Grace Shultis

My Writing Journey

Closing Statement

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Derek,

English 250 has been an extremely helpful course. I have learned about each of the WOVE components and how to effectively communicate using these mediums. My strongest one is written communication because I am usually pretty good at getting down raw content. To strengthen this I need to allow myself more time to proofread my writing and seek out others who would be willing to proofread for me. I often end up waiting too long to start an assignment and then run out of time to find more than maybe one person who has the time to read through my writing. I also need to work more on creating pieces of writing which are organized for the reader. After I have read through my own writing a few times, I am no longer able to distinguish the reader’s point of view from my stance as the writer. This ties back to starting earlier in order to gather feedback from others. Aside from these issues, I believe written communication to be my strongest area.

My weakest area is oral communication in a public setting. I am terrible at public speaking. I get really red, cannot look at the audience, and usually end up speed talking my way through the information. This happens when I have not spent enough time preparing the content and/or rehearsing. The oral component of my visual analysis ended up being fairly decent. I typed it out word for word and read straight from the script. As I made my way through the analysis, I found instances where I would need to go back and change some of the words, but I never really went through it as a whole. I reviewed the video a few times once I was done editing and before I turned it in. However, I did not read through the script and proofread it.

In order to improve my communication, oral and written, I plan to allow myself more time to prepare and rehearse. By getting a rough draft done as soon as possible, I will have enough time to review the rough draft, find people to proofread it, and edit it. This will also allow me to look for bigger issues such as audience organization and transitions.

To improve how I tailor my writing to the audience, I will take into consideration how much prior knowledge they might possess, what types of resources they might have access to, and how they might be able to relate to my writing. All of these aspects will determine the structure of my paper and how much to include in each section. For example, in my writing Daylight Saving Time, I had to consider how much the reader might know about DST prior to reading my piece. I based this off the average American using my own knowledge as a guideline. I personally did not know that Benjamin Franklin was incorrectly credited with the idea of resetting the clocks. I used four paragraphs for background information and helped round out the average person’s knowledge of DST.

I believe my abilities to communicate using the WOVE model are strong but could always use improvement. By allotting myself more time for assignments I will be able to go through and strengthen them on multiple fronts. English 250 has helped me build a strong foundation for furthering my communication skills.

Sincerely,

Grace

Video Analysis

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Toy Story 3

The purpose of this video is to provide a humorous twist to the end of the movie Toy Story 3. The intended audience is for those with prior knowledge of the movie. Without having any idea what the Toy Story franchise involves, this video wouldn’t make any sense. The tone and the visual style of the video is designed to replicate the original movie. The tone includes humor and sarcasm. The visual style closely imitates the way the movie characters are drawn with some adjustments to show that it is not the original. The drawing style is also a flatter 3D style than the original.

Beauty & the Beast

This video utilized various audio aspects to mock the movie. They rewrote the narrated introduction and the theme song to close the video in order to point out the flaws in the movie. They also had two separate endings. The first was a sappy, romantic ending which they provided with the typical Disney happy ending idea. The second “real” ending was used to show the irony in “happy ever after” and further pointed out more flaws in the plotline.

Overall Analysis

Both of these videos used humor to mock the original movies. As these videos are published on YouTube, this approach caters to the type of audience typically found on the internet. These videos are also designed to be short and get right to the point as viewers usually do not wish to dedicate large chunks of time to one video. The videos start with a brief summary to build context and highlight the relevant parts of the movie. This then transitions to the end of the movie and the authors’ ending of the movie. The style of drawing used in the videos is distinct enough to be easily recognized from the thumbnail.

(E)DENTITY: Small Change

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Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted

I like the article. It starts by describing the first Woolworth’s sit-in and uses it as the foundation for the argument of “weak ties” to “strong ties”. Malcolm Gladwell uses other examples of activism which occurred more recently. These are known for being influenced by social media but Gladwell points out that the perception of social media’s influence comes from a Western viewpoint. The Twitter Revolution acts as strong evidence for Gladwell’s explanation of social media consisting of “weak ties”. I agree with Gladwell that today’s activism is a lot less drastic than it used to be due to social media. People rack up donations because it only takes a few thousand people to donate a few dollars. Before, donations were dependent upon if a person was carrying cash on them, the size of the bill, and the level of effort it would take for them to dig out their money and put it in the bucket. It’s easier to be nice to strangers when all that’s needed is a few clicks of a mouse.

 Logos – Small Change

Malcolm Gladwell uses logos in his article. Woo hoo! (<– Just kidding. That’s pathos.) Gladwell uses logos to form his explanation of how the student protest in Tehran, Iran did not actually use Twitter to organize. The tweets were in English and grouped together by the hashtag “iranelection”. These tweets were curated by people in the West, not people in Iran. Gladwell also talks about how social media activism does not work as well as old-fashioned activism. The “weak ties” formed through various social media platforms are not strong enough to stand alone. Most protests and acts of resistance occur because of “strong ties” formed prior to the event. A participant is more willing to stick around if a close friend or family member is also involved. Gladwell shows this by drawing the connections between the four freshmen at the lunch counter.

Logos: a rhetorical strategy used to analyze a writing by working through the logical components presented by the writer.

Quote: “In the Iranian case, meanwhile, the people tweeting about the demonstrations were almost all in the West. “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote.”