Category: Discussions/Homework

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Week of 6/8 Discussion

  1. In Margaret Herffernan’s TedTalk, The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World, she engages the audience by starting with a story. Her story details a problem with the current world in its unpredictability. She describes how in our current setup we have a problem in that it is difficult to plan ahead in these circumstances. Again, she begins her speech detailing a problem. She sets it up so the audience believes this is a real problem in the world, and then follows by explaining how she has the answer to it, and that is what her speech is about. By setting the speech up in this way she not only draws her audience in, but she gains credibility. Now that the audience is aware of this problem, they want to know how to solve it, as knowing about the problem makes it theirs.

She continues through the body to explain her answer to the problem, tying in are evidence. She uses evidence of people successfully using her answer to the problem, to show more credibility to the audience that her solution works. Again, she has the audience roped in from the start, because she convinced them from the get that this was a problem worth caring about in their lives. Now they are glued to the speaker until the end of the speech so they know how to combat it. She ends in the same way she started, by addressing the unpredictability of the world and raising a feeling of hopelessness. She responds again, with a “but,” and summarizes her methods for combating the problem. By the end of the speech, she has convinced the audience there is a problem they should worry about, has them worried, reveals and answer to the problem, how they can use it, and convinces the audience they will be fine as long as they use her solution.

2. In Margaret Herffernan’s TedTalk, The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World, she utilizes evidence throughout her speech to back up her points. Her evidence adds to her credibility as a speaker and appeals to the audience’s logic. She begins using evidence from the very beginning of her speech by starting with a story. She uses an example of a company to explain how it is disastrous when the world is unpredictable and people aren’t prepared. This evidence helps the audience believe in the problem she sets up in order to answer it herself. She then goes into her solution, outlining everything about it. Then, throughout the body she pieces evidence back in to add credibility to her solution. She provides examples of countries, corporations and more who use her solution successfully. This helps add to her claim that the solution is the right one to the problem she introduces at the beginning.

She uses this method of introducing problems with answers to follow throughout her speech, which illustrates to the audience that she is the person with all the answers. It shows she is knowledgable on the topic, and by following each claim with evidence by way of examples, she adds to her credibility and keeps the audience glued to her. She becomes responsible for solving the problem she planted in her audience’ heads, and in turn becomes valuable to listen to.

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Discussion post 7/6/20 (Dan)

  1. Rahul Chakraborty (a professor at Texas State university) wrote an excellent  article called A Short note on Accent-bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism.  This article explores concepts such as social identity theory (S.I.T.). This is a theory that states how people will identify themselves with others who share similar traits as them. SIT explains that this tendency to categorize ourselves gives us a feeling of familiarity and belongingness. People who are in the same social group of ours form “ingroups” and the people that are not form “outgroups”. Rahul then talks about how this is related to a topic called ethnocentrism. Essential the meaning of this is that members of ingroup believe that their group is centric to everything. This ethnocentrism when taken too far can lead to people discriminating against outgroups Accents are a typical characteristic that people tend to categorize each-other with. The author then offers some tips that can help mitigate the issue of accent discrimination. Some of the tips included the use of speech language pathologists to help nonnative speakers improve their pronunciation in their nonnative language. Another tip was hiring more diverse staff in universities so that students become more accustom to working with people who have a nonnative accent.

This article is an important part of my portfolio explains some of the psychology involved in unconscious bias. This article has taken my understanding of this topic to a much higher level and was crucial to my final project in this class. Another thing I found useful about this article is how it referenced and explained several studies that were conducted which validate his arguments. I found this article through the use of the advanced search on Syracuse Summons library.

Chakraborty, R. (2017). A Short note on Accent–bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 8(4), 57. doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.4p.57

 

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Discussion Prompt Week of 7/27

similar example of my genre.png

The image above is similar to my genre because this shows an example of an Instagram story posted to social media. While I couldn’t find any Facebook post example templates, I’m creating a similar idea that this story portrays because I want to include a series of posts. This type of writing offers easy-to-read visuals, catching headlines, and big fonts which attract the audience. I believe this sample is very effective, as so many teens and young adults now are consumed by social media. I like how simple and interactive this genre is. While you can’t ask Q+A’s on Facebook like this picture shows, the viewer is still able to react to a message by loving it, liking it, commenting, or sharing. It may be less successful in a way where too many details cannot be shared, so the content is less specific than an article, for example. The lesson I am taking away from this sample in crafting my own project is to create a layout that is fun for the reader! If it’s not interesting to their eyes, it won’t be interesting to read.

 

 

 

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Instructions for submitting your final work

With the end of the summer term quickly approaching, you’ve got some looming deadlines, but you’ll have a little bit of extra time. Read on for instructions and deadline info.

