Month: October 2018

Kayla:

Kayla dealt with losing a passion. She is a clear example of the “victim” literacy narrative. As Alexander states A victim ” has dealt with a negative literacy experience in or out of school; discusses how someone took the fun out of reading and writing”(615).  Kayla use to love reading as a kid. But her experience with Mr. Stritch completely ruined that for her and she never found that spark for reading again.

Sam: 

Sam is what we can call a “success” narrative. She never had a bad experience with writing, and always strived to be better. The writing was never worked for Sam, as she says “So what did I think about the process of writing? I loved it, I really did. I enjoyed just being able to get lost in the moment of sharing my thoughts on a piece of paper”(2). According to Alexander of “Successes, Victims, and Prodigies”, “Students like Anna value the success master narrative as a lens through which they understand their literate experiences, and they do so by generalizing about literacy and its power of pointing to future success” (617).

Hannah:

Hannah’s story was trickier to put into a literacy narrative perspective, but I believe that Hannah is a “hero”. In the face of a teacher telling her that all her hard work was wasted, Hannah showed self-reliance and believed in her own essay. Hannah’s college essay was helping her heal from her brother’s death, and no teacher, grade, or college acceptance was going to change how she felt about the paper.

Blake: 

While reading Blake’s story, I realized that he fits into the literary narrative of “hero”. To Alexander, a hero is someone who “equates literacy acquisition with success, liberation, development, and progression”(615). We see Blake try and try again to find out the problem with his paragraph. When Blake succeeds in solving his grammar error, he is proud of his own progression. Later in life, he learned to overcome his grammatical obstacles, “Still to this day when I find myself rushing through projects I have to stop and tell myself to slow down”(2).  The obstacles he overcame helped Blake grown as a person.

 

 

“Expect the Unexpected” was a very sad story to read. I am glad that Hannah did not lose her passion for her essay because her teacher put her essay down. As Kayla Farrell said in “Turn Around”, “Teachers have a bigger impact on their students then they realize”.

 

“Recess and Distress” was a story that I personally related to. In 1st grade, I had a teacher who was always hard on me and would hold me in during recess. Just like Blake, I learned to slow down and fix my mistakes, that proofreading is so important. I emphasized the fact that this could have been an experience that would have made Blake hate English, like Kayla.

 

Just Like Hannah’s story, this one was sad to read. I talked about how it was so sad that it was a teacher that ruined Kayla’s passion for reading when it should be the opposite. Teachers are the ones who should inspire us to read.

“Passion for writing” was another success story like Blake. I talked about the relationship between having a good teacher and growing your passion for English and reading. This was the final story I read so I was able to connect it to every other story.

 

2.) We grow up talking and socializing, but it is English teachers who make us self-aware about English. They teach us how we can write, and more importantly, what to write. Alexander describes the use of writing as “ literacy narrative aim to define who were are and what we want to become as individuals and a community”. Writing is essential to growth, but many people hate it due to poor experiences. Many have been belittled in front of the class, worked so hard on an essay only to get a C or any other type of negative experience. This is why I believe people dislike the Discourse of English, bad experiences shape our image of English.

4.)The “child prodigy” in Alexander’s “cultural narrative” chart is one well familiar with. These are the students who have excelled in their students since preschool. They “excel in reading and writing from an early age and is put on display for others to see his or her brilliance”. I chose this cultural narrative because I know many of these “prodigies”. Honestly, I feel bad for them. They never got to learn it is okay to get a bad grade. Ever test they have panic attacks. What good is being smart if you don’t feel good about it? I really dislike the “victim” cultural narrative. I don’t understand how one experience with literacy “takes the fun out”. We read every day, we read both good and bad news, read letters from our grandparents, we read every single day. How can someone possibly dislike reading when it is an action necessary to survive?

6.)  “Hero and rebel” are two of the biggest cultural narratives that are influenced by teachers. The “hero” cultural narrative talks about their enlightening experience with literacy, how it shaped their lives, while the “rebel” narrative talks about how much they hate literacy. Teachers, especially in the earlier stages, can “make it or break it for a student”.

