Ashley+Arquette

Ashley's page






 * [[file:Persuasive Essay.doc]]



=***Response to Question: 1/18/08**=
 * In the past you have probably never paid attention to whether or not you were appealing to your readers' logic, emotion, or character. Go back and think of times when you have written and have done so. Do you have an idea of how to appeal to your reader? What of these three appeals will you need to work on the most? Are you good at giving examples? Are you pretty logical? Do you know how to sound like a good, moral person? Spend some time writing about these three appeals and how you perhaps compare to the author you are analyzing and how you measure up and what you need to work on:
 * In the past you have probably never paid attention to whether or not you were appealing to your readers' logic, emotion, or character. Go back and think of times when you have written and have done so. Do you have an idea of how to appeal to your reader? What of these three appeals will you need to work on the most? Are you good at giving examples? Are you pretty logical? Do you know how to sound like a good, moral person? Spend some time writing about these three appeals and how you perhaps compare to the author you are analyzing and how you measure up and what you need to work on:
 * In the past you have probably never paid attention to whether or not you were appealing to your readers' logic, emotion, or character. Go back and think of times when you have written and have done so. Do you have an idea of how to appeal to your reader? What of these three appeals will you need to work on the most? Are you good at giving examples? Are you pretty logical? Do you know how to sound like a good, moral person? Spend some time writing about these three appeals and how you perhaps compare to the author you are analyzing and how you measure up and what you need to work on:

When I had to write book reports on various novels back in junior high and high school I never really payed close attention to whether or not I was appealing to the readers' logic, emotion, or character. Basically I wrote them as quickly and well done as possible. As long as I received a good grade in the end it didn't matter to me whether or not the reader really enjoyed my piece of work or not. However, this all changed my senior year of high school when I participated in college prep English. Our teacher pushed us to write with enthusiasm and passion, to make others feel our passion when they read our papers. We could never use too many examples or items of support in our papers-- the more, the better. We worked on different assignments each quarter. At first we wrote different genres. Then we spent a semester working on a research paper. Another semester was spent on reading a novel, thoroughly examining it and finally producing a novel critique.

I think that I do have a fair amount of ability to appeal to a reader. I feel this is because my whole life I was taught to write each paper tailored to the individual teacher. Each teacher has his or her own opinion and therefore writing how I would like to write does not fit what all of my English teachers expected from me. Therefore, pretty much all of my previous writing experiences were written to satisfy the reader and appeal to him or her.

I feel that I can appeal to logic the easiest, with emotion coming in at a close second. I was taught to write with a lot of support and examples, because the more evidence you have for your case, the stronger your argument. I also feel that I am pretty good at being logical and easy to follow. I don't usually struggle with flow or organization in my papers, so they are usually easy to follow and understand. I do also feel that I am good at sounding like a moral person, mainly because I think that I am a moral person to begin with. There are certain things that I cannot help but show how I really feel, because I have a strong opinion one way or the other. The hardest one for me would definitely be appealing to character, because it is so hard to write to please everyone. Yet, I feel the need to always put my opinion or my own way of thinking into my pieces of work, at least when it is called for. Sometimes this got me into trouble, because my teachers would not agree with what I said, even if my support and examples and my appeal to logic was good. This frustrated me on countless occasions and remains something that I do not understand today. How can I be marked down if I do everything right except write in a different voice than what the reader believes to be true? I do believe I can improve a great deal in appealing to the readers character.

As far as comparing myself to the author goes I feel that I agree with what he has to say. Though his purpose was unclear, after reading the article I do believe that he is against changing the "unofficial" language of the United States and I agree with him. He uses good appeals to logic and emotion and it was enough to make me believe what he had to say. The only draw back was that he seemed a little unsure of himself and what he really believed. It seemed to me that he was unsure of what he really believed to be right and wrong. He more stated the fact that English is the language of the United States and less stated whether or not he really thought this was right or ethical. Also, the author did not really make me think he is credible. He was just a blog writer, with no experience in education or politics. With a lot of run-on sentences and quite a few comma errors, I found the piece to be not well written. Yet, as talked about before, are we really to judge a person's intelligence by the way that they write?**