Final projects will be due by the end of the day on Thursday, 8/6 (this is a 24-hour extension). Please post your project to the blog, and be sure to do the following:

  • if your project takes the form of anything other than a blog post (for which you could use Expressions to build your document), please insert your project into the post as a usable file (i.e. PDF) or link. Use the Add Media button on your post to do this. Remember that you can title that media in the Add window, so that whatever text you want to have will appear where you embed the link.
  • in the body of your post, include a brief outline of the rhetorical situation for your text–the audience, purpose, mode of delivery/publication, etc. (Remember that you have full control over this and can create whatever hypothetical situation you desire.)
  • categorize your post as “Taking it public,” and tag it with “final project,” “unit 3,” “week of 8/3,” and [your name]

 

Your Unit 3/final course reflection will be due by the end of the day on Saturday, 8/8 (this is also a 24-hour extension). Please refer to the unit 3 assignment sheet for the prompt for this 500-word post. Please note:

  • this should read like an essay (not just a Q&A)
  • you should categorize this post as “Taking it public,” and tag it with “week of 8/3,” “reflection,” “unit 3,” and [your name]
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Discussion 6/29/20 ( Dan)

1.

Cori Wong entered a very important and popular topic in her article “Changing organizational culture: from embedded bias to equity and inclusion”.  As we are learning in our studies of the book “They say I say”, it is important for an author to enter a conversation and to add something new to it as opposed to simply restating facts and ideas authors have come up with. She did just that in a very enlightening way when she used a metaphor for describing the difference between equality and equity. Her metaphor was that if a group of people are running a long race, a decision based on equality would be to give them all the same exact shoe (size and all). This technically treats everyone the same as equality strives for. However, people have different sized feet (i.e. different needs). Therefore, some people may have an inherent advantage in running the race due to their perfect fitting shoes while others are at a disadvantage who’s feet don’t fit. Equity on the other hand would be assessing individual’s needs and getting them a shoe that fits well to give them equal opportunity to succeed in the race. I believe this metaphor was an excellent contribution to the conversation of diversity and inclusion. This was significant to me because it really helped me visualize and understand the difference between equity and equality. It is very important to be able to distinguish the difference because the language that we use is powerful and can dramatically impact how our society functions.

 

2.

After reading chapter 8 of “They say, I say” and reading Cori Wong’s article, I noticed multiple location where she used important moves to “connect the parts” of her sentences and paragraphs. In doing so, Cori was able to create an article that reads very easily and flows nicely. Had she omitted the various transitional words/phrases her writing would be choppy and would be much more challenging to understand. The following paragraph found on page two of the article states

“[While diversity often refers to representation of difference, inclusion refers to how differences are meaningfully incorporated and integrated into daily practices. As such, a better way to frame the commitment to be more equitable and inclusive would start by asking, “Who is not represented at the proverbial table? In what ways have we kept some people out?”]”

After her first sentence explaining the definition of diversity and inclusion, Cori begins the sentence with “As such”. This technique refers back to her previous sentence and indicates to the reader that she is going to add something related but new to her argument. She does this by staying on topic but including the addition of an example to help the reader digest the new ideas she is describing.

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Discussion Week of 7/27

The presentation that I found to mirror what I will be focusing on shows how to address the topic and the genre of a presentation about empathy and the workplace. The first source I found is a presentation that discusses empathy in the workplace. The presentation “Empathy At Workplace” was written by Abu Zafor Md. Shaleah, Assistant Manager HR at A Leading Group of Companies and published on slide share which is apart of the LinkedIn platform. I choose this example because I can learn from the features of the writing such as the way that the author addresses the topic. He spreads the terms and points out throughout each slide telling a story and keeping the attention of the audience. The presentation does a good job of introducing topics and defining them before diving into examples and resources, this influenced me to make sure to limit the amount of vagueness in my presentation. I am going to try to incorporate how the author includes common questions on the topic and then respond with answers that way the presentation connects with the audience. Since the bibliography is a large part of this project I made sure to look at how these sources cited the work. In this presentation, the author used a slide at the end to summarize all of the references. Though I like the idea of a reference slide, in the end, I do think that it could be organized better and I will aim for that when creating mine. The platform the source is posted on also influenced me when deciding to have the presentation be published online or presented in person. Publishing my presentation on LinkedIn slide share similar to this presentation seems to be the best choice because it is a platform that is constantly populated with college students. Overall this source is a good reference for me when crafting my work and I will take the positives and negatives from it to move forward.