Revised Learning Outcomes: 

Introduction- I made my hook more engaging. In my rough draft, I jumped straight into the methods of scientific discourse. In the introduction, I changed it to start very broad and general. I tried to make my thesis stating that the IMRAD format and building tasks are meant to help you write a research paper and that observation is the key to scientific discovery. 

Evidence and Explanation- I added more evidence to my paragraphs about Haas and Eliza, I wanted there to be two clear results of the experiment to show people Eliza grew as a student and as a person. I also tried to relate everything to a building task. Mentioning practices, connections, relationships, etc in each paragraph I wrote about. I added a quote that explains how abstracts work, as someone might be unfamiliar to them. 

Reorganization- I did not really move around paragraphs, I mainly added to them to make them have more content. 

New Paragraph- Yes this paper is much longer than my rough draft. I added a paragraph about results and discussion and asked questions like “what does it (your research paper) mean why it matters. I lengthened by methods and materials paragraph any adding quotes to help connect it to Nair and Nair. The Haas experiment was already a good length so I did not really change it a lot, I mostly just revised it a little here and there. I took out a lot of repeating words to keep the point of the message across. 

 

1. I full understand Gee’s concepts, I can see how Building Tasks can be related to anything in literature, in addition, I can see Discourse in everyday life. Haas, I am having more trouble with. With paper 2 I am having difficulty relating Haas to anything besides the Eliza experiment and how the study was made in the IMRAD format. Other than that I cannot seem to make overall connections no matter how much I read the paper. 
2. I think I have good quotes to help strengthen my points. I feel that the quotes I used when talking about the Eliza experiment brought in a visual of how Eliza grew as a student. The whole study was to watch her grow and I think quoting on the face that she did not realize how she was growing really showed the depth of the experiment. Haas was learning things about Eliza that not even Eliza knew. 
3. I am having a lot of trouble with the results and discussion paragraph of the essay. I can only seem to relate it to Gee’s Building Task of connections. At the end of the study, the results are what we have. And in the discussion, we connect everything from the experiment and relate it to the real world. I can see the connection between Haas’s study and this one building Task but not any other. 
4. I believe my analysis will show that the science Discourse is extremely thorough and everything has to be thought out. Experiments can wield many results, including results that thought of by scientists in the first place. I also believe my analysis will show how important observation is, the root of the scientific method and basis for all discovery. 

The root of any scientific discovery is the curiosity to pursue the unanswered questions. The scientific method involves steps like observation, hypothesis, carrying out an experiment, and then drawing out a conclusion. The beginning of the scientific method comes from observation. An inquisitiveness to figure out something new. There is a reason that not everyone is a scientist, being a scientist is a Discourse, not all can enter. Not everyone has this “inquisitiveness”. Many scientists can root their passion for science sprouting up when they were a child, science becoming apart of their primary Discourse. “We acquire this primary Discourse, not by overt instruction but by being a member of primary socializing groups”(Gee 8). Family members, friends, and even teachers are all influences on our primary Discourse. They could have given scientists the inspiration they needed to pursue their passion.

The method of observation is well written about in Haas’s Learning to Read Biology. Haa’s entire experiment on Eliza, watching her grow from a timid freshman to a well informed senior is entirely based off of observations. In her experiment Haa’s watches how a student (Eliza) grows educationally throughout college.  Haas observed how Eliza used tools she learned in freshman year, putting the knowledge to use all the way up till senior year. How subjects Eliza struggled with eventually became easy due to Eliza putting in the extra effort. “Eliza showed a level of awareness of the activity and agents of discourse that seldom was obvious in the texts she wrote”(Haas 47). Haas is saying that we do not realize we are mastering something. Through observations, Haas has come to understand that Eliza is growing and understanding the concepts she is learning thoroughly that she can now apply it to other subjects.

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Significance:

• “Keep in mind and respect the general level of the readers’ understanding and familiarity with your procedures. For example, in a manuscript for a journal targeted at researchers in biophysical aspects of agroforestry, it is not necessary to narrate all minute details of how materials were selected, drawn, prepared, and so on.” (Nair & Nair 19)
  • I thought this was a significant quote because it applies to every paper you right. Know your audience, and do not overfill with details. Write your paper with a targeted audience in mind so you can cater to them.

