Eng 110 Journal #2
When I begin to write an essay or any type of writing, I start by structuring my essay on a separate piece of paper. I like to have all of my thoughts written down before I even begin writing because I will be able to figure out where I want to put all of the information that I have within the essay. Once I have all of my information written down, I then use the information that I have on the separate piece of paper to begin my opening paragraph. I use the opening paragraph to give an introduction to what the rest of my essay is going to be about. When writing the body paragraphs, the separate sheet of paper comes in the most handy because I already have all of the information written down, I just have to put it into sentence form and make it flow in a way that will be entertaining to read. I end with the conclusion paragraph where I tie all of the information that is in my body paragraphs together. The separate sheet of paper makes the writing process lot easier in the end and I am happy that I learned about it at a younger age.
The revision process is more complicated because you have to go back and find all your mistakes. I first go through my essay and find all of the spelling and grammar mistakes that are throughout my essay. Once I do that, I make sure that the sentence structure is put together in a way that makes the whole essay flow. After I finish this, I go back through the rest of my essay making sure that there is nothing more that I can add, take out or improve on. The revising part of the essay is the most important part of the writing process because you can perfect the writing that you have.
Journal #3
In chapter 3 of They say, I say, there are a lot of excellent pointers on how to quote correctly when writing an essay. The best advice that I got while reading this chapter was to quote relevant passages, frame every quotation and to blend the authors words with my own. These 3 pieces of advice will make it easier for me to incorporate quotes into my essays. Quoting relevant passages is the best piece of advice that is given throughout the chapter because picking the quote to use in the essay is the first step in incorporating quotes into the essay. If I pick a quote that does not support my argument, then the quote will not do anything in making my essay a better piece of work. Framing every quotation is also important because if the quote is not properly framed, the reader will not be able to tell the significance of the quote easily and they won’t be able to see the point. Lastly, blending the authors words with my own will play a very important role in the end because being able to reexplain what the authors point is by putting it in my own words will make it easier for the reader to understand and it may help them figure out the point I am trying to get across. These 3 pieces of advice will make it a lot easier to incorporate quotes into a piece of writing.
Journal #4
The essay “The End of Food” by Lizzie Widdicombe, tells the story of an entrepreneur, Rhinehart, who came up with a solution to meal replacement. The essays began with the story of a young man who wanted to come up with an efficient way to save money on food. He tried many different ways of saving money including living off of McDonald’s s and having a strictly kale diet. Nothing that he tried ended up saving him a significant amount of money, so he began to research meal replacement online and he began to test it out. After 30 days of this meal replacement, he felt a lot healthier. The essay then goes onto describe the food supplement that Rhinehart came up with called Soylent and how it turned into a company that began to ship across the United States. The product grows to be a huge hit across the country and many people begin living off of the food supplement and getting used to not having an actual meal. To conclude the essay, Widdicombe begins to describe her experience being on Soylent and her feelings towards the product.
This essay was able to change my way of thinking about food as a whole. I never considered having a meal supplement before and never really noticed the amount of time and energy food took up in my life. Soylent gives people more time to go about their life and not have to worry about where the food is coming from, when they are going to have their next meal or even going to the grocery store to buy food. Personally, I would not want to go on this meal supplement because I like food way too much. My favorite part of the day is sitting down at dinner for a homecooked meal. As a college student, Soylent would be very useful in keeping a healthy diet and also being able to get a full stomach in a short amount of time without having to prepare a full meal. Overall, the lifestyle of Soylent could be beneficial to my health and life, but it would not be my first choice of food.
Journal #5
While i was reading “Entering the Conversation” in They say/I say, I was able to learn a lot about how to respond to other people ideas and how to tell someone my thoughts without making it seem as though I think that it the only answer. The first part of the chapter that i found most interesting was the “why are you telling me this section” Through this section, they talked a lot about how if you put the views of others and make it seem as though you are open to other ideas, the audience will be more open to the ideas you are putting forth. The second part of this chapter i found to be interesting was the templates that were throughout the chapter. I saw a few great templates that could be very helpful when I am writing an essay and need a way to incorporate other ideas into my piece. Overall, I found that this chapter gives a lot of information on how to start a conversation and be able to show that you appreciate other people ideas but also have your own.
