The Writing Process to Date

The elements that impacted me the most in the writing process is the writing process itself. The steps of writing the body first, the conclusion second, and the introduction last have been immensely helpful in preventing writer's block. Getting all your thoughts on a piece of paper before writing an introduction or conclusion is a great aid to starting. I always feared writing essay's because I couldn't figure out how to start them, and I felt that I never had enough content, but writing everything down that I know about the subject first has completely prevented those "freaked out" feelings from happening. 

The other tools that have impacted me are the rhetorical tools that we should include in the essay. It's helped me to identify the audience I am speaking to and it's also helped with how I should talk to that audience. Rhetorical tools rule! 

Methodology Used When Writing An Essay

The methodology used when writing an essay sounds like a scary process because most people don't know what methodology is. So, to help out the audience, let's define methodology and then move on to how that applies to writing an essay.

Methodology: the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study.

Now that we have defined methodology, we can apply it to writing an essay. Specifically, the process that is best used when writing an essay. The first step in writing an essay is to write the body of the essay. This doesn't have to be an organized or perfected thing. Step one is to get all your thoughts and everything you know on that paper. The methodology (or analysis) of this step can help us understand why we write the body of the essay first, and it is simply this: because you have gotten all your thoughts on that paper, you can more easily organize those thoughts and edit what you have written. The introduction and conclusion both come from the body of the essay.
A conclusion is the last part of the essay. It's typically the very last paragraph. This is where you sum up what you have said. Because you have the body written, the conclusion becomes very easy. You know your main points and it's simple to sum them up in a few sentences and finish with your thesis, which is the main argument your essay is a part of.
An introduction is designed to tell the audience what you are going to be talking about and what specific rhetorical tools you will be using. If you have the body and conclusion of your essay written, you know the direction of the essay and the introduction becomes very easy to write. As you begin to edit your essay you include rhetorical tools that speak to your desired audience. Including various rhetorical tools will help focus your essay and draw in the proper audience.
These three steps to writing an essay are designed to make the process more simple and faster for students or other people that have to write a paper. The reason this method works is because it applies to any form of writing. Get your thoughts out, edit, conclude, edit some more, introduce, and finalize the essay. It's fool proof work.

Methodology of Process Explanation Essay

The steps I will take to teach my audience about the writing process are as follows:

Step 1: The audience will understand how to write the body of an essay. I will explain to the audience how to first begin an essay with the body and then how to edit and review their essay. This step includes teaching the audience how to include rhetorical tools like logos, ethos, pathos, or division and classification, etc.
Step 2: The audience will understand how to write a conclusion. This is the next step in the writing process, but the audience will need to understand that to write a conclusion, you sum up your main points in the body of your essay. This step will include mic droppers and a discussion of a successfully summarized essay.
Step 3: The audience will understand how to write an introduction. This step includes the explanation of a sentence hook and a definition of a thesis. I will be sure to have the audience understand why the introduction is last.

These steps are important to the process of teaching an audience about the writing process because they follow the outline of writing the body of an essay, then the conclusion, and last, the introduction. Using this format will give the audience a broader understanding with more depth. Using this process will be the best and easiest way to teach my audience the writing process.

The Perfect Introduction

An introduction is a crucial part of a successful essay. It's important to have the introduction because this is the paragraph in your essay that pulls the audience in and lets them know what you are going to be talking about. People often get disinterested if they don't instantly know what they are reading about, so having that introduction will help the audience gain a broader understanding of what you are going to be discussing and will be more likely to continue to read if you have captured their attention.

Steps to creating the perfect introduction:

Step 1: Open with a hook. Capture the audience's attention! Make them want to continue reading.
Step 2: Follow up with back ground information. Begin to give the audience an idea of what you are going to be talking about in the body of your essay. This is best done by splitting up your essay into sections and giving that section a topic in the introduction.
Step 3: Present your thesis statement. Your thesis is what your whole essay is going to be discussing, so make it match the overall theme of your essay.

If you follow these steps when writing your introduction, you will have the essay of a life time!

