Parenting

I decided to write my expanded definition around the idea of parenting. This term to me is not universal because not everyone let alone every country have the same ideas on what it means to parent children. The term varies from person to person, family to family and culture to culture. Parenting is one of the most important jobs in the world and therefore i think it is worth defining.

My Editorial

For my editorial I decided to write about the experience students have with advisers at Oakland. I choose this topic because many students are feeling as if the academic advisers here at Oakland are not as helpful as they should be. The advisers can help students decide on anything from a concentration to a major with the information that they communicate to the students. However, the advisers just doesn't seem that enthusiastic about helping the students therefore students are going without valuable information. I don't know if this is because the advisers are overwhelmed or what but going off of my experience along with the students i have encountered just feel as the advisers here at Oakland University are not fulfilling there responsibilities to the students.

Strategies for persuasive arguments

After the recent presidential election i have come to realize what types of techniques that writers can use to catch my attention. The factor of the emotional approach really helps me to make a decision. When the candidates talked about things that hit close to home emotionally i was immediately connected. If the candidate use the topic to show how it affected their own lives i really felt sorry for them and believed the idea that they were trying to get out to readers. That's another reason why i know that examples are key to a well written argument. When the writer gives examples that back up their theory a lot of times it can convince me as a reader. Yes statistics are important also, however sometimes they can be overwhelming. In most cases a theory can be proved off of stats but the emotional aspects along with examples always makes the argument more persuasive. Lastly, one thing i usually look for in an argument is for the writer to talk about the opposing view. If the writer can address the opinion of the opposing view and tell why it is wrong or not as good as the chosen argument it helps to prove their point.

My Memoir Revision

I decided to do my blog on my revision i think i need to make on my memoir. After reading the comments made by two other students and my professor i think i need to change a few things. I talk to much about the actions rather than showing my readers through details what happnens. I will take out some information to make the document shorter and more concise. Also i will add more memories about my mom to try to help show the audience what kind of person my mom was before she went into the hospital. The last thing i will probably do is change the introduction. Im going to leave the ending the way it is because i rather have the memoir end at the end of the memory rather than tie it all up nice and neat. I hope this revision will help me get my vision off to my reader in a more accurate way.

Revision

After reading the article written by James Drisko it helped me realize my standards for revising. I will make sure that I let my writer know the strengths and weaknesses of their document. Also as far as the weaknesses I will make sure I point out exactly where I have a problem. I think in order for the writer to understand why I have a problem I need to let them know where I got lost at and why, in addition to what I understood and what I didn’t. I must be really respectful as I would like anyone to be for any of my writings. Of course I think that some proof reading is important for things that are not set in dialect. Not necessarily the way the sentences are wrote but something like spelling.

Stephen King Response

I wasn't that surprised to see that vocabulary was the first "tool" of writing and grammar was the second, however i was surprised as to what he said about vocabulary. I though it was important to try and choose your vocabulary depending on your audience. He said the first word is always the better word. After i thought about it i found it to be true. Because usually when i write and i change the word i always go back and put the first word because i liked it better. But i guess it all depends on your audience. One more thing i found surprising was that King said paragraphs were more important than sentences. I thought that without good sentences the paragraph couldn't work.

Memoirs

After reading the article about memoirs i came to two conclusions; i think one it is very important to tell the truth inside ones memoir, and two i think it takes the combination of a memoir and a autobiography written by a bias outside source to make a good piece of history. First of all i think memoirs are great because it usually can eliminate the possibilities of lies and over exaggeration of a persons life. This of course is only possible if the author is honest and open with the reader. On the other hand the reader can relay on the outside source to tell the complete truth because there cannot be any harm done to the author for telling the whole truth. Also the only way a good memoir can be written is if the author is being completely honest.....especially on the most important and story changing information.