Journal #6
Feedback letters
Jacob Essay letter
At the sentence level there were a few errors that I noticed a few times throughout the essay that could be easily fixed. The first mistake that I noticed was that a lot of the sentences could be combined together. By adding a few short sentences together, it will make the flow of the essay better overall. Another thing I noticed was that the topic sentences were strong and gave the reader an idea of what the rest of the paragraph will be, but the conclusion sentences could be improved. By having a strong conclusion paragraph, it will give leave the reader thinking about what you want them to think and your final thoughts on it. The biggest improvement could be done on the thesis. Rather than stating exactly what your essay will be about, be more general with what each body paragraph will be about. I thought that at the beginning it was a little choppy but about halfway through until the end, the essay came into focus.
Thesis
The thesis in the essay is pretty general because it states exactly what the essay is going to talk about including the pieces that are going to be discussed throughout the essay. I think that the thesis could be improved by not being so specific and putting more general information about what the body paragraphs will be about and set the reader up for what they are about to read. Rather than saying “I am going to be discussing…” make the thesis so that it gives a general piece of information from each paragraph so that the reader understands what each body paragraph will be about and what the point of whole essay is.
Emphatic Moments
In the essay there could be a more emphatic moments but there are some really good points that are emphasized. There is an emphasis on the idea that the Soylent could be beneficial for a student athlete because of the busy schedule that they might have. Another point in the essay that had a good emphasis on it was that Soylent could help the worldwide situation of hunger and starvation. In one of the body paragraphs about the Soylent being beneficial and being able to help our society reach our goals, there could be more emphasis on what goals would be reached because of the Soylent. Overall, I feel like the emphatic moments through this essay are very helpful and help the reader understand the point of it.
Textual evidence
There is a good amount of textual engagement through the essay. I think that the quotes that were used in the essay went very well with what the body paragraph was about. Also, the quotes were placed well in this essay. It seems as though there was a good amount of thought put into how to explain the quote and how to lead up to the quote. The textual evidence was strong overall in this essay and easy to understand why the quote was used. I did not notice any spots where the textual evidence could be improved, and I thought that overall the quotes were placed well and explained well.
Hannah essay letter
Local Concerns
There were not many sentence level errors throughout this essay that I noticed to be a common trend. What I did notice was that after the quotations, you do not need to add punctuation. The punctuation is supposed to go inside of the quotation mark rather than on the outside. There were very few grammatical or spelling errors in the piece. The only thing that could be improved on is adding a few comas in different places but nothing other than that. The essay flows from start to end and I didn’t notice any spots where it was choppy. The place where the essay flowed the best and I was really able to understand the major point of the paragraph was the 5th paragraph that began with the rhetorical question. Overall, I didn’t think that there were many local concerns throughout the essay.
Global Concerns
Thesis- The thesis in this essay is pretty strong but the wording of it is a little confusing. I think that the idea behind it is very strong, but it could be improved a little to make it flow better and give the reader a better setup for what they are about to read. Overall, the thesis has the ability to set up the rest of the essay and start a good flow but needs to be improved by the structure of the sentence.
Emphatic moments
There is a lot of emphatic moments throughout the essay that helps the reader get a better understanding of what the point of the essay is. The emphatic moments begin with the first sentence when you state that America has a very troubles relationship with society. This sentence leads into the discussion of how the American society is obsessed with food but also, they take it for granted. The next emphatic moment is the first sentence of the next paragraph because it tells the reader exactly what the paragraph is going to be about. Overall, you did a very good job with the emphasis of the main points of the essay and as a reader, I was able to fully understand it.
Textual Engagement
The textual engagement of this essay is very good. There are a good amount of quotes throughout the essay that gives support on the topic. The quotes in this essay are placed well and explained well. They are not placed in a random place without thought which helps the reader to understand the point of them and explain the point. Also, after the quote, there is a good explanation of why the quote is there and what the point of it is in the essay. Overall, the textual evidence is strong and put in strategically.
Journal #7
Journal #8
This section of They say, I say, talk about how to state what other people are saying. There are many ways to bring up what people are saying in your own words. When bringing up other people’s view, there is always a standard view which is a view that has been so widely accepted that by now, it is the conventional way of thinking. The templates that are given in the book are very helpful because they are a quick and easy way to challenge widely accepted beliefs, place them on an examining table and then analyze their strengths and witnesses. I also learned that another way to introduce what other people think is by making it something that I would say. Overall, I learned that it is very important to keep what other people say in view
Journal #9
In my essay, I spent the most time revising the flow of my essay. I found that the essay was a little choppy and did not have much flow when reading from paragraph to paragraph so I needed to adjust the way I transitioned from each paragraph as well as the order of them. If I were to go back, I would change the introduction paragraph to give more background information so that the reader would have a better understanding of Soylent as they went through the essay. This drafting/editing process is much different from my high school experience. I feel as though in high school I was just going through the process to get the grade without really understanding the process. During this essay, I was able to understand the process and the importance of each step when I was going through it. I did not really have a specific approach at the beginning and did not really know where to begin but as I got deeper into the process, I felt like my approach got to the point where it fit the expectations of this class.