=A 2: Summary and Analysis=

http://webtools.uiuc.edu/blog/view?blogId=25&topicId=811&count=1&ACTION=VIEW_TOPIC_DIALOGS&skinId=286

Summary:

The title of Dennis Baron's blog says it all: "Spelling counts at the Spelling Bee, but in the age of the internet, should it count anywhere else?" The issue at stake here is whether or not spelling is important in today's world. Though many a people place a great deal of importance on the skill of spelling, Baron believes that spelling is undeserving of the hype it receives. He states that spelling has no practical use and is not a necessary skill to obtain. For example, even the most well known authors, such as Jane Austen and Shakespeare, struggled with spelling things correctly and many teachers today have to refer to dictionaries when correcting papers. Baron's argument gets more specific when he attacks Spelling Bee's in and of themselves. The author shares horror stories about kids suffering emotionally after participating in Spelling Bee's. After arguing that the traditional Spelling Bee is not rational and problematic he reaches the conclusion that schools should create a new competition to replace the Spelling Bee.

Analysis:

The author's argument is somewhat hard to follow. He starts off talking about Spelling Bee's, then talks about why spelling is unnecessary, and then goes back to Spelling Bee's. Baron uses logos the most, appealing to our logic as readers. For example, "The greatest English writers had trouble with spelling. jane Austen misspelled friendship, the title of her first novel, and Shakespeare seldom spelled his name the same way twice." However, he also touches on the emotional and ethical aspects of the issue at hand. An example of pathos is: "The bee pits youngsters who should be outside playing against one another in a test of trivia where losers often suffer great emotional trauma, and winners get to take home a dictionary and the certain knowledge that they're about to forget most of the rare and obscure words they've spent years learning to spell." The following sentence displays ethos: "If we have to have a school competition for the smart, nerdy kids, so they can get some of the attention we usually lavish on school athletes, perhaps it's time to replace the good-old-fashioned Spelling Bee with something a little more humane, and a little more connected with the kinds of reading and writing we all have to do on a daily basis." The argument that I found most persuasive was the claim that Spelling Bee's cause emotional trauma that will stay with a child for the rest of his or her life. I participated in the Spelling Bee for 3 years and took two first place spots, as well as attending the Regional bee in Chicago. Though the experience for me was not a traumatic one, I do remember it being so for other children. Because I have had personal experience with the Spelling Bee, this argument was most persuasive, in my opinion. However, after reading this article I am still not convinced that spelling is an unnecessary skill that is not important in today's world. I think this article was intended for educated individuals who have gone through school and are living as adults presently. I also think that it is written for those with a special interest in language and the art of speaking/communicating. Therefore, this topic has become a heated debate on the site. There are many more articles that deal with the same topic and many a people have commented and let their opinions be made known.