Extended Definition of Classification and Division

Classifying and diving a subject lets you analyze and explain a subject more in depth. It identifies the major discussion your topic is a member of, and shows in order of importance the different aspects of your topic in a research paper.

Beginning at the largest portion of a research paper, you select your topic. A topic, for example, could be food. Now that we have a subject, you can create a focused topic within that realm of. An example focused topic in the realm of food could be fruit. This is the actual topic you will be researching and it is the thing you will be further dividing and classifying.

After selecting a topic within the large subject, you can classify the different aspects of your topic. In our case, we are discussing fruit; so to classify different parts of "fruit", we can select different types of fruit (preferably your favorite), keeping in mind to classify the most important things first and the least important things last. For our example, it would be your most favorite fruit first leading to your least favorite (still probably a solidly delicious fruit). There can be many classifications, but we will list only three for the sake of this example: 1. Watermelon, 2. Raspberries, 3. Strawberries. (there are many other good fruits like peaches and apricots and apples, but there are just too many to really have a favorite)

Now that we have classified the subject of "fruit", we dive deeper, which leads to the divisions of each classification. The divisions examine the various elements of each major classification. For example:

1. Watermelon: Red on the inside, green on the outside. Crisp. Juicy. Seed spitting contests. Summer time. Things that remind you of watermelon.
2. Raspberries: Red, small, juicy. Sweet. Bees.
3. Strawberries: Red. Oh so sweet. The good ones are the small ones. Chocolate strawberries.

Following the pattern of classifying and dividing your topic will lead to a successful research paper and effectively analyze the discussion your topic is a part of. Congratulations!

Extended Definitions

"All great and precious things are lonely." -- This means that the greatest things in life aren't found in large crowds of things or people. The greatest, most precious things are to be found still and untouched by human hands.

"Ahead, a steely, sunlit sea unfurls to the horizon. Behind, the treeless landscape affords a view of snow peaks, a river still to ford, and my tent, a painfully long walk away." -- This represents a journey of the soul. It is the distance he has traveled to get where he is at that point. Through the struggle and painful walks, the landscape is still beautiful and the view is worth the pain.

"The ruins dotting the landscape drive home the point that I'm alone in a place that no longer belongs to humans." -- The meaning of this is that what the author is seeing is a ghost town of where humans used to live, but no longer do. It is an area that is left to the elements to handle.

Definitions

The way you define something is what is going to make the audience understand the topic or not, and there are two different types of definitions: the classical and the extended. The classical definition would be a definition from your average dictionary. Definitions like these don't relate to an audience because there is nothing to relate to. They aren't very effective for that reason. The extended definition shows the essential nature of something. It goes beyond "what it is" and shows the topics purpose. Definitions like these can reach and audience because there is something to relate to. It makes the audience understand in depth the point you are trying to make.
The article Hornstrandir Nature Reserve, Iceland belongs to a bigger societal conversation than just "Preserving Nature". It belongs to a conversation about finding yourself within nature. The article is about finding a piece of yourself in the nature that has been preserved. With so little nature being preserved and more unseen lands being taken out rapidly, the conversation of the article still fits in with the societal conversation of making sure that we preserve the land that we have, but the broader definition of this article is finding yourself in the secluded, lonely areas of the world.

Link to the article (I think): http://web.a.ebscohost.com.dist.lib.usu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=36a65992-3b87-4254-affb-57856cbe71b1%40sessionmgr4005&vid=44&hid=4207

Rhetorical Terms

Subject specific rhetorical terms are important in the writing process because each different rhetorical term hits different and specific parts of a narrative. For example, a specific rhetorical term would be something like pathos, ethos, or logos. It's important to have the different terms because they express different things. The pathos of a visual, for example, would be the emotion side of the picture, but the logos of the visual would be the logical side of the photo. Two very different things, but both combine to create an effective message. The main importance of the specific rhetorical terms is to reach every aspect of the audience to get the whole message delivered

Pathos: The emotional view of a visual or narrative.
Ethos: The ethical view of a message; it's the credibility of the author that makes the audience believe or disbelieve the message being presented to them.
Logos: Presents the logic of the message. It makes the audience ask, "Does this make logical sense?"
Indirect Persuasion: Not directly leading to a topic, but still enhancing the visual.
Openness: The observation that images are more open for interpretation than a text is.