Journal #10
Page 2 paragraph 2
I agree with this paragraph especially when it talks about how popular cooking shows have become. The Food Network has become extremely popular and it can be seen in millions of American’s homes. All different ranges of ages watch these shows because of how appealing they are and the variety of shows that are aired on this network.
Page 11 Paragraph 3
This paragraph appealed to me in the sense of how much I agree with it. The paragraph starts off with the idea that the cooking shows are more about buying and not making. Along with that, certain cooking shows come with a celebrity aspect of it making them even more popular. Overall, the foot network has come to the realization that the views of these sows care more about what is cooking rather than who is cooking.
Page 19 paragraph 2
This paragraph gives a lot of information and gives results to the study which makes me agree with it. I found it interesting how obesity rates are inversely correlated with the amount of time spent on food preparation. After thinking about this, it made more sense because homecooked meals are better for you because you know exactly what is in the food and you are able to control what ingredients are being used.
Journal 11- TS/IS chapter 14
The main point of this chapter was to learn about why is the writer writing about a certain subject. I learned that when reading a piece of work, I should imagine the author with other people, in a multisided conversation trying to persuade or get other tp agree with them rather than hunched over at a desk alone. The trick in reading for the argument is to figure out what views the author is responding to and what their argument is. it is important to figure out the “they say” and how to author is responding to it. Challenges when reading can be determining the “they say” when it is not obviously stated, is something nobody has talked about to or reading challenging texts. These three scenarios will make it rather difficult to determine what the “they say” of the book actually is for the reader. Overall, I learned that reading for the conversation is about just the thesis but for the views that have motivate the thesis as well. It is important for reader to have different strategies to detect the “they say” in what they read even when it is not obvious.
Journal 12- Animals Like US
“This twisted moral taxonomy worked fine until Judith ran into Joseph Weldon, a graduate student in biology. When they first met, Joseph, himself a meat eater, tried to convince Judith that there is not a shred of moral difference between eating a Cornish hen and eating a Chilean sea bass. After all, he reasoned, both birds and fish are vertebrates, have brains, and lead social lives.”
This passage in the article I found to be a very interesting point. Often times, people do not see fish as people so, it would make sense that Judith would think that just eating a fish would be okay because most people would not consider a fish to be an animal. When we think of animals we think of birds, cows, pigs etc. but fish never seem to come to mind. As Joseph Weldon points out, cornish hens and chilean sea bass are both animals. They both have social lives as well as brains and they are both vertebrates.
“In addition, cats, unlike snakes, are recreational killers. It is estimated that a billion small animals a year fall victim to the hunting instincts of our pet cats. Oddly, many cat owners don’t seem to care about the devastation their feline friends cause to wildlife. In a cruel irony, many cat owners also enjoy feeding birds in their backyards, inadvertently luring legions of hapless towhees and cardinals to their deaths at the claws of the family pet. It is likely that at least 10 times as many furry and feathered creatures are killed each year as a result of our love of cats as are used in biomedical experiments.”
This passage in the article is important to the essay because it shows how the owners of the cats can actually be blamed for the death of many animals due to their cats. Owners will feed birds in their backyard which will in turn bring towhees and cardinals to their death because of the family cat. As the birds begin to feed on the food provided by the owner, the cats will attack the birds and kill them. This chain started with the owner causing the owner to be the reason for the death of the birds
“Like most people, I am conflicted about our ethical obligations to animals. The philosopher Strachan Donnelley calls this murky ethical territory “the troubled middle.” Those of us in the troubled middle live in a complex moral universe. I eat meat—but not as much as I used to, and not veal. I oppose testing the toxicity of oven cleaner and eye shadow on animals, but I would sacrifice a lot of mice to find a cure for cancer. And while I find some of the logic of animal liberation philosophers convincing, I also believe that our vastly greater capacity for symbolic language, culture, and ethical judgment puts humans on a different moral plane from that of other animals.”
This part of the passage gives more meaning to the essay and wraps up the final thoughts of the author. He believes that he is in the middle when it comes to the ethical obligation to animals. Some things he would considered bad like, testing chemicals on animals but other things, like finding the cure for cancer by using mice, is okay to do. I agree with this because if we are able to help the greater good of the world and extend the lives of many people, our ethical obligations can go away. We are on a different moral plane when it comes to us vs animals but all in all we do owe something to these animals and being overly harsh to them is not the right thing to do.
