11/26- Artist’s Statements

You’ll begin your portfolio with an artist’s statement (see the assignment sheet for more details). Click here for samples from another ENG 1121 class. Keep in mind that the professor was asking a slightly different set of questions, but I think that seeing what other students produced can be useful even if they’re not writing about the exact same thing.

11/13- Rhetorical strategies for portraying people

Rhetorical strategies for portraying people

Close-ups vs. long shots (close to the person vs. far)

Frontal vs. oblique angles (taken with their body facing toward you vs. away from you)

Demand vs. offer image (looking at you vs. away from you)

^These strategies make us feel social closeness vs. social distance. Close-ups and frontal angles make us feel socially closer than long shots and oblique angles. Demand images are when the person in the image looks right at you–they’re demanding something from you. In an offer image, the person is looking away from you, so you can gaze at them without them looking back at you.

10/21- They Say/I Say

This link has some great templates that show how you can integrate sources (they say) into your call to action paper and build your own argument (I say).

9/23- Discourse communities

Basically, discourse communities are groups of people who communicate to achieve shared goals.

There are six features of discourse communities:

Goals: “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals” (471).

Intercommunication: “A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members” (471).

Participation: “A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback” (472).

Genres: “A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims” (472).

Lexis: “In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis” (473).

Levels of expertise: “A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (473).

*Note: you won’t need to define these terms in your call to action research paper. They’re useful in helping us understand what discourse communities are, though.

9/5- Definitions from the reading homework

  • Rhetorical situation- the situation in which you write; includes purpose and audience
  • Purpose- why are you writing?
  • Audience- who are  you writing for?
  • Rhetorical Appeals- how you get your reader to believe or listen to you (ethos is trustworthiness oir credibility, pathos is emotions, and logos is logic)
  • Modes & media- modes are writing, visual and audio; medium is how it’s delivered (for example: a paper book vs an audiobook)
  • Genre- response to a rhetorical situation; type
  • Common elements- what is similar in a bunch of different samples
  • Style- writing choices (tone, detail, voice)
  • Design- visual choices (color, illustrations)
  • Sources- where you get your information

9/4- Technology policy and thoughts

  • Keep phones on silent so we don’t distract each other
  • It’s nice to use multiple screens- have stuff on the projector but also stuff to look at on the phone
  • Phones can be useful for taking notes

8/28- What makes a good class discussion?

  • Topic– if the topic is bad people don’t want to talk about it; if the topic is good people jump in
  • Participation- everybody has input; we hear everyone’s opinions on a certain topic
  • Having a good counter-argument to what someone says
  • Listen and take in other people’s perspectives
  • Relatability- want to talk about things that you can relate to 
  • Sitting in a circle