Compare and Contrast: My Peer's Blog

In comparison to Sam Christensen's blog: Rhetorical Gazes

There can be many differences and many similarities within one topic or assignment. In comparing my own blog with the blog of one of my peers, Sam Christensen, there are many obvious similarities and differences. The similarities include the topic of the specific essay. We both wrote about rhetorical gazes and included a picture that brought some type of gaze to the viewer. Beyond that point there are more differences than there are similarities. These differences include the look of the blog and the pictures we used for our explanation of what a rhetorical gaze is. He included a picture of hands around the world and I included a picture of a man bathing in Doritos. Both images bring a feeling to the viewer, but that feeling isn't the same for both images. Another difference between our two blogs is that I included an example of what a rhetorical gaze looks like in real life, and he did not. He explained it well enough that he didn't need to include an example. The final difference I would like to discuss is our own view of what a rhetorical gaze is. For Sam, he says, "A rhetorical gaze is the process that will, with a certain perspective or history of the viewer, produce the desired image." For me, that definition is, "A rhetorical gaze is a tool used by an author of a text to get his or her message to a desired audience." Both definitions point to the same outcome, but our personal perception of what a rhetorical gaze is different, and that is manifest in our blogs. 

http://www.sam-christensen.blogspot.com/ 

Compare and Contrast

When considering the writing process, it is important to note the idea of compare and contrast. When using compare and contrast in an essay, you are pointing out two typically opposing ideas related to the subject of your essay. By pointing out and analyzing a pair of ideas, it strengthens the ability to remember the key content of the writing. It highlights important details and makes abstract ideas ideas more solid and lessens confusion among readers. Compare and contrast can clarify subjects being discussed and makes comprehension easier. 

We have been focusing on compare and contrast in the writing process alone, but it is also important to consider in visual rhetoric. When looking at a picture, it is important to look at the things in the picture that make the picture what it is. For example, to gather meaning from Pompeian art, you have to compare the skin color of the people, the body positions, the action the are performing, etc. to even be able to determine if the human is male or female. Without compare and contrast, specific meaning would be lost and the picture being depicted would be lost in its entirety as well. 

Rhetorical Gazes

A rhetorical gaze is a tool used by an author of a text to get his or her message to a desired audience. There are a few different types of gazes that could be used, but the main four are business, social, engineering, and ecosystem. Each of these four gazes contain different components to get the message to the right audience. For example, when advertisers broadcast an advertisement on TV, they do it at a specific time when there are specific TV shows on because they know what their target audience is. During the Super Bowl, most of the ads on the TV are about beer, Doritos, or a skanky girl eating a hamburger or because they know the majority of people watching the game are middle aged men. Another example would be a commercial for a retirement home; they would show this ad in the middle of the day while Wheel of Fortune is on because they know their audience is typically older in age.

 

Please enjoy this fairly effective business ad during the Super Bowl: 

Broadcasting a specific commercial at a specific time to hit a specific audience is effective because the advertiser knows they are hitting the correct audience that is most likely to buy their product based off the time of day or time of year. All rhetorical gazes have these specific tools to reach their desired audience. 

Another type of gaze that is common is a social or familial gaze. A familial gaze would help the reader or viewer feel and relate things and memories to their family or other loved ones.  These feelings are best found pictorial form, like this: 

This picture shows a mother and a child exploring the wilderness together. This picture in and of itself can bring back personal feelings or past memories of experiences you may have had. That is the goal with visual rhetoric: getting the meaning to the audience. 

