REFLECTION #4 FINAL REFLECTION

Over the last 4 weeks, the amount of new information I acquired was unbelievable. This was my very first summer class I have ever taken and it was also the first 30 day class I have ever taken. So you can imagine the difference from the traditional semester long class I am used to. I wouldn’t prefer to take classes like this, although it was a nice change of scenery and new adventure I am glad to have tried. The most important things I learned over the 4 weeks were understanding and analyzing advertisements, analyzing language use, analyzing arguments, and analyzing credible well known people. I know that analyzing correctly and effectively will give me an advantage in everything I do regarding school and eventually will carry on to helping me with my future job. I learned that the main things that need to be looked at when analyzing are: the “authority” of the creator, the “claim” needs to be legitimate, there needs to be “supporting evidence” in the claim, along with the understanding of a “counterargument.”(pp. 296-297) The most important tool for an argument to be valid is the “authority” of the creator because anyone can argue, there has to be a legitimate authority who has expertise in that particular area of work, for it to be considered valid. Giving service to the community of Clinton, Iowa was a very important part of my stay here in this town. I feel as if my connection with the community gave me a better understanding of how closely bonded the people in the area are. I am glad I had the opportunity to serve with a fantastic organization, the American Red Cross, while gaining an understanding of how important they are to this community. The most important things I reviewed over that needed “touching up” were probably language and its effects on the reader, understanding the tone and point of view, and making accurate inferences. When speaking of language and its effects I enjoyed the review of figurative language and how it will “create a mental image” as well as recognizing the misused and abused language like “clichés” and other meaningless words and expressions. (pp. 197, 210) Understanding the tone and point of view were things that also needed to be noted as important review. Point of view and tone work together as you notice whether someone is “favorable, unfavorable, neutral, or ambivalent.” (pp. 238) The other topic that I enjoyed reviewing was how important it is to make accurate inferences because often times “we make inferences on facts we do not have” or “facts we chose to ignore.” (pp. 81) By the end of this course I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed my time and interaction with the class, thank you for hanging with me through my technical difficulties to start the class section.

REFLECTION #1

Things are finally up and running for me, I will be doing everything on a daily basis to catch up and stay up with the class. I am embarrassed to be behind this far in a class, I am usually the person to have everything in early but things were tough early on in this class. For accomplishments, I took down chapters 1-5 and I realize that the amount of time I spent on these chapters will pay off in the long run for this class. I missed questions on each test and noted them. I still need to update my weebly site with notes from what I missed. I don't think I had any issues sending you stuff but I could be wrong because I don't get confirmation emails or anything telling me it worked or not. Almost everything was a review in these first few chapters for me. Of course terms I have not used in many years were re-united to me, specifically the modes of discourse, I needed to be re-informed on what they meant. I also slacked in the department of paragraphs and how they are developed and organized, although once I read the the chapter things came to me rather quickly.

Reflection over presenting info learned and data

I like the contrast of a fact and statistics as talked about in one of the readings. The author explains it saying a fact is a verifiable object of information proven by truth of experiment or by personal observation. While on the other hand statistics are in the form of numbers, that stem from studies or polls. My conclusions regarding the difficulty in gathering data is that different viewpoints of people vary depending on what their background experience and knowledge is in the particular subject. Data needs to be gathered in a way that it is most diverse to make the study or polls most legitimate. What I did realize in the results of my poll is that it isn't that diverse in terms of the population surveyed because of the general area we live in(MIDWEST). Besides learning some fun and interesting information from graphs and data in the book I also came to the understanding that without polls, graphs, and other ways of gathering statistics we would be helpless in terms of just about everything. It is amazing how much we as humans use statistics for anything from drinking beer, to employment rates, to athletics, or even to our schooling records over time. Data is an extremely powerful tool.

Reflection on why understanding an inference helps you to become a critical reader

As the book states, when you are looking at cartoons you are naturally making inferences while scanning it. Usually you scan and piece things together one at a time to make a connection to what the desired meaning is. These cartoons can carry some serious information involving public opinion and social trends in the world today, especially when speaking of political cartoons. Making those connections to the desired meaning of an inference often depends on the person who is viewing, for example one person might few an image or cartoon and pull a completely different message than another person viewing, depending on how there mind works. Either way it is important to understand images to be a critical reader, when we look at the image we are also "reading" it similar to what we do while reading a paragraph of text. As I analyze the cartoon on page 430 of the book I make the inference that it is a cartoon favoring the founding of America to the Native Americans, showing that the pilgrims arrived to the land after the Natives. This is an issue that is talked about often in America, not only just who settled where but issues that we still face today with Native Americans and how they are treated or perceived.

Reflection on how understanding an inference helps understanding a photograph...

While looking into a photograph such as the one given on page 186 of the text book, you realize that there is far more information regarding that picture than we actually know. Yes it seems as if it is just a little old lady that was photographed in a home somewhere possibly doing some kind of handy work on her little home. But the bigger picture is what is this lady all about, what is her heritage, is she well off or is she living a life unhappily and in distress? An inference helps us understand that this little old lady is one who lived in Alaska, as a member of a tribe, living in a home of a structure that necessarily wouldn't be stable in terms of our time. The home is filled with religious objects that symbolize several different things to the tribe and set up for someone to live a life just as they should according to there religion which is heavily followed on an every day basis. It helps to have an inference so you can get an inside look at the real meaning versus a outside look of your own opinion, which is what helps us become more of a diverse critical reader when we look into a photograph. It is very important to read about the author at the bottom of the screen to show the credential that the article and photo's have. The author has a PhD and has done heavy research in regards to Native American background across the United States and has wrote several books.

