Daniel+LaClair

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1.) After reading this article I get the impression that everything goes back to what was taught to us in class. Do you really think that all of it leads back to english class or do you think more of it comes from the background you were raised in outside of school?

2.) Should schools take the incentive to teach students about Linguistic Prejudice or should they just touch on it and leave it to the parents at home to take charge?

3.) Do you feel this is racism? Or do you think this is something our generation and last generation started doing because they thought it was a little nicer thing to do instead of calling a black person a nigger?

1/15/08 I have never really thought about if im appealing to the person or im making good logic. I usually just write and think about examples and how to make my writing as good as possible. When I write I usually go off of prior experiences or something I have seen. To me making your paper appealing to the audience is to write it in a way they can read and maybe relate. If you writing to an audience that doesn't understand what you are talking about and your using big words they won't find it interesting and won't want to continue reading it. An area i need work on the most between logic, emotion, and character is probably emotion. I really dont know how to put emotion into my paper. Im not a very emotional guy as it is so for me to put it in a paper and make someone feel sad or pissed off is hard for me to do. My best area is probably examples. I think its easier for me because I have alot of prior experiences in my life. In my writing i believe i sound like a logical person because thats who i am. If someone isnt logical it pisses me off so for me to write in an unlogical way would probably be stupid.

1/24/08 Dan LaClair Wendt English 101 January 23, 2008

Should English be the Official Language of the United States? A big controversy these days is should English be the official language; or should we have a different language be the national language of the United States of America? Some say yes and some differ. But why is this such a big issue when us Americans have pretty much established that English is our national language? To me the English language in our culture has always come off as being our national language. I never realized we didn’t have an official language until about 2 years go. The way I was brought up in life was knowing the majority of people in the United States spoke the same language and we had the same money currency and culture -- all over the United States. In an article I printed off it states that “The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, even our own American dollar bill. What do they all have in common?? They are written in English, a language that should indeed be our nation’s official language”.(1) This statement right here shows that even though we don’t technically have an official language or call it our language we already use it in every sense. So to me I am all for having English be our official language. But what about the people that don’t speak English? Should they have to know how to speak English in order to even live here? Should there be laws stating that if you don’t speak English and you are caught living here you will be punished? Those are some important things to think about or even be talked about. If you were put in a position to decide if there was a consequence -- for not speaking English if it does become the official language -- what would you do? To me that is a really hard question to answer. Just because I’m the type of person that couldn’t scold someone for not speaking English, but if we do make it the official language there has to be some type of consequence or there would be no point in making it the official language. What I would do is offer classes to immigrants that want to move here and they have to pass the class before they can become an American citizen. If they don’t pass lets say a 4 week class then they have to take it over again before they can be legally called an American citizen. What about the people that are already citizens but don’t speak very good English--what do we do about these people? Well for starters it would be very difficult to make everyone take a class because there are already so many of them in the United States. Some of the people don’t have enough money to pay for classes if there was a cost to it so that would cut into our taxes to help people speak the language that’s official. Personally I would not bother to make people speak English that are already here but to let the do it on their own. Because in the long run all it is going to do is benefit them. After reading through all of the blogs in my article I didn’t not find one saying that English should not be the official language. I got a bunch of answers saying that even though we have a wide variety of languages spoken in the United States right now the main one is English. But I did get a unique answer that stated, “ Incredibly however, according to the 2000 U.S. Bureau of Census, the common language that emerged is what 82.11% of all Americans speak today. That language is not English, Spanish or Chinese. It is truly and distinctly different and at the same time easily recognizable. It is American”.(1) After reading all of these blogs I received a pretty good understanding as to what the U.S. citizens want to happen in this country. The answer is: make the official language English. I can’t argue that other then the fact it would be pointless to make it the official language knowing that it basically already is. It would just complicate everything else and make the U.S. citizen end up paying more taxes.

1/28/08


 * Word**: Hope


 * Definition**: //noun// - The feeling that what is wanted can be had or the events will turn out for the best: to give up hope.


 * Alternate:** hope against hope, to continue to hope, although the outlook doesn't warrent it.


 * Origin:** before 900


 * Related Forms**: hoper, hoping, hopingly

1/31/08

Brute After the debate my feelings and thoughts took a 180 degree turn. I feel the patient is more of a brute. I feel this because what the doctor did was something he had to do to save this guys life. Yeah his actions weren’t very professional but compared to what the patient did it was nothing. The patient started off swinging at the cops and granted he was drunk it shouldn’t make it an excuse. After he got into the ER he was still fighting the cops by jumping, thrashing and trying to get loose of their grip. At this poin the obviously doesn’t care that the cops are trying to help him. So to me that is a perfect way of showing you don’t care what other people are doing or are trying to do. After he’s on the table he says to the doctor, “You fuckin’ hold still.” That right there is so inconsiderate and anyone that wasn’t a brute would never tell a doctor that if he’s trying to save your life. That right there are just some examples that surpass anything the doctor did wrong. So yes I do believe the doctor made some bad choices but I feel that the patient was more off the asshole thus making him the brute.
 * Brute- noun**: A brutal, insensitive, or crude person. To me a brute is someone acting in an immature way all the time and not caring about anyone else’s feelings or emotions. In our class debate I was on the side where we thought the doctor was more of a brute then the patient.