Journal 13- Project 2 process
I had a different approach to writing paper two compared to paper one. I found that when i was writing paper one, I did most of the paper in one night but when I was doing paper 2, I split it up into 3 different nights. This made it a lot easier to not get sidetracked and distracted when I was writing it. I also found that I had new ideas and different information to add in when I went back the next day to look at it. I also saved my drafts more often which i found to be very affective because I was able to look back at what I previously had. The most difficult thing in this essay was finding quotes that were a good fit in my essay. I had to find essays that were a few lines in length which was more difficult than I had expected because the essays were shorter. The peer edit step of this essay helped me a lot because I was able to see what other people were doing in their essay as well as have my peers edit my essay and explain what made sense and what didn’t make sense. I really enjoyed the peer edit process overall and I was able to get a lot of useful information from this. I am happy with my progress of this essay over the course of the few weeks butI think that I could have improved on a few different things. I could have put more effort into the quotes that I chose and the explanation of the quotes. I also think that my opening and conclusion paragraphs could have been a lot stronger and could have been explained a lot more. The last thing I could have improved on would be adding more background information into the opening paragraph so that the reader knew more about each of the pieces that I was going to introduce. Overall, there were many difficult parts of this essay but I managed to make my way through it!
Journal 14- reconsidering the lobster
As I read reconsidering the lobster the first time, I was more interested in how Wallace got all of this information than anything else. As i read it again, i became more interested in how he wrote the essay and the different things that he added into it in order to structure it. I found that right from the beginning, there was a lot of useful information rather than filler sentences. He gave a lot of background on the history of the lobster especially in Maine which helped me to understand the essay more in the end. Along with this, Wallace explained his reasonings throughout the essay and mad me think in a different way than i would have if he did not explain this. I liked that he was able to make me think in a different way and look at what he was saying in a different perspective. Another thing that i noticed was his use of rhetorical questions throughout the essay. He was able to put them in a spot that made me really think about the question he was asking and then we he explained what his thought were, I was really able to grasp his reasonings. The last thing that I noticed this time that I did not notice the first time I read it was how he ended it. He explained himself and was able to convince me to be on his side of the argument. Overall, I had different experience this time rather than the first time reading it.
Journal #15- Against Meat
On page 3, the paragraph explains what is gained and lost by giving up meat. Foer was able to lose a few things by giving up meat. He went back and forth between being a vegetarian for a lot of his life, but he does not hate the idea of meat and he will never completely go against it. The reasoning behind this is because he has great memories that involved eating meat and the experiences would not have happened if the meat was not involved. For example, he went on lunch dates with his mom to get sushi and ate his dad’s turkey burger when they had backyard celebrations. Without the inclusion of the meat in this food, he wouldn’t be able to have had these amazing memories. On the other hand, by taking food out of his diet, he was able to gain the peace of mind. He realized that eating meat was going against his morals and that he would prefer not to do it which made him feel a lot better about himself and what he was eating.
On page 5, JSF asked the question, “why doesn’t a horny person have a strong claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it?” This question made me think a lot and it is a valid question. I think that our ethics and culture play a large role in the answer to this question. Humans have always eaten animals and it culturally acceptable to eat an animal which is the main reason answer to this question. Our ethics go against the idea of raping an animal and it would go against cultural norms to do this. Overall, the best answer to this question is that eating animals comes natural and has always been acceptable but raping an animal would go against this and would not be acceptable.
Journal 16- Writing an essay with Naysayer
In this section, I learned how important it is to include the opinions of other people in the work that I do. Even if I in no way agree with what the opinions are, giving another point of view, will help me to become more reliable and seem less bias. Opinions that go against my own, are actually better than the ones that agree with mine because they are able to show the audience that I am considering other people views. As I go through my essay, I know that I should consider what other people are thinking and the argument against my opinion that could arise. There will always be someone that disagrees with my opinion so by adding it into my essay, it will show that I am willing to look at the other side of the argument and consider the other side. The templates were also able to give me some insight as to how to add the other points of view into my essays.
Journal 17- Peer Review Site
Journal 18-Paper 3 work
I got a good amount of my paper done for the peer review session that we had and during this review session, I got a lot of great feedback that I was able to use in order to improve my essay overall. I was also able to gain some ideas by reading my peers essays. My biggest question going into the peer review session was whether or not my thesis made sense or stood out. I figured out that my thesis was able to pick out and it made sense. I then went back through my essay to find the grammatical and spelling mistakes that I made. Overall, the peer review session helped a lot and I was able to get a lot of good feedback that I used to improve the structure and content of my essay