Response to First Person Female

First of all this was a great topic that i never even thought about. Harrison hit on a lot of different prospectives, and brought in a lot of topics or ideas surrounding the main point. In my on personal opinion i think it all depends on the message the author is trying to expose and the surrounding circumstances, when it comes to men posing as women and vice versa. Some men and women attempt to do this, and sometimes it can come very close when they have been around the opposite sex all their lives and have studied them for a extremely long period of time. The author will start by laying the background information in to place such as the gender, age, race, childhood, hobbies, education, social status, and etc. By applying this and public persona to the character the author can come very close to successfully capturing the voice of the opposite sex. However, when it comes to the psychological point of view the text becomes harder. I think it is difficult for a men to have full access to the thoughts of a women like Harrison mentioned and vice versa. This is usually when stereotypes come into to play. The author tries to write off the typical man or women and sometimes this makes it hard to be original. This is not always a problem because some documents can get away with this when they main focus is to criticize a aspect of reality that is pretty much dominant in a culture. However this can also be a set back because in certain situations it is hard to determine exactly how that sex feels about the subject. So in the end i think it can be done depending on the situation and circumstances surrounding the story. Its not always possible to reach every audience member but in some instances the author can satisfy some.

Is it Plagerism

After reading the article i was surprised for one because i didn't know that copyright issues existed so long ago and in so many different works of art. I knew of course the issue with the work of music, however i thought that the farthest it went with literature or art was maybe students citing where they got there information from or a business reprinting someone's product. I didn't know that actual writers were using others work to such a great extent.
My opinion on different copyright rules is kind of all over the place. When it comes to music i think that the idea of downloading music and DVD's illegally is wrong because it is the way that the artist among many others make their money. So for a individual to steal the work of art that they would normally pay for is wrong because its taking away from the welfare of the artist and many others. Now as far as a artist sampling a old song, which is done all the time, is a little different. Usually by the time a song is sampled the monetary aspects of the song and/or beats is pretty much over.
Now as far as television shows and ideas being used in that area, i think is a complete necessity. For example, without artist being able to do this there would be no shows such as Mad TV, The Chapelle Show, or Family Guy. In television i think the borrowing of ideas is important. I really don't think there should be a fee or consequence to things like this. Now to completely steal someones trademark is a different story.
As far a literature goes one shouldn't be able to completely steal ideas from other authors but a lot of times stories need to be updated and made modern. Of course there should be some type of recognition to the original author.
Finally, i was so surprised to see at the end of the article that the author confessed to stealing pretty much everything he said. This is because usually when material is stolen i can tell by the flow of the passage that it was cut and paste, just some put together material. However this author did a very good job at putting information together. By the way it was a greating ending to the story.....

Response to Grammar Article

First i was really surprised to see a article wriiten about the use of grammar in today's society. This article is very accurate, because it seems as if the topic is becoming less important in the classrooms and on the kids television shows. I went to a college preparatory high school and we learned grammar my freshman year, and after that it was never really mentioned in great depths again. I figured that since i went to a college prep h.s. i was being taught everything that was important and would prepare me for my collegiate career. However, my freshman year in college i had to take a RHT 150 course that focus somewhat on grammar and/or writing. I realize that i was not prepared at all in these subjects. I felt sorry for other students all well as myself because i was on the schools newspaper in high school, so i had a little taste of the importance of grammar and writing. I also experienced the difficulty with grammar when i took ALS here at the university. This course also had to do with the history of the language and the basics of it. What we think of has common knowledge in the English language can be harmful when someone is trying to teach you the basics from the beginning. Now i agree that grammar is something that can become overwhelming for the teacher as well as the student, but i think it is a very important aspect of everyday life that needs to be explored from the beginning.

Response to Write Till You Drop

When reading Write Till You Drop i was confused many times throughout the passage. Because there were so many references to authors and/or stories that i had no clue about, at some points i felt as if i was outside the "readers circle." Some of the vocabular was also very extreme inside this long story. Many of the sentences and words i had to go back and read a couple of times before i was just a little clear on the purpose of them. It also seems like the passage could have been shorter as if there were to many examples or to much "wordyness" that could have been narrowed down. However, i did get the just of what the writer was trying to communicate. I have had the feeling of this artist. For the most part once i have a topic and sort of an idea what i want to talk about the process isnt that hard, just time consuming. The feeling that the writer was trying to express is the feeling a writer gets when they come to sort of a writers block. When so much information is running through your head but you really dont know what to do with it, or if you should do something with it. Then finally it (idea) comes to you, its like a light shining down on you. This is when you are ready to start writing, you know for the most part what direction you want to take your writing project. I have had this feelingss more than a few times.