REFLECTION #2

Over the second week I have accomplished a lot more than I ever planned in the first 2 weeks but I understand that it is only going to be a great next 2 weeks as I accomplish getting a grade in this course. I have not ever analyzed a photograph or cartoon quite like I did in the second week, I learned how important an inference is in understanding how to become a true critical reader as I talked about a lot in the other reflections. I gained a large respect for how important information is in our everyday lives not just when thinking and reading critically. Data is a driving force that gives credibility to whatever the issue is and proof of studies and research. My organization I chose, the Red Cross, is affected by my issue with tornado's and floods. Currently I live on the Mississippi river and if you didn't know we actually encountered a rise in the river which left people out of there homes for months and even wiped out some homes. The Red Cross is prepared to coordinate shelter for these people who couldn't live in their homes. The Red Cross has several places in the area that are also able to shelter people in the instance of a tornado, when I asked where they were at I found out that my college gym that is underground is one and several other gyms in the area are underground as well, which are marked as places of safety by the Red Cross. I feel like the survey that I did was not one of too much credibility but I understand the point, to obtain some data to compare and contrast. I don't think my survey was credible because of the amount of participants in it and the similarity in opinion was similar because every single person lives in the mid-west. I could pursue this issue by making a poll on the internet with over 100 participants from all around the united states rather than just 26 people from one region.

Reflection which considers why understanding what we see may not give us accurate information

Advertisements are filled with what we call "appeals" which is "something that makes an argument attractive, worth considering, or plausible."(pp. 349) Appeals can be illegitimate, and are used in hopes to generate our emotions and divert us from the real argument. For example, in regards to the terror attacks 9/11 the Bush administration was faced with "impatient population, waning support for an unpopular war, and declining poll numbers, the Bush administration and its supporters continued using the appeal of fear. The arguments were intended to shore up sagging support for military policies as the war dragged on."(pp. 350) In other words the Bush administration would fear the people by saying things like, these "dangers can reach our cities and kill our people."(pp. 350)
The appeal to authority often can cloud our rational thinking, by this I mean a famous person or well known politician might be used in an advertisement on a new product, which in turn could drive people to buy this product just because of the authority in the advertisement. The book says it perfectly "the authority may not be identified or may be highly biased" which can cloud our rational thinking.(pp. 349)
The main things that engage me while looking into advertisements are the subject, action, people, words, and tone. For example, What is being depicted? What is the significance of whats happening? Who are the people, what are there emotions, what are the wearing? What does the text say in the ad? What kind of tone is the ad using?(pp. 390) After looking into these points, you come to an understanding of how or why people are drawn into advertisements. The level of empowerment in an advertisement is shown by the millions of people who respond, whether its legitimate or illegitimate.

Reflection over language and its effect on the reader

For starters, the main point of this section was to expand the understanding of our language and how we use words and figures of speech to convey messages. Figurative language is used to give a metaphorical or imaginative aspect to explaining something, for example similes, metaphors, or personification. I gained a better understanding on cliches, which are tired, overused expressions that good writers avoid because they sound ridiculous in our time. An example of a cliche is "as clear as mud" as you can see this is just a bad use of figuritive language.(pp. 212) The section on potically correct language gained my attention because I realize how overused the actual term is used, and also some history behind it. Originally being politically correct "was an attempt by liberals to purge the language of words and phrases that might be considered insensitive or racially charged or that call into question people's differences."(pp. 215) I gained an understanding on the term witty, learning that its a partially comical  way of revealing elements of a situation. Being witty relies on clever word usage and "a pointed perception in describing human frailty." (pp.257) For example, "get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish." (pp.257) This actually makes me laugh out loud, but I want you to see that as I stated in the above the clever word used as the kicker here is "distort", which makes this a "witty" statement. The use of satire really jumped out at me because it is so creative and funny the way it comes off. For example, "Want to kill someone, Court TV's sympathetic coverage will ensure your acquittal!" is satire directly from Jon Stewart.(pp. 262-263) I am going to practice being witty and using satire on a regular basis after reading through these sections. I knew about the figurative language as we have studied it our whole life, my favorite thing I learned during this section was the terms witty and learning some history on politically correct language.

REFLECTION #3

Third week of class consisted of all kinds of fun, I learned how to correctly analyze advertisements, looked into language and its effects on a reader, learned the correct way to analyze an argument and editorial, and finally I had the opportunity to analyze some famous speeches. Instead of writing thousands of words on every bit of information I learned in the book I am going to pull some key points out that I feel need credit on terms of their importance. First thing I want to note is the importance of advertisements and the effect that they have on our society. The book states the effect of ad's perfectly saying, "The advertiser uses flattery and transfer and a questionable cause-effect relationship to entice the consumer to accept an implied claim: If you use this product, you will miraculously be endowed with the same appeal that the model enjoys." (pp. 390-391) Next, I want to touch on the importance of figurative language as it serves "to enhance the reading experience" giving some imagination to the reading, in other words giving the reading some life. (pp. 199) When you analyze an argument or editorial there are several key things that need to be addressed. The first thing being the "authority" of the person speaking, are the an expert on the topic? The next thing is the claim, is the positioning clearly stated? Is there "supportive evidence" that is logically put together and is there a "counterargument" clearly stated?(pp. 296-297) To correctly break apart and analyze a editorial or argument, I learned that these things need to be broken down. I thoroughly enjoyed analyzing the famous speech’s that were assigned, with my favorite being the Lou Gehrig speech because I am a baseball fanatic. This week at the Red Cross I spent my time happily doing little things around the office they needed help with. Amber had me packing care packages of deodorant, tooth brushes, tooth paste, and snacks that will go out to troops overseas. I spent some time mailing out letters for a 5K run fundraiser, writing addresses and putting stickers on the letters. For about an hour I counted, separated, and boxed t-shirts to get ready for the event.