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Week of 7/27 – Discussion

For my research I came across two news articles that I found capture the genre of writing I’m aiming for. The first from the University of Colorado Denver articulates a very academic friendly text crediting many of its sources through in-cite citations. The article does a very effective job of including many voices referencing academic researchers and highlighting direct quotes from first-hand accounts. It presents a wholesome narrative keeping the reader engaged and able to jump to related or more detailed issues through hyperlinks. What I like especially is the way it breaks down the text in big headline topics that are controversial or straight to the point. The first headline, for example, called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Diversity” serves as an introductory starting point for the authors and gives a clear picture of what the subject (and later paragraphs) will be about. Other ones such as “BIPOC – Never Heard of It?” and “Forget Minority and Underserved” shift focus to critical areas that need to be addressed and reevaluated for modern discussions.

Overall I find the way the article is written works particularly well keeping in mind the reader’s attention span with hierarchical takeaways (like italicizing text, increasing font size, inserting block quotes). What I think the article could improve in, however, is by increasing the variety/ type of breaks. In the second article I found from CNN, I liked the way it includes key images with captions and related videos. In this example, it varies by adding historical, geographical, and audio information to round out the reader’s understanding. Though longer to read and less effective in being direct with the audience, the strategies I liked of the two will be helpful in crafting my final project.

 

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Discussion Week 7/27

The article I chose is one that models the project I wish to create and focuses on the effects of social media on adolescents and the way that peer experiences play monumental roles on their development. This article lays out in a chart the causes and effects of kids that are introduced to peer activities and exhibits the reactions to each varied experience. It is not only able to show the real life consequences of these negative impacts on the students but also the unknown ways that they are being negatively impacted and the dynamics that will be tampered with as a result. I enjoyed that his article not only talked about what’s already occurring but how the future generations will be impacted if changes are not made. It sets up a framework to exhibit to the readers how each dynamic within the adolescents life will change because of social media. Although the article presents solid information and numerous facts, I feel it turns into a rather long research presentation as it explains the various ways and situations the students can possible experience. The article is broken down into multiple concepts and frameworks in order to convey one central issue when I feel it can be condensed to present the information to the readers more efficiently. When I am creating my own project I will use some of the same methods such as presenting the information in a chart or bullet like formation and breaking apart the social issues based on cause and effect.

 

https://link-springer-com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/article/10.1007/s10567-018-0262-9

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Discussion Prompt week of 7/27 genre

The article I chose was one written by the New York Times  regarding the black lives matter movement, and the breakdown of numbers and the protesting in general. I believe this sample works, and it does not. The article does a good job at describing numbers and giving exact examples to back up what he is saying. He breaks down the article into subtopics which helps divide the information for the reader to better understand, or be able to find exactly what they are looking for in the article. I like these parts of the article, as it is a good representation of what I hope to do — the visual pairing with the information and broken down in a way that is easy to read. However, there are ways in which the article is less successful. The author almost uses quotes and information too much, to the point where it is more general information rather than to the point. The article is a way of putting information together to make it easier for the reader, instead of to the point and an easy read. The article is wordy, however that is not a bad thing with the magnitude of information being represented. I believe they did a good job at presenting important information that matters, however I will be trying to find a balance. It will take practice, however I do believe it is able to be achieved.

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Discussion post (6-15-20)

3. I can tell that the article “The problem with diversity in computing” has a good flow to it. The reason for this is the excellent transitions that Ian uses from paragraph to paragraph. His ability and the transition sentences he forms prevents his article from sounding choppy. For example, He speaks about Charles Isbell who is the director of the constellations program at Georgia tech. Isbell claims that we should be more interested in integration of individuals as opposed to just diversity. Ian places the following quote at the end of the paragraph.

“Diversity is just membership,” Isbell said. “Integration is influence, power, and partnership.”

This allows Ian to start his next paragraph by responding to Isbell’s assertations by stating that integration is much harder than diversity. He adds in another quote from Isbell stating that in order to reach integration in industry new folks need to be capable and confident and older folks need to be willing. This sets him up for the following paragraph where he speaks about the willingness of tech industry giants such as Google.

 

  1. I was intrigued by Bryans work about language diversity. One of the facts that I found most interesting is that when most people think of diversity they often think of race, religion, and gender. Nonnative accents are generally not the first thing that comes to mind. However, nonnative accent discrimination is a serious problem and should be discussed so that we can strive to find a solution. I really liked the TED talk that Bryan included by Lera Boroditsky in which she discusses how language affects our thinking. Some of the parts that I found most interesting was how some cultures such as a specific tribe in Australia base their entire language off of the directions north, south, east, and west. This helps them to stay very oriented which is opposite to our culture. Another thing I found interesting is how a language such as English places blame on someone who makes an accident ( such as breaking a vase). We say “John broke the vase”. In other cultures such as Spanish speaking cultures it is much more common to say “The vase broke” when speaking of an accident.

This topic that Bryan chose has really opened my eyes to new issues of organizational culture. It has formed the basis of my unit 2 research and my unit 3 research paper.