=**Paper #1** 1/24/08=

English 101 Paper # 1 Ashley Arquette

Rhetoric is the art of speaking or communicating. Any time someone uses language they are using rhetoric. There are different components of “good” rhetoric—five to be exact. They consist of critical thinking, purpose, support, organization and composition. This paper is going to focus on the latter of the five—composition. Is composition, referring to grammar and punctuation, really necessary in today’s world? Does a businessman need to know how to spell “hemorrhage”? Or does a teacher need to know how to spell “hors d’oeuvres”? I believe that it is essential to be able to speak and spell correctly because we live in a world where knowledge is power. To be successful in today’s world requires that one must be educated. Part of being educated is having a thorough understanding of the English language and how to use it correctly—this includes spelling. One of the main reasons for speaking and spelling correctly is so others can understand you better. If a person accidentally pronounces a word wrong in speech or spells a word incorrectly on paper, it can confuse the listener or reader. The meaning behind your story could be lost or misinterpreted. For example, a teenage girl is writing a paper about her cat. She meant to write, “The white of my cat is pure and innocent.” However, she accidentally left out the e on the end and her sentence read, “The whit of my cat is pure and innocent.” Does the sentence make sense both ways? While it could read either way, if the e is left out then it totally changes the meaning of the sentence. Incorrect spelling makes both reading and communication difficult. Another reason knowing how to spell words correctly is relevant in today’s world is that the way a person speaks and writes reflects their intelligence. “A person is either educated or is not! Incorrect spelling is an indication of lack of education at best; at worst, just sloppiness” (Balderson, 1998). The following example will deal with the issue of being educated or not. Picture this scenario in your head. You go to class and your professor is constantly rewriting words on the board after misspelling them the first time. As a student in that situation I would feel a number of different things. It is distracting for one thing. How does the professor expect me to stay focused if he is constantly erasing the information he wants us to learn? Also, I would start to lose some respect for that professor; I mean this is a college professor who can’t even spell. It would make me wonder why he is in front of me teaching and why this class was even worth my time. If it happened every now and then that would be a different story, but what if it happens every class? Though I do not think that it is fair to judge one’s intelligence by the way that they speak or write it is something that everyone participates in. Though spelling is not the only means of determining one’s intelligence, what employer would hire someone whose resume was filled with spelling and punctuation errors? “CVs and job applications by teachers at the local school are scanned for spelling errors, more than two and they are not considered. I expect this policy used elsewhere, so in this competitive world spelling does matter” (Graham, 1998). Spelling might not have anything to do with the field he or she was applying for, but it is necessary in order for employers to take a person seriously. Now I realize that everyone makes mistakes and that sometimes errors happen. But with the technology available to us today people think that it is no longer necessary to know how to spell correctly. They argue that spelling should only count in a spelling bee. Why is this opinion being taken? People across the board agree that spelling is not really a necessity any more due to the fact that we do all of our major work on computers. Every computer has some sort of spell checking ability in its software. So why is it necessary to know how to spell words if spell check will do it for you? For starters spell check does not catch every error, especially if you just forget to write a letter and the combination you typed in still constitutes a word. Also, spell check does not contain every word of the English language in its database. I hope that the following poem will give a humorous example of why spell check is not sufficient. “I have a spelling checker. It came with my PC. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss steaks aye can knot see. Eye ran this poem threw it. Your sure real glad two no. Its very polished in its weigh, my checker tolled me sew. A checker is a blessing. It freezes yew lodes of thyme. It helps me right awl stiles two reed, and aides me when aye rime. Each frays comes posed up on my screen Eye trussed too bee a joule. The checker pours o'er every word to cheque sum spelling rule. Bee fore a veiling checkers Hour spelling might decline, And if we're lacks oar have a lapse, we wood bee maid too wine. Butt now bee cause my spelling Is checked with such grate flare, There are know faults with in my cite, Of nun eye am a wear. Now spelling does not faze me, It does knot bring a tier. My pay purrs awl due glad den with wrapped words fare as hear. Of witch won should be proud, and wee mussed dew the best wee can, sew flaws are knot aloud. Sow ewe Can Sea why aye dew prays such soft wear four pea seas, And why eye brake in two averse Buy righting want too please” (Selvaratnam, 1998). Therefore spell check is not a reliable tool. Writing a good paper—with little errors—requires something more from the writer. It requires an understanding of words and how to use them in a correct manner. Another counter argument is that we live in a world where time is of the essence. There never seems to be enough of it. In fact, time is such a valuable asset that we humans search for any shortcuts that will help us get to where we need to go or what we need to do faster. One way that people can get things done faster is by shortening words when they write. Why is it necessary to spell everything correctly when it is just easier and more convenient to shorten words into little phrases such as “lol,” “wtf,” and “idk.” Believe it or not there are drawbacks to writing in the shorthand. You may forget what your abbreviations stand for. When other people read your notes or text message they might not understand what you are trying to communicate. After presenting both sides I still feel that knowing how to spell words correctly is a necessary quality that all students should develop. Spelling is not just a superficial skill that has no real purpose in the present world. It is important for correct understanding and interpretation of written work. It is also necessary in the practical sense that spelling is part of literacy, which is part of education. Anyone that lives in America today knows that in order to be successful and find a good job—with good pay—an individual must have a well rounded educational background.

=Definition Word: 1/27/08 = indelible \in-DEL-uh-buhl\, adjective: 1. That cannot be removed, erased, or washed away. 2. Making marks that cannot easily be removed or erased. 3. Incapable of being forgotten; memorable.

=**__Journal 3: 2/5/08__**=

When you wrote paper number two on the definition of a word, what specific argument strategies did you use? Why did you choose these specific strategies? Did you feel that they helped you organize your argument, or did using them make it more difficult for you to write? Why do you think this was so? How do you feel about your logos, pathos, and ethos in this piece?

