Chapter 7 Envision

I really liked how chapter seven started with creativity. I strive for creativity, and being original, I never feel like anything I do is wholly original but I still try regardless. Using creativity to link up with Plagiarism was really a brilliant idea.

Plagiarism was nailed into my head as the devil of writing from the moment I entered middle school. I never knew how tricky it could be to incorrectly cite something when I first started learning about plagiarism. I guess I really don’t like plagiarism because it’s really tedious. Unfortunately the rest of the chapter was not like the introduction, and I really didn’t much care for what it had to say.

I actually am pretty anal about plagiarism, I’ve always been fearful that I would plagiarize someone’s work. It didn’t help my case all those years ago when someone told me that everything has already been said before and that we only alter what has come before us. Then I saw the quote at the beginning of the chapter; it said, “Creativity always builds on the past.” That quote really opened my eyes to the fact that creativity improves, and not copies past work. While I may not have been to keen on the chapter itself the beginning is ironically one of my favorite things about this book.

Class Log October 25

So there I was, sitting in English class again. This time was different though, this time I had to do the class log. So here’s how it began. Mrs. Tessa talked about the differences between writing and reading. When you speak you can create an atmosphere, and body language. It was also mentioned that Sentence fragments from writing would not work for speaking. We also talked about the first canon: Invention is tied to the rhetorical appeal of logos. Common topics- what kind of dichotomy is there? What kinds of reasons people might take? What or whom you can appeal to.

We also looked the Arrangement of Classical Oration.

The introduction

Statement of Facts

Division- what order your evidence goes in

Proof-

Refutation- bringing up people who disagrees with you and find out why they thin that.

Conclusion-Talks about how voters get an audience excited to vote their way

This is not the only way to do this.

Think about what your audience knows,

Delivery- It deals with how something is presented. It covers a lot of things.

Used you tube to show. Uses the “Argument Clinic” as an example. We also looked a British mock video of a news report and a video on ordering pizza in the future and The astounding world of tomorrow a humorous look at the future, and was a Humorous, yet depressing look at the future. The class picked a South park video but it was not what people expected. Real future prediction video, which was kind of accurate, and finally a BBC Video. We ended the class on a Five minute free write where you first wrote about your topic and why you believe so strongly in your argument. Then you spend five minutes doing a rebuttal. I must admit it was actually helpful. So that was class in a nutshell.

Class Log Oct. 20

The weather outside sucked today and to add to it we had to walk to the library rather than the Robert Bell building. Even though it was not much further it was still something I felt like complaining about. Once I arrived at the library I saw everyone scrambling to finish their library self guided tours. So after everyone was done finishing or starting their assignments we went down the super awesome spiral stairway. We were leaded to a computer lab in the basement where we were going to get a tour of the library form one room. The student librarian led the tour and started with the card cat article search system. I wasn’t paying to much attention to what was going on, because I was trying to think of a research topic. The tour leader seemed to really like reality T.V. because that is what she always seemed to search. We went on to using many other kinds of article and database search engines all just looking for reality T.V. stuff. After awhile I noticed that the person next to me began to take a power nap on the palm of his hand.

Like usual most of our classroom began to get up like five to ten minutes early as immature as that is. Like in all my classes I wonder how many people realize they are paying for the class time, which they try to leave early. Well I guess its not my problem that I seem to be one of the few people who care about there education and not focusing on what is going to happen Friday night. But I digress some people will never learn what the point of their education is. We sat back down after being told to and we left class at 6:15 like usual.

Chapter Six of Envision and Movies

This book several times has interested me in many ways. As I was reading the first paragraph I thought to myself this sounds very familiar. The name River and she fighting Reavers sounded so familiar. So I re-read the paragraph and come to find out the author was talking about the movie Serenity. I freaked out. I have actually seen the film, and is one of my favorite movies. The book then went on talking about how film makers must be very organized and how that they can rearrange a film to make it flow better, and also saying that you can do this with your papers. This got me even more interested because I would like to be a film maker. As the book went on, it got to a point when the authors were then talking about Avatar. This is another one of my most favorite movies. This furthered peaked my interest in reading more within this book. The authors talked about how the trailer was loosely but also suggest an outline of what will happen. I really liked reading this part of the book, because of how it compared writing to film making. I felt I could really relate with what the authors where trying to say.

FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, Comic Strip, and Live Performance! But no Plays?

Chapter seven of Envision explained how to properly document sources in order to avoid plagiarism, whether intentional or not. It began with discussing why it is important to give credit where credit is due. One of the parts I found most interesting was when it talked about how, in ancient times, students would copy a speech word by word before they analyzed it. This was in order to further study the organization, rhythm, and other such factors of the writing. This is what helped them become better writers themselves and help the world of literature evolve. The other section I found particularly helpful was the section about avoiding unintentional plagiarism. This, I feel like, is probably the number one issue that student have. Ho do we know if we are plagiarizing? The two practices they gave to help are to “Always keep in mind that you are contributing to a conversation with other writers” and to “Develop effective ways of note taking while reading through your sources.” The first put into perspective how thinking of writing as either responding to another’s works or quoting them in order to include them in the dialogue. The second gave me the idea of, when copying a quite, taking note of how I might use that quote. The section of the chapter that I found myself a little frustrated with was when it went through almost every single way to document almost every single type of source out there… except for how to document lines from a play. It even had visual sources and facebook and twitter. But, because I am writing a textual analysis of a play for a different class right now, I referred to the book for help on how to cite lines from a play, but there was nothing to help me. Although, it did go into deep detail that will probably help me on different projects. But I was a little disappointed.

Envision Chapter 7

As I read through this chapter I found it very interesting. I viewed documenting sources differently from what the book described. I thought that originally this chapter would just talk about what you should and should not do while document sources. On the third, or so, page of this book I found it interesting how the author talked about how you are contributing to a conversation with other writers. I just thought that when writing research papers you only cited sources because you give credit to the authors of the sources. I never considered the possibility of me actually contributing to a group conversation.

I also found it interesting when I read the paragraph discussing how using citations helps guide the readers. Meaning, the work(s) cited page allows the reader of your papers to look back on to the sources that you found. It is almost like a treasure map for the readers of your paper to find your sources.

Taking notes is also very important. If trying to avoid unintentional plagiarism taking good, clear notes helps to avoid this. Through good note taking, you can see where you found certain information. I think the story about the writer who worked a paper for years got accused of plagiarism. Over the years to researching she forgot where certain information came from. She said it was her fault and promised that she would try not to do it again.

I think I see a clearer understanding of why we, as writers, need to know why work(s) cited pages are needed.