Brandt reading response:

Before you read:  In my local community, reading is promoted in school, I remember in elementary school and middle school we always were given silent reading time. The local libraries usually have book clubs for the young children and contests over the summer to see who reads the the most. A good reader is someone who can read and understand what they have read.

Summary: Brandt's article is about literacy, and how literacy is important in todays society. She uses case study to argue that sponsorships are what drive literacy. She says that literacy rates should be higher than they are and is promoting higher literacy rates. She says that literacy is one of the greatest profits of the 20th century. The audience of this article is any one that is literact and wants to improve their literacy or learn more thoughts or ideas about literacy.

Synthesis: I think this article can sorta relate to porter, porter talks about the Discourse community and how in a discourse community you are writing for a specific group, its kinda like what the sponsors do. This could also relate to Allen because Allen talks about peoples reasons for writing, and how people learn to write, and this article is about how people are impacted by literacy. I think it could also relate to Dias, because he talks about what it takes to be a good writer and Brandt is talking about what it means to be good at reading and to be literate.

Response	Quotation
I think this is true, the 20th century is really based off of literacy,  schooling, shopping, advertisements  tv programs, etc.	"Literacy looms as one of the great engines of profit and competitive advantage in the 20th century."
Citizens use literacy for everything, social media sites, applying for a job, education,  and as the quote says your status is really based of your literacy, illiterate people are look down on .	" As ordinary citizens have been compelled into these economies, their reading and writing skills have grown sharply more central to the everyday trade of information and the goods as well as to the pursuit of  education, employment, civil rights, status."
I connected with this quote because while reading this article I too thought of how I learned to read and write, I thought about the different teachers I had and the activities we would always do in class to learn/ get excited about reading and writing.	"In the interviews, people explored in great detail their memories of learning to read and write across their lifetimes, focusing especially on the people, institutions , materials, and motivations involved."
I remember playing on recreational teams growing up that would have logos like that. Its a good way to promote them selves while sponsoring a team. We see these kinds of things all the time, sponsors for sporting events, ball parks, olympic games etc.	"Like little Leaguers who wear the logo of a local insurance agency on their uniforms, not out of the concern for enhancing the agency's image but as a means for getting to play ball, people throughout out history have acquired literacy pragmatically under the banner of others's causes

Meta Moment:  Brandt involves different types of literacies, how the effect us in life today, and how they are taught.  She talks about the sponsorships that influence the learning of reading and writing. She talked about the impact sponsorships have in improving literacy for some people.

Thoughts: I can relate to the article because it makes me think of the people that taught me reading and writing growing up.  I made me think of literacy in new ways.  I thought it was a lot of reading...

progress report:


Currently I am in a research phase. I have done some research but none of it is what I am looking for or it is what I  am looking for and I just don't know it yet. I plan to continue to read articles about the topic and see what comes from it.  I think after reading I need to just write. a "shitty first draft" just to get my thoughts on paper.  I think the workshop was nice,  I liked getting feed back from my partner about my concerns and I also like reading someone else's paper to make me feel like im on the same track is they are.  I think it would be helpful to get good feedback/ some direction from a teacher view to though, so that I could continue to move forward with ideas that are going to help me progress.

Dawkins:

"Before you read":   Talking to my friends about grammar rules at dinner, because they are also in english 1510, we discussed how rules of english language are not bendable, rules like punctuation, capitalization, fragments, independent and dependent clauses, sentence structure, coordinating conjunctions. We all learned one way of using the rules and that that was the only way it could be done.

Summary: This article is all about punctuation. Basically it says how the punctuation we have learned means nothing because it can be inter changeable with other punctuation. and its all in a writers good taste to pick the write punctuation based on the message they want to convey.  On page 144 it goes through different example of using different punctuation can mean the same thing in the same sentence.


Synthesis: This article is questioning punctuation much like Bryson questions english language itself. Both articles take rules that students have learned and teachers have taught for years and throw all the rules out the door.  Dawkins makes punctuation seem like is shouldn't be taught in the first place because it seems you can do pretty much what ever you want anyways. And Bryson talks about the english language being a free for all, how the language incorporates roots from all over.

Response	Quotation
Quirk et al. examined statistical data on the use of the comma to mark coordination and this was what he came up with. after reading the rest of this article I have to agree it seems like punctuation rules are tendencies that we always do because it is what we were taught and is what is comfortable to do.	"These results show we are dealing with tendencies which, while clear enough, are by no means rules"
After reading the examples on page 142 and using different punctuation in the same place in a sentence, I was questioning how to choose what to do. Ive never been great at punctuation to begin with, this makes me question it even more.	"The writer has choices, so there arises the question of how one goes about making these choices."
I feel like in middle school and high school teachers make punctuation seem to relate so heavily on grammar. they make it seem that the grammar of this sentence will determine the punctuation but after this article I dont think it does as much.	"As should be clear by now, learning to punctuate effectively requires only a little knowledge of grammer, much less than most english teachers will grant"
I have learned that punctuation doesn't have set rules and that only in certain circumstances are you limited to the punctuation you have to use.	"The notion that there is only one correct way of punctuating a given word pattern is true only in limited degree"

QD5: From reading Dawkins I learned that punctuations do not always mean anything, Dawkins uses random punctuation throughout his essay that adds voice, and identity to his piece. It also helps makes the point that punctuation does not always need to be structured.

