Month: April 2016

Furthering the Conversation

For my final paper, I am planning on examining how volunteering can have positive effects on elderly populations. As one gets older, it is easy to feel as though there is no longer a purpose in your life. When you don’t have anything to do everyday, your home and minor hobbies get you through the day. However, if a person can find a daily/weekly/monthly volunteer event, it might make the difference between depression and a better life.

The audience of this piece would elderly citizens themselves, different community organizations who need more volunteers, family of elderly citizens, and doctors of elderly citizens. While I have only stated a few, this piece can be useful for many people and many educational fields of study, such as: sociology, aging studies, and psychology. For my paper, I will be focusing in on elderly citizens and their family members as my target audience.

I see my piece being less of a formal paper, and more of something that can be accessible and read by anyone. I am planning on using mainly scholarly sources, but I want to translate and use these sources in a way that people who normally won’t have access to these sources, can now have that information at their hands. In order to do this, I will draw from the quiz we took, and keep in mind that I can’t use certain scholarly words and instead should use everyday jargon. Additionally, I will draw from the readings we’ve done, in remaining aware of who I want to read my piece.

Furthering the Conversation

I am looking at how immunotherapy treatments can affect the lives of people with terminal cancer. Currently these treatments are only experimental and most patients choose chemo, which can cause many negative side effects, or to forgo treatment and live in some sort of hospice care until their death. These new treatments have the potential to give patients more time with their loved ones, but will not destroy their bodies in the same way that chemo does. One of the main issues with terminal patients getting these treatments is they are expensive and insurance companies are less likely to pay for clinical trials, especially if it is for someone who has been diagnosed as terminal. My target audience is the patients and their families because there are many instances where doctors do not give all of the options or suggest chemo because it is more tested. I think it is important for people to be informed of all of their options before making a decision. I see my paper taking the route of an informational essay and because it is intended for people who won’t necessarily have science degrees it will be easier to read and understand than a more scholarly article would be.

Bottom Lining Final Project

What I am trying to figure out with my research is what type of effect does food have on individuals when they experience the process of grief, specifically with a family member. My target audience for this piece will be families that are in the process of grieving because with at least one person knowing the effects that food can have on an individual, even a family, can help out with the grieving process when learned and applied. Some different ways I could see this text form into is an informational essay, giving important information about the ways that food can positively and negatively effect the individual and family during grieving times. I could also see this essay taking  persuasive turn, persuading people to make food as a family, or just different tips in this subject.

Paper Topic

I am researching how hospice care can benefit the families of the residents to depict to hospice centers how important it is to prioritize the families as well as the resident and to inform perspective residents on some of the advantages choosing hospice could hold for them. My target audience would be the hospice centers themselves and anyone interested making a future plan for end-of-life care. I believe it is very important for people to know their options and be informed about the pros and cons choosing hospice and to let hospice centers know what they are doing that is good and what could be improved upon. As morbid of an outlook as this is, everyone is going to die so it is beneficial for everyone to know about hospice as an option when the time comes. I think this essay will turn into more of an informational essay with a call to action to make hospice care centers even more prepared to help families deal with grief. I could also do a compare and contrast between the benefits that hospice centers have on families verses the benefit hospitals have on families.

Furthering the Conversation

In my project, I am trying to figure out how race and socioeconomic status affects a disadvantaged individual receive medicare because these are important factors that are important to ensure whether medicare is provided to everyone equally or whether there are disparities among people. My targeted audience can definitely people who are disadvantaged patients, care providers, health insurance providers, and the general public. This audience is not limited and can also include sociologists, psychologists, etc. I still have yet to think about the form I want this project to take but I decided to incorporate the idea of socioeconomic status in my topic question to avoid generalizations as much as possible. Any race can struggle achieving the adequate resources for medicare so I did not want to paint a certain race group with the same brush. With socioeconomic status, it makes it more easier for me to explain the main race groups that are affected by medicare and the types of race groups that are at a disadvantage. I am still struggling to find a way to go against my position I will be taking in my project. I feel like I am explaining too much about the types of groups that are affected and in what ways/how they are, but It would be helpful to find a clever way to find a rebuttal to my arguments.

Project Overview

What I am trying to figure out is how air and water quality affect the health of individuals and society. I chose this topic because it is a relatively non-controversial issue. I cannot think of a single person who does not want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. It is an issue we can all get behind, regardless of race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, region, or ideology.

There are noticeable health differences between individuals who grew up in a geographic area with high quality water and air and those who did not. I am going to attempt to show those differences (all other factors controlled for), outline why they exist, and propose solutions. My primary audience is both federal and local government. The federal government is in the strongest position to implement change. However, given the political dysfunction in Washington these past few years, I think it is important for state governments to act upon my solutions as well. While the federal government argues about taxes, spending, debt, and the role of government, states and city governments should overcompensate if they wish for their citizens to have access to clean air and water. In fact, one could argue that it is more of a local government imperative given the geographic disparities.

