The interaction of people and institutions with this piece of writing.

• After creating my article, I did find myself to socialize with others than just thinking to myself. For my article, I had to interview somebody for my topic. That obviously made me interact with others. Also, this class blog has made it very easy to communicate and work with other classmates throughout this unit. We are also working with our teacher which brings us to socialize with her and know what she expects in this class.