MM: I think we are reading about punctuation is rhetorical rather than just explaining what it is because, dawkins says that punctuation is more tendencies that we are taught and that we stick to them because that is what is comfortable. It is more effective to talk about grammar as a rhetorical.

Thoughts:  I found myself wanting to keep reading just because this idea was so different than anything i have ever heard before but on the contrary i thought this article was really long. I did however like the examples it gave through out to help put and image to the concept.

Bryson:

Before you read: I think good english is when you use proper grammar, and language that makes you sound educated. Good english is what you would use in an academic setting. Bad english is when you use slang words, or abbreviations, more commonly used informally among friends.

Summary: This article talks about as the title implies "Good english and Bad english" the first part of the article talks about the origins of the english language. The english language comes from latin. and how the english language combines different roots to form its own words,  other languages don't do things like that. The article says " considerations of what makes for good english or bad english are to an uncomfortably large extent matters of prejudice and conditioning. What may have been proper english a decade ago may now be considered not proper or correct.

Synthesis: Bryson is similar to Dawkins because Dawkins is about rhetoric grammar, and punctuation they are related because Bryson is about good english, what we think of as good english may not be good english at all. It can also relate to mcClouds comic because we maybe seeing english as one thing but it may be perceived complete different by someone else.

Notebook:

Response	Quotation
I think this is ironic, when you are writing it isn't something that you think of, but when reading this article it was interesting to think about. how the present form of a word isn't even used in the present tense of a sentence.	"In fact, almost the only form of sentence in which we cannot use the present tense form of drive is, yes the present tense. when we need to indicate an action going on right now, we must use the participial form driving."
This seems to be more and more common in today's era to shorten whole sentences into on word. and the person your talking to usually understands the full sentence you are trying to say just in that one word.	"What!", they would say, really means" what are you telling me- you crashed my car?" "Where?" is short hand rendering of "where did you crash it?" "How?" "translates has "How on earth did ou manage to do that you old devil you?"
I liked this quote because being a sports fanatic I could relate to the analogy. and sometimes with english it does feel like playing a game with foreign rules	"Making english grammar conform to latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football"
When I read this line in the article I was a little confused because I really thought uninterested and disinterested and imply and infer ment the same things.	"They point out that there is a useful distinction to be observed between uninterested and disinterested, between imply and infer, and flaunt and flout"

Thoughts:  I think this article wasn't to bad. I think it had some good points about english as a language. and the rules of english. some think english is really open to do what ever it wants which can be a good thing or a bad thing.  I also was pleased that this wasn't a super long article.

Bernhardt:

Before you read.  Looking at an article in The Post. I notice the heading is in all caps, and one word is colored instead of black. there is also a logo above the heading. and then a large picture below the heading. There is another small heading under the picture. and then the actual article. within the article there is a quote that is pulled out and made larger probably to emphasis the point. and lastly there in another picture incorporated into the text.

Summary: Bernhardt's article about displaying writing visually and structurally. He discribes the different ways texts are seen. One way he discribes in visually in which tables, images, are added to a text to make the point stronger to the reader. the second way is in the structure. This way the reader still has to read all of the text to gain knowledge, but the organization is in a way that adds meaning to the text itself.

Synthesis: This article can compare to McCloud because it talks about using images to explain points in writing. McCloud and Bernhardt take different approaches to the subject but both make the point that sometime there are deeper meanings in writing than can be seen just by reading, that sometimes require readers to make connections. This article also connects to Bergers idea of perceiving.  Different people will perceive the same thing differently based on who they are. I think this connects with Bernhardt because he says how different visual styles in writing appeal to different types of readers.

Response	Quotation
I picked this one because I always thought this way too, until I came in to english 1510 and found out that this is not the case. There are many different essay organizations and non of them are like high school at all.	"Though classroom teaching often assumes essay organization as the norm."
I had never thought that writing took so much visual stuff into account so I thought that this concept was interesting.	" to attend to the layout of the text requires considering the text as a visual gestalt, focusing attention on the total visual impact of the text on the prospective reader"
I felt like this would be something important to remember when working on my own writing. making key concepts stand out visually against the rest of the back ground.	"The second law of gestalt, that a good continuation or good figure suggests that visual perception works to pull figures out of the background and give them definition against the undistinguished field in which they are located"
When reading this I had a light bulb moment and connected this quote with my communications class, Closure is when you see a picture that is incomplete and your mind automatically fills in the missing parts.	"Invoking a third law of gestalt that of closure."

Thoughts: I thought that Bernhart was an interesting essay because I liked reading how different visuals made reading more appealing. I used several ideas from Bernhart into my own writing pieces. I used images, charts, and boxes to added dynamic appeal to my writing, I think it definitely helps and keeps the reader guessing. 

After you read:  I think McCloud could have represented this article in his comic form by, setting up the difference between an article with visuals and one without and then shown the different reactions with in the cartoon characters to make the point come across clearer.