Cause and Effect Structure

Cause and effect is a chain of action and reaction. When you have a cause and effect chain reaction, you have your immediate effect and the main cause. Typically these are present in the current situation. It feels very direct in the sense that "this" caused "that". But because cause and effect is more of a chain reaction, there are contributing causes, main causes, and the primary effect. From the primary effect, it branches from the immediate effect to the remote effect, and finally from there, ripple effects. Because one event leads to the next event, which leads to the next event, and the next, and so on, your causes can become your effect and your effects can become your causes. Typically in a cause and effect chain, you begin at the least important event (cause) that leads to the main effect, then go to the most important causes that directly lead to the primary effect.
Using the chain of action and reaction by cause and effect is effective in reaching an audience because it keeps things in chronological order and it's easy to follow in the sense that one thing leads to the next and that leads to the next event, and so on. It tells the audience what happened and explains why it happened and then the consequences of that happening. Analyzing a cause and effect paper is simple once you can find the first event that leads to the primary effect. Identify the main cause and effect and from there you can find the events, typically in a sequential order, that led to the main event. After figuring the main event and the things leading up to that point, you can look for the consequences of that main event, also known as the ripple effects. These ripple effects can be immediate, or they can reference to the future. As I stated in the beginning, cause and effect is one massive chain of action and reaction that, once found, is easy to follow.

Peer-Review

Often times when writing an essay, we have a one track mind that doesn't enable us to see from different points of view. It's easy to get stuck on one problem or one aspect of the essay you're writing. This can leave the essay with problems and leave the author at a dead end with no new ideas. These dead ends in essays is why peer review is important. It's super beneficial to have other people read your essay because they have a different perspective than you do. They can tell you what works in your essay and what doesn't. They often find grammatical errors or transitions that don't quite work out as well. They give beneficial feedback that you can then incorporate into your essay because you have new ideas and a better sense of direction with the final drafts of you essay.
Peer review is important mainly because it helps you polish your essay and make it better than it could have been without a peer review.

Arthurian Rhetorical Tools

There were a few different rhetorical tools used in the Zambreno article. She used, for example, mutability/plasticity, open-ended closure, piecemeal, and window of opportunity. Mutability or plasticity is the ability of a text to be changed for various audiences. Open-ended closure and window of opportunity are similar, but open-ended closure leaves gaps filled in except for at the end of the story, where it is up to the audience to come up with a new ending, whereas window of opportunity is gaps within a piece of literature or time periods that leave for new interpretation and input by other people with different perspectives. Piecemeal is exactly what it sounds like in the fact that it is taking pieces of a story or of history and putting them together to make one coherent, flowing piece of literature.
It's important to have good rhetorical tools and skills because rhetoric is how we create meaning. If the tools to create meaning aren't there, then there can't be any meaning within the narrative text. It was important for Zambreno to include window of opportunity because it explained why Arthurian narratives are so diverse and so different. It helped explain and support her point effectively because it went along with what her thesis statement said. It helped her create meaning in her narrative because the rhetorical tools explained her point further. She used the tools effectively, and therefore, her text was supported withe meaning and validity.