2/3/08

Dan LaClair English 101 Wendt P2 1/30/08 “Hope” __Hope__- (noun): the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. To me the definition of hope means something might happen for the best in the future but for others it may mean something different. This evening my room mates Chad, Marc, and I went bowling at Central Michigan and what happened there was a perfect example of what I think hope is. So were bowling and It’s just me and Chad going head to head the last game and were in the 5th frame and I’m losing 83 to 131. At that point I thought I was doomed but when it was my turn to bowl in the 6th frame I threw a strike. Chad was up and he rolled a six but didn’t pick up his spare on the next roll. It was my turn again and I threw another strike. I was starting to think I had a chance if he would just throw and not mark in another frame. From that point on I continued to throw two more strikes giving me 4 strikes going into the 10th frame. I was now up on him 159 to 147 and I needed to mark in order to get a third roll. I walked up to the line and placed my feet in what felt like perfect imprints in the floor. I rolled my 16 pound ball watching it hook and just miss the head pin. I knocked down 7 pins and cringed with anxiety. The ball rolled back to me and I grabbed it again with my two middle fingers and my thumb, stepped into zone and threw my last ball. MISS! I finished the 10th frame with a 167 and all I could do now is hope Chad couldn’t capitalize under pressure. But sure enough he threw a strike. BANG! Watching the pins explode felt like 4th of July all over again. His green ball came back and he decided to throw a trick shot between the legs just to rub it in that he could beat me. The ball slide down the floor like it was on ice. Crash, 7 pins went down. At that point it was over. I had lost to the lean, mean, green ball, throwing machine. To me this is a perfect example of someone getting their hopes up. Another example of hope could turn for the best. For instance, about 3 months ago our family found out that my grandma had a brain tumor and she only had 8 months to live at the most. It was a stage 4 cancer and no one had ever survived this type of cancer. Her only choices were to get lots of radiation and decrease her life span to only 4 months or get it removed and go through chemotherapy and lose some of her eyesight. She decided to go though with the operation. After that Patty, my grandma, had to go to radiation once every 2 weeks for 2 months. Those two months went buy and things change drastically in our family. Everyone started to get ornery and anxious about her recovery. About a month ago she went in for an MRI and the results came back clean! Everyone thought that it was cured but a big thing with this cancer is that it has fingers and spreads through the brain. Their microscopic so they don’t show up on the scan but the good thing was that there wasn’t anything new forming. To this day my grandma is doing really well and she still keeps a positive attitude towards life. She is getting another MRI soon and we should be finding out more information. To me this is a great example of hope going towards the best. She could of just given up and said let me die but instead she had the operation hoping to get more out of her life. Another example of hope is hoping for something and it either happens or doesn’t happen. Over the past two months I have been getting my car worked on at a shop in Chicago and I have been told for the past 3 weeks that my car will be done this weekend, nope next weekend and so on. I was told that over this past weekend it will be done so I reserved a hotel for me and two friends for Friday night. We drove down Friday night and when we arrived I called the shop and he told me a part didn’t arrive and it wasn’t going to be done until next weekend. I thought this would happen but I drove down anyways because I already reserved a room. We drove over to the shop so I could make sure my car was still there because I was beginning to wonder if my car was even there. We got there and Paul, the manager, took me back and showed me everything that was going on and told me that it would be 100% done by next weekend. I laughed and said ok. To me this is an example of getting your hopes up and nothing coming out of it. So as of now I’m not getting too excited because if I do get my hopes up chances are I probably won’t get it. Hope is a very broad word so to many people it could mean something totally different then it does to me. This is one of the many reason why I decided to choose this word. Another reason why I chose this word is because I rely a lot on hope In my life. Yes it sounds bad but I believe it is a big part in everyone’s life no matter what. A quick example is back in high school I knew six students that died in the four years of being at our school. They consisted of car accidents, heart attacks, and over doses. This is a big reason why I believe hope is a big part of my life. “One of my favorite quotes is hope for the best and not the worst because when the worst comes you know what the best really is.”

2/5/08

Journal 3

Some argument I used in my paper was the different kind of hopes you can have and what some people may think hope might be. I used these strategies because there wasn't much else to argue about or try and persuade people about. The most import thing was that i had a personal example for the 3 types I used so it made it easier for me. I felt that it helped me organize my paper alot. If i were to have interviewed people and asked what they thought hope was my paper would have gone in a totally different direction. I feel i my logos, pathos, and ethos were all touched on very well and great examples were used for all 3 to support my paper even better.

3/6/08 Minimum Wage

1.) What were the main reasons for the increase in wages from $5.15 to $7.15? Was it a community or state decision? 2.) Has the increase in minimum wage helped the economy and people or has it hurt it? 3.) Should the government keep raising the wage every year or should they keep it that same and see how things go?