In paper # 2 I chose to write about the word "spiritual." At first it was very hard to come up with a word, but with a little help the ideas started flowing to my head. When I began writing my paper I did not think about a strategy or anything of that nature. I just started writing my paper. I had two pages done when I came to class the day we worked on using specific strategies. Though my paper was basically done (I only had to add one more page) I realized that I had no specific strategy in my paper. In class I decided to think about which ones would fit best with what I had already written. I chose to add refutation in my introduction and I also used narrative as well throughout my paper. I chose these strategies because they fit well with what I already had done and they were also easy to think of ideas for. Since this is a definition paper--what I specifically think the word means--I figured that refutation was a perfect fit because basically that was the whole point of the paper. We had to define a word that was ambiguous and then define the word the way that we think of it. Adding refutation was the easy part. Now, the narrative was a little harder. At first I could not think of where to add narrative to my paper. The idea of adding a story was not hard at all, but finding the perfect spot for it was. I decided to add narrative to my introduction as well. I figured it would be a great way to entice my reader and introduce them to the topic, so I chose to tell the story of how I came to Christ and started my own spiritual journey. When all is said and done I do think that adding these two strategies was very beneficial to my paper. I think that the story made my paper stronger because it gave a more personal feel to the paper and let the reader know why I was defining the word as I did. As for refutation, I think that it was good for my readers to see the difference between my definition and what other people think the word means. I also think that refutation made my paper stronger, but in a different way. After finding the perfect places for each of the strategies I found it easy to write about them. It was no big deal and I think it really did add a lot to my paper. I think it made it easier because I could make the paper my own by adding my own personal story. It made the paper mean more to me. I think that my logos and pathos are very strong in this paper. As for ethos, I think I did a much better job in this paper than in my first paper. I had a lot more to say about his topic and I think my paper sounds very educated and well thought out. I also think that because I am a Christian and have experience with being "spiritual" that the reader will be able to sense that I have a pretty good idea of what I am talking about. I think that this paper is very convincing and well written--at least better written than my first paper was.

=**3 Questions/Research Proposals**=

1. Education and/or Funding: Is the No Child Left Behind Act beneficial to schools? Does it need reforming or just be abolished?

A big issue is educational reform. In an effort to raise the scores and better the education of young people across the nation the NCLB Act was signed into law in January of 2002. It requires public schools to meet test standards to receive federal funding. It is controversial. Hillary Clinton will end the NCLB Act and Barack Obama will reform the act. A big push for both of these candidates is early childhood education. John McCain, who just won the primary election and will represent the Republicans, voted for the NCLB Act in the past and is therefore in favor of the act and promoting better education. As an education major this is a very big deal to me and I will have to be knowledgeable of this issue as a teacher. Whoever is elected President now will affect my future as a teacher.

2. War in Iraq: Should our troops leave Iraq or should they stay and fight the war against terrorism?

This is the most important foreign policy issue of this 2008 election. Clinton voted in favor of sending troops to Iraq but now regrets her decision. She is in favor of pulling the troops out as soon as possible. Barack Obama opposes military action in Iraq. He is in favor of redeployment in phases. John McCain He voted for military action in Iraq and supported the President in his veto of the War Spending Bill (which would have removed troops by March of 2008). This is not really as big of deal to me as it is to others. I have no close family and relatives that are overseas serving our country. However, this is a very emotional issue and I feel for those families who have lost loved ones or who have children/relatives serving. I would also like to be a little more knowledgeable about the issue so that i can have a firm opinion.

3. National Health Care: Should the government offer affordable health care to all Americans?

Hillary Clinton mandates individual health insurance coverage for all Americans. She is in favor of providing everyone with affordable health care. Barack Obama Would create a national health insurance program for individuals who do not have employer-provided health care and who do not qualify for other existing federal programs. John McCain opposes federally mandated universal coverage but would like people to be more aware of this issue, offer tax dividends to low income families (to make it more affordable), and encourages small businesses to work together with health care companies to lower the cost of health care plans. I would like to find out the pro's and con's because I know very little about this issue but feel that it is very important.