Class notes 4/6

Collaborative planning to figure out what we are going to do for the final project
-research is done because it serves a need
-figure out what experts in the field actually need to hear
-Noah:why does arf continue to be such a problem in developing countries?
Audience could be medical staff in those countries, people with family in those countries, and public health officials who could invoke change, and people who live there.
-lania:what effect does food have on the process of grieving?
Audience could be anyone who eats, people who get eating disorders as a result of grieving, could be psychiatrists or counseling professionals, staff of hospices or people who are about to lose someone close
-Scott: what effect does funding have on hospice providers’ ability to meet goals?
Audience could people that are going to be residing in a hospice, or their families, could be health officials or policy makers, the hospice care providers, donors, insurance companies
-Angelica: how do immunotherapy treatments affect the lives of patients with terminal cancers?
Audience could be patients and their families, researchers, care providers/hospitals, insurance companies, policymakers
-Stephanie: how do race+class change persons experiences in receiving medical care?
Audience could be people who feel that they are disadvantaged as patients, care providers, health insurance companies, the general public
-Laura: how does hospice care help families?
Audience could be families with members seeking hospice care and the clients themselves, donors, the hospices themselves, the doctors recommending hospice care-Matt: how does geography(air+water quality and healthcare systems) affect health outcomes?
Audience could be world health organization members or other large health organizations, real estate agents, prospective movers, policymakers, researchers
****furthering the convo blog entry
**** AND one more blog post
**** AND two comments on classmates blog posts
**** AND read chapt 8 they say I say
1. Bottom line your project.. -what I’m trying to figure out here is….because… -here’s my target audience(and why)
2. Some possible forms that this test might take (brainstorm options)
CONVERSATION ESSAY:
-4-5 pages
– 4 sources
– Dialogue( Fred:…… Noad:…….)

Class Notes – 4/4

How to become a part of the conversation

  • We converse because we think what we know matters
  • Effectiveness relies on how your contribution works with others
  • Key moves:

o   Explaining your position relative to others—agreeing, disagreeing, “yes, but…”

o   Explaining your reason

o   Offering something new to conversation

Subordination v. Coordination

  • I thought the paper was good but it needs some work

o   Uses coordination…equal importance between 2 independent clauses

o   Job of the independent clause is to carry the main idea

o   Dependent clause gives ‘bonus information’

o   Put your point of emphasis in the independent clause

Comma-Splice run on sentence: joining independent clauses

  • Comma with conjunction (and, but, for, so, yet): shows a close relationship
  • Semi-colon: closely related
  • Period: adds greater emphasis on each idea
  • Colon or dashes: very close relationship in that one half defines the other

Chapter 7 TSIS Reading Notes

• Chapter 7 of “They Say/I Say”
• Authors Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
• Their audience is anyone looking to improve their own academic writing skills or are looking to teach others how to right
• The purpose of the whole book is to give everyone equal opportunity to be able to write good quality texts even if they don’t intuitively know how.
• The purpose of this chapter is to tell why it is important to tell the audience why you are writing about the subject and how it applies to (“so what” and “who cares”)
• This chapter focuses on various moves and templates to use in order to explain to the reader why your topic is significant
• Readers need to know why they should care
• Even if you think your reasons are obvious, you should explain why anyway
• A big problem of speakers are that they don’t address the question of why their argument matters and then loses the interest of their audience because it lacks relevance
• “who cares”: asks you to identify a person or group that cares about what you are saying
• “so what”: asks about real-world applications and consequences to give it relevance
• Best way to show larger role your claims make is to relate it to something you know the audience already cares about
• Very important to just be explicit about it, get to the point

Documentary Review

I believe that the documentary was extremely well done. From a visual standpoint, the cinematography was very well coordinated.  The shots were clean and concise while providing an accurate representation of what life is like for these people. The documentary used a shock and awe approach to bring awareness to this problem facing American kids, and did so successfully. On top of a well filmed picture, they also had a series of visual aids (graphs and tables) that helped them convey their point. The infographics and other animations scattered throughout the movie were effectively used to show the severity of the situation. The producers used research from the CDC and other government agencies to display first give the facts on the issue, and then accompanied them with stark comparisons (such as calorie intake of the normal individual juxtaposed to that of Rosie) to emphasize their point.

The film was well organized in that it followed a storyline, rationalizing each point previously made in the following sections. The would present a statistic and then provide an example of the situation the statistic was taken from (I.E., x out of x kids goes hungry, like Rosie here…). This question and answer style of presentation is effective in convincing the viewer that the presenter knows exactly the scope of the issue and is hinting that they are soon going to propose a solution. In a way, it keeps the viewer interested and coming back for more.