• “In order to understand, use, and judge scientific content students need a meta-understanding of the motives of science and scientists and the history of scientific concepts” (Haas 45)
  • I chose this as a significant moment because it so easily related to Gee’s idea on what a Discourse is. To understand scientific literature, you need to understand everything around it, like the history behind it. To join a Discourse, you need to be completely surrounded by the beliefs and values of that Discourse, and to talk, behave, and write about it.

Practices

• “By the time she had left college, she had come to a greater awareness of the rhetorical, contingent nature of her chosen field, biology”(Haas 46)
  • I used this as an example of practice because to leave college in a greater knowledge, it means that she had to put in the effort. She had to practice the skills to be a biologist.
• “I hypothesized that in her reading practices Eliza might demonstrate more rhetorical sophistication than she would in her writing where more production skills must be managed”(Haas 47)
  • Eliza is demonstrating more rhetorical sophistication than in her writing. This showed that Eliza was picking up different skills at different times based on how much she practiced them.
• “Because the Abstract is a short version of the full paper, it contains a mixture of tenses representing the tense used in reporting the respective sections of the paper”(Nair & Nair 17)
  • The Abstract is a summarized version of your research paper, it must contain every major aspect of your paper but condensed. It is limited to 250 words and needs to stand on its own. Many need to practice to get their Abstract just right

Connections

• “When readers approach a discourse situation, they presumably have some knowledge or representation of the participants, including the identity, knowledge, and background of author intended readers.”(Haas 48)
  • I connected this to Gee, you must know everything around Discourse if you want to be a part of one.
• “The section pulls everything together and shows the importance and value of the work and is, therefore, the most innovative and difficult part of the paper to write”(Nair & Nair 21)
  • This quote shows the importance of connection in a research paper. Without connections, we cannot create a discussion without connection multiple sources together.  

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1. Learning in college is not just about reading information and remembering it. It is about understanding the entire concept. As Haas states it “‘scientific literacy’ as not only the mastery of scientific facts and concepts but an understanding the ‘evolving contributions of individual scientists and group of scientists,.. the social communities and historical settings in which scientists work”(Haas 45). To understand a subject is to fully be engaged with the text, knowing the facts and history around a subject. In college we do not just read the text, we have to fully understand the concept. 
2. The “myth” Haas is talking about is the view that “ written academic texts as discrete, highly explicit, even ‘timeless’ functioning without contextual support from author, reader, or culture”(Haas 45). This myth does not inherently make sense to me, I feel that it is asking too much from a textbook. We don’t need contextual support from an author, it is a textbook we just need well worded and organized information.
3. Haas’s study of Eliza is probably a common occurrence, the longer we spend working on a subject the more prolific we become to it. Progress is hard for us to see because we make change subconsciously sometimes. “ She( Eliza) exhibited a growing cognizance of texts”(Haas 69). As Eliza continued her studies, she grew a deeper understanding of the material that she could use in other work. By studying Eliza’s growing study pattern, it could share inside into how college students develop compared to high school students.
4. A rhetorical frame is used to help readers better understand underlying themes within the text. “ A Rhetorical Frame helps the reader account for the motives underlying textual acts and their outcomes”(Haas 47-8). Rhetorical frames use participates, relationships, context, and motives to help bring certain aspects out of the text for the reader. 
5. I see a connection between Gee and Haas through their definition of “Discourses” and “scientific literacy”. Both authors state that there needs to be a deeper level of understanding and appreciation in order to truly understand each subject or Discourse. “Discourses are ways in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities”(Gee 7). To Gee, Discourses are not just one level of understanding. You need to be completely surrounded by everything a Discourse stands for to be a part of one. This is reminiscent of Haas’s view on scientific literacy,  ‘scientific literacy’ as not only the mastery of scientific facts and concepts but an understanding to the ‘evolving contributions of individual scientists and group of scientists,.. the social communities and historical settings in which scientists work”(Haas 45). In order to understand scientific literacy, you have to understand it on multiple levels, just like a Discourse. 

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