Narrative Elements

To continue my description of the rhetorical elements found in the short story I have selected, I would like to elaborate on the use of the flashback. In the beginning of the story, there is an instructor teaching small children about a people from the past called the nomads. It's important for the author of the story to include this flashback of the past because the people called the nomads is what the story focuses on. It gives the audience an idea of the topic of the story and helps fill in the blanks and helps focus in on the purpose of the story. As the teacher in the story begins to finish his explanation of the nomads, the author transitions from the past to the present, which is the next topic I'd like to elaborate more on: transitions.
The author used fair transitions, but what was most impressive about the first transition is that it not only moves the story forward and helps the switch from the past to the present, but it also introduces two of the main characters of the story. The teacher of the story is ending his presentation of the nomads, and to bring the story to the present, the author introduces a young girl named Lucy, who then asks a question about the present day and how she can apply what the teacher is saying to her. At the end of her question, she states the instructors name: Mister Arnold. So using the flash back and transition correctly, the author was able to introduce two important characters into the story, while getting his message across about the people of the nomads and how they were not efficient in using the land.
The nomads were a people that didn't know how to use a land, and would leave it barren after its use, but the teacher points out the genius of farming and how people today aren't like the nomads because they know how to use the land. Mister Arnold continues his story until Lucy asks the question, "and if that was so important, and improved everything so much, why are we nomads all over again, Mister Arnold?" The author uses another rhetorical flashback in which Lucy explains how she saw people, the people of today, using the land incorrectly. To get the final theme, or lesson learned, across to the audience, later in the story, all the students wear a shirt that says, "I am not a nomad". The lesson the audience is suppose to learn is to use the land correctly and try to be more sustainable in the way they live. I feel the author did a fair job of getting that point to the audience with the rhetorical tools he used.
The various structural elements found in narratives are things like keeping the story in chronological order so the story follows a comprehensible line of sense. Types of transitions are also a structural element, and to elaborate on that, it's important to always switch paragraphs when changing tenses. It's crucial to know when you are changing tenses, so you know when to change paragraphs. The thesis is typically the conclusion of the story, but it is also the lesson you should learn from the story, so the thesis needs to be clear and the audience should be able to identify it fairly easily.
Other structural elements of narratives include the setting, the characters, the plot, the problem/resolution, the chronology of the story; all of these things contribute to the structural elements of a narrative.

The Importance of Narrative In Reaching A Desired Audience

In order to understand the importance of narratives in reaching a desired audience, we need to understand what a narrative is and the purpose that it serves. In the text, Comprehension Strategy Instruction: Teaching Narrative Text Structure Awareness, Susan Dymock states, "What is narrative text? Narratives are more than simple lists of sentences or ideas. Narratives are stories. Calfee and Drum (1986) reported that “stories generally tell ‘what happened.’ Who did what to whom and why”," Based on this information, we know that a narrative is a story and has the ability to tell what happened and why. Narrative text uses a structured story line that the audience can follow and, therefore, better understand the message the author is trying to get across. Thus, narrative is important because it provides the audience with an easy way to comprehend the text that is being presented to them. The audience can follow and understand who, what, when, where, and why in a text with little to no problem.
The rhetorical tools, or the effective use of language, used in narrative text is presented in what is called a story grammar. A story grammar is basically a set of grammatical rules used to structure a sentence. It identifies the basic parts of a story and shows how the parts tie together to form a well constructed story. There are four parts to a story grammar: the character, the setting, the plot, and the theme. These four parts work together and compliment each other to help the audience "get the picture". Another key element, or rhetoric, used in narrative writing, is your ability to transition from one topic or idea to another. It states what happened and what happens next, for a clear story line for the audience to follow. A key when using transitions, is incorporating flashbacks or foreshadowing that support the story and focus in on key points and bring the narratives to life. Knowing all of these elements of rhetoric in writing a narrative, you can reach you desired audience by using the right sort of narrative for different age groups and schooling levels. For example, if you were to write a narrative directed to third graders, you would use more simple characters, settings, and plots, that would lead to a simple theme, which is the lesson learned. In conclusion, you can direct every part of the narrative to a specific people, and that is how you are able to reach your desired audience using the rhetoric tools.

The Writing Process

Many people are uninformed on just how to truly and correctly compose a good essay. For the most part, the majority of human beings in this world believe that to start an essay, you start with the introduction, go to the body of the essay, and end with the conclusion, but not so! To start an essay, you don't even worry about the introduction or even a thesis statement, you worry about the body of the essay. You basically write down everything you know on the subject with out any rhyme or reason to your writing. After you have everything down on paper, you can begin to edit the words and ideas to make them flow and coherent to the reader. Once you have removed sentences that don't matter and you have made the body of the essay flow, you work on the conclusion because you know everything within your essay and it's easier to sum up into a conclusion paragraph. And finally, as soon as you know what your conclusion is, it's easy to write the introduction because you know the direction of the essay and you know the point you are going to be making. That is how you write the perfect essay.
Thank you